Italian Courtyard Home And Region

I’m pleased to announce that my Italian Courtyard home and region template is now available. This is a beautiful courtyard surrounded by luscious natural space. Supports Room Editor for furniture placement and user selectable lighting.

If you visited the BlakOpal’s Courtyard region in-world in 2018, you may be familiar with the build. At the time, I created it as a place to visit as well as a way to learn how furniture placement worked in SineSpace. BlakOpal wanted me to make her a space to hang out and decorate in-world, and as a result the courtyard build is what I made for her. Click here for a tutorial on creating a region and applying a region template.

Improving on Great Design

What I have done is go back through my original build to improve the quality and efficiency. That brings the filesize down, as well as adds functionality that I’ve learned to do in the months since then.

The original project turned into a sort of laundry list of things I thought BlakOpal would like. She’s a fan of italian culture, history, and architecture. As luck would have it, Pete at Quantum Theory was just finishing his second volume of ancient Roman assets. I wanted to change a few things, and take advantage of recent improvements to Unity‘s particle system to make the fire bowls pop.

Surrounded by trees

We have lemon trees in our real-world yard. BlakOpal knows I’ve been using the Speedtree modeler and wondered if I could make a virtual lemon grove. I had already been working on sparrows flying and flocking in the skies overhead (occasionally landing on the courtyard building). Since we have hummingbirds in our yard, naturally I had to see if I could get them into SineSpace. The birds are more than just a simple animation loop, you’ll see them fly and flock around the region. I set their behaviors and they fly and they flock naturally (and the hummingbirds love the lemon trees hehe).

Pet Friendly

In BlakOpal’s courtyard, we had two cats roaming around. They were modeled after our two real world furry friends (each with their own behaviors, of course). I didn’t include those cats with the Italian Courtyard home template, but instead use a single grey tabby who sure seems to enjoy roaming around the courtyard.

Courtyard Lighting Options

The surrounding terrain of the Italian Courtyard region is spacious (a little over 3.5 square kilometers), but not huge. Improvements were made to the lighting setup, and I added user-selectable lighting. It defaults to daytime but you can set to sunrise, sunset, night, or a few different day/night cycles. You can also choose to make the fire bowls go away if you like. Check out this post to see the day and night settings in action. The test video was recorded in the Fairfield Deluxe home & region, but behaves the same way in the courtyard home. For a tutorial on adjusting the daytime lighting options, click here.

I finished out the store room portion of the build as well. That included floorplan support and a clickable door. I also added some basic wall lights so you could better find your way around at night. Check out this post for a demo and tutorial on adjusting lights.

The birds in the original build were great, but I made a few changes I think improves their behavior. 

While the region makes full use of physically based rendering (PBR) materials, it DOES NOT have swappable materials like the Fairfield house. That would have required a much more significant overhaul of the build and considerably more time to prepare. One of the goals I had with this template was to make something that was a little more affordable.

What the Italian Courtyard DOES have…

• User-selectable day and night settings
• Fire bowls! They’re on by default but you can turn them off
• Clickable door for the storage room
• Adjustable wall lighting in the main courtyard area and storage room
• Room Editor support for furniture placement
• Lemon trees, leafy trees, and ferns/grass that move gently in the wind
• Sparrows and hummingbirds in the sky and a delightful gray striped tabby cat wandering around the grounds.

It’s also an efficient build. You get a little over 50MB worth of space to add your own furniture on the basic free region (check out this post to learn how to place and move furniture). If you take advantage of one of their subscription deals, you will have tons of space to place awesome stuff. This is a great region template to get started with. It showcases a lot of great features in SineSpace while giving you plenty of room to customize with your stuff.

Italian Courtyard Home and Region is Available Now

You can find it in the SineSpace shop. Click on Region in the top row of categories and then choose Landscapes from the subcategories on the left…. or just search for COURTYARD! You can also check the build out in-world, search for COURTYARD and it’ll come right up! Buy it for yourself or gift for a friend. Click here to preview on the web shop.

As soon as we get client updates with long-awaited camera controls improvements, I will record and post some videos to walk through and demonstrate the house and its features.

More from Trilo Byte Designs

• Sansar Commentary
• Rim Shader Avatar Skins
• Catwalk Animations
• Izi Sig Volcano World
• Tirana Rainbow Forest