Creating Worlds: Terrain, Vegetation & Import
The Build Panel shapes objects. This guide is about the ground they stand on: spinning up a brand-new world, sculpting its terrain, planting forests across it, and importing whole regions from other virtual worlds -- all live, inside the world itself.
A world in poqpoq is more than a pile of prims. It has land you can raise into mountains, vegetation that carpets the hills, water, light, a name, and rules for who may enter and build. Shaping the land and planting it happen right inside your world, in the Environment panel: Dozer powers its LAND tab and Kudzu its PLANT tab. Bringing in a whole region from another virtual world is the job of Legacy Import, launched from your world's card in My Worlds.
This chapter walks the whole pipeline, from the empty biome you pick at creation to the finished landscape you and your visitors walk through.
Starting a New World
Open the left shelf and expand My Worlds. Every world you own is listed here with its type badge -- WORLD for a full region, WORKSHOP for a small building space, ZONE for a special area -- alongside its age rating and public/private flag. At the bottom sit two ways to make something new.
Create Another World
Choosing Create Another World asks one question first: where do you want to start from? Each option is a different biome -- a starting terrain and material palette you can build on or completely reshape later.
Pick a biome, then name the world, add an optional description, and set its rules before you create it:
- Starting point -- the biome card you selected above. This only seeds the initial look; the LAND tab can regenerate or reshape the terrain entirely.
- Name & description -- how the world appears in your list and to visitors. The description is optional.
- Rating -- G, R, or X, the same content-rating scale used across poqpoq. Pick the one that matches what will happen in your world.
- Access -- Public (anyone can visit) or Private (only you and people you allow). You can change this later; building permissions are covered in Managing Your World.
Create a Dungeon
The second button, Create a Dungeon, is a different path: instead of an open region it builds instanced, party-scoped content with the help of the Dungeon Master. Dungeons spawn a fresh private copy for each group that enters, so loot and enemies are never shared or camped. The dungeon design flow is covered on its own -- see Dungeon Instances and Quest Loops in the World Guide.
Shaping Your World: the Environment Panel
Once a world exists, you shape it from the inside. There is no separate app to open and nothing to send: walk into your world, press I (or tap the shelf) to open the left shelf, and expand Environment. Its tabs cover everything about the land and the air above it:
LAND is Dozer, poqpoq's in-world terrain editor. PLANT is Kudzu, its in-world planting tool for trees, groundcover, and rocks. PATH carves trails, roads, creeks, rivers, and canals into the ground; WATER sets the sea and its waves; LIGHT sets the time of day, weather, and mood. You can also right-click the ground for two shortcuts: Path ▸ a trail, road, creek, river, or canal opens the PATH tab and starts drawing it from that spot, and Plant opens a species list beside the spot -- one click plants, and the list stays open so you can plant more there.
Every change happens live, in front of you, and saves itself. Who may shape a world follows its permissions: the owner always can, and admins, staff, or members the world allows may too. Anyone without permission who opens the panel sees a short note such as "Only the sim owner can shape this land." instead of the tools. A natural order is terrain first, then plants on top of it, but you can move between tabs at any time.
LAND -- Shaping the Ground with Dozer
The LAND tab is where flat ground becomes islands, dunes, and mountain ridges. Say "make me an island," then sculpt it with a few good brushes, right inside your world. It has three parts you can mix freely.
Generate a biome
Pick a tile -- Island, Desert, Mountains, Forest, Plains, or Flat -- for an instant landscape. The Shape sliders set the water level (raise it to flood the valleys) and the relief, and Randomize gives you the same biome with a different landform. If you have already sculpted, poqpoq asks before replacing your edits.
Sculpt by hand
The Raise, Lower, Flatten, Smooth, and Roughen tools carve exactly what you want; Revert brushes an area back toward its last saved shape. Set the brush Size (1 to 48 m), Strength, and Falloff (Smooth, Linear, or Sharp). Click the tool again or press Esc to stop sculpting.
Ground textures
Under Advanced, the Textures chips set what covers each height band -- Low, Mid, High, and Peak -- from sand, grass, dirt, soil, rock, and snow. Click a chip to cycle it; the reset button puts back the biome's own palette.
There is no Save button: the land saves itself as you work. A small mark on the tab bar shows a dot while you edit, a spinning arrow while it saves, and a check mark once your world has it. A standard world's ground is 256 × 256 m; workshops are 16 × 32 m, and the public plazas 512 × 512 m.
PLANT -- Growing Life with Kudzu
Bare terrain is lonely. The PLANT tab populates it with trees, palms, shrubs and ferns, cacti, grasses and flowers, vines, underwater plants, and rocks -- dozens of species in all -- either a whole canopy at a time or one brush stroke at a time.
- Grow a canopy -- start from a preset such as Dense forest, Meadow, Desert scrub, Tropical island, or Kelp reef. It fills the whole world in one go.
- Design the grove -- the Grove Designer map shows where plants will grow. Tune Density and Clustering, add species to the Plants and Land features mixes (rocks live under Land features), set the size range, and Reroll for a fresh arrangement. Plant grows it across the world; Clear empties it.
- Work in the field -- switch to the in-world tools to paint plants where you stand: Brush adds a few at a time (Size, Count, and Falloff, using the preset mix or one species you search for), and Erase removes them. To change one plant, just tap it while the PLANT tab is open (or use Select): a single tree or a cluster can then be resized, rotated, switched to another species, duplicated, or deleted. The Delete key removes the selected plant.
- Let it save -- planting saves itself every few seconds and when you close the panel. Revert restores the last saved planting if you change your mind.
Each world holds up to 3,000 plants. When you reach the limit, the tab tells you the plant budget is full; clear or erase some to make room. Worlds planted with the older Landscaper tool keep their vegetation: it still loads.
Legacy Import -- Bringing in Existing Worlds
Legacy Import is a button on your world's card in My Worlds (click the world to expand its card). It opens Black Box Legacy -- a converter that turns OpenSimulator region archives (OAR files) into poqpoq-ready 3D content. If you have a world built in OpenSim or a Second Life-style toolchain, this is how you bring it across instead of rebuilding it by hand.
The conversion preserves geometry, textures, and layout so an imported region arrives recognizable rather than as a jumble. The deeper story of why cross-engine geometry is tricky -- and how poqpoq keeps imported shapes faithful -- is told in Bridging Worlds.
Pipeline Tips
- Terrain before trees. Shape the land on the LAND tab first, then plant on the PLANT tab -- plants follow the surface, so reshaping the ground afterward moves the ground out from under them.
- A new biome replaces your edits. Generating a biome on the LAND tab starts the land over; poqpoq asks first, so choose Keep if you meant to carry on sculpting.
- Everything saves itself. There is no separate app and no send step. Watch the mark on the tab bar for the check that says it is saved. Land changes reach visitors who are already in your world once they save; new planting shows for others the next time they enter the world.
- There is no undo button. On the LAND tab, the Revert brush paints the ground back toward its last saved shape wherever you stroke it (Strength and Falloff apply). On the PLANT tab, Revert restores the last saved planting, and Erase removes plants one area at a time.
- Standard worlds are 256 × 256 m. Workshops are smaller (16 × 32 m) and plazas larger (512 × 512 m); every world holds up to 3,000 plants, so plan features and forests to fit.