Second Life building
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A page with things you can make in Second Life, as well as more general building tips. Please could you add your name to the bottom of the page if you have found this useful-we'd like to get as much feedback as possible:
Contents
Building Tips
Starting off
Everything in Second Life uses prims, or primitives. Each individual shape is a prim, which in turn brings the island one step closer to the 15000 prim per sim limit. Once all 15000 prims on that sim are used, there's no more building. Basic prims can be joined together and manipulated to make larger and more complex objects. To get a basic prim, at the bottom of the screen, click build. This brings up an additional menu with a variety of basic shapes on. Click the shape you want, then click on the ground to "rez" (create/bring out) that shape.
Basic Editing
Now you will notice that the building interface has changed from Creating to Editing. You can also get on to this screen by right clicking objects and selecting 'Edit'. Here you can position, rotate, stretch and select individual sides of that shape. Clicking position will bring up the crosses (click to move on the x,y,z axes), clicking on stretch will bring up little dots, and rotate will bring up the sphere-type shape. The colours are a quick guide to the axis, with red representing the x axis (along), green the y axis (sideways), and blue the z axis (up). Clicking and dragging the red, green, or blue bars changes the objects around those points, so for instance dragging on the red circle in rotate will rotate the object around the x axis. In stretch you can also drag the grey points to scale the object-stretching it along all axes equally. A useful tool is to select the 'Stretch both sides' option-this allows the shape to be stretched symmetrically around the centre, which means that you don't have to reposition it.
Camera Controls
The main object menu allows you to move the camera around an object, and can be selected on the camera tab on the top of the menu. From here you can orbit an object, moving around it to look at it from different angles, zoom in and out to look at the object from different differences, and pan the camera, moving it to different focus points. When you orbit an object, you click on a central point and that becomes the camera focus, the screen centres on that point, and by moving the mouse you can circle the object. When zooming, you simply click and drag, with the camera moving out when you move the mouse up the screen, and in when you move it down the screen. Panning you again click and drag, moving left when you drag it to the right, up when you drag it down, and so on, as though you were dragging the world to different places on your screen.
Textures
After you've got the rough shape, you can move on to changing textures and colours of the shape. Click on "more" on the editing tab. This brings up a whole new range of options. Click on "textures" at the top to go to the texture tab. Now click on texture/colour to change the look of your shape, with the colour being controlled by selecting different areas on the square, and changing the shade on the bar to the right, and textures being selected from your inventory-there is a large list of textures in the Library. You can also make different faces have different colours and textures. Select the 'Select faces' option, which makes a white target sign appear on each face, and then left click on the faces you want to change. These are then changed in the same way as normal, while the other, unselected, faces stay the same. You can also change the Transparency of an object between 0 (opaque) and 90 (nearly see through) by changing the number in the box.
Hotkeys
There are a number of quick ways to do all of the things above and more. Ctrl allows you to rotate the object Ctrl+Shift allows you to stretch the object Ctrl+Alt orbits an object Ctrl+Space pans an object Mouse wheel zooms in or out Ctrl+L links objects together Ctrl+Shift+L unlinks objects Ctrl+D copies the object
Objects you can build
A flag that waves in the wind
Great tutorial here on YouTube (from the Second Life website). The Sandbox with free textures and tools mentioned at the beginning is on the Main Grid and therefore inaccessible to anyone based on Schome Park - but you should have textures in your inventory already. If you need more, ask staff to give you some, check out the selection in the Scho-op, or talk to TheSchome Ranger about uploading your own. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBlYNcZdrg OR http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=381
Definitely worth checking out the other resources there as well.
12 August - Rowan followed the tutorial the result is in the Sandbox for now. Well, it's a start - although I can't find any textures at the moment
A simple café stool
- Right-click the ground and select CREATE from the pie chart.
- Select the hollow tube (not the solid cylinder).
- Check KEEP TOOL SELECTED.
- Click the ground with the wand.
- On the grey menu, select MORE, then the OBJECT Tab.
- Under SIZE, set X to 1.000.
- Under HOLE SIZE, set Y to 0.50.
- Under PATH CUT BEGIN AND END, set B to 0.250 and E to 0.950.
- Change HOLLOW to 85.
- Select the GENERAL tab and type in a NAME for your object.
- Select the TEXTURE tab and choose a COLOUR for your object.
- Close the grey menu and you are left with a café stool.
- Sit on your café stool.
The same instructions, but this time with pictures
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Editing and copying your café stool
See pictures of how to do this.
- Open the INVENTORY at the bottom right of your screen.
- Your bar stool should be in the OBJECT folder.
- Drag it onto the ground.
- You can drag it out as many times as you like.
- Right-click your café stool to EDIT it.
- Select the TEXTURE tab and change its COLOUR.
- It's less confusing if you change its name as well.
Now find out how to make your café stool talk!
If you have found this useful-please put your name below
