Sunday, February 3, 2008

Building in SL

I have begun building for my group's project, and I have found that it is much easier than I had expected. Second Life provides a great tool kit that makes building fairly easy, even if you have no prior experience with it. That being said, I was wondering if anyone could help out with a few problems I have been having.

1. I would like to make a ceiling and then building another floor on top of the first. I can't seem to figure out how to building a ceiling.

2. I would like to make a teleport that could take someone on the first floor up to a higher floor.

If anyone knows how to do either of these and would like to help, I would really appreciate it.

-Mark

4 comments:

arturo said...

Mark, I imagine that you have built the walls already so you know how to scale prims. A ceiling or floor is exactly the same except the scaling goes in the Y instead of X or Z. So I don't know what the problem is, can you be more specific? or tell us where it is (the coordinates that appear on the top bar) you are building so we can see it.

Once you build a slab for the floor for example, since the ceiling has the same shape most likely, just duplicate the floor (shift_move) and raise it to where you want it. That's that.

I just saw a kind of maze on the Swamp which I think might be yours (if you are Achilles). In either case the first problem I see is that you should have built the floor first (like when you build a house, starts with the floor plan, right?)

Then you build the walls and then you "raise" the ceiling by simply duplicating the floor.

You cannot simply trace the entire shape (like you would do on a 3D program) mainly because as you probably found out there is a 10 mt. limit to the prims, so if you want a larger area just put them together (although there are tools in world that you can buy that have many more functions. Skidz is one).

Another important tip is the following. Try to plan a little more beforehand. For example try to decide what the walls are going to look like, let's say brick. So before you start building, create a first wall, texture it, and then when you clone it 5o times it already has the right texture, otherwise,hmmm, it will take some time...

As for a teleports, unless you are very familiar with scripts, I would suggest you just buy one, there are many kinds, do a search. You might even find a freebie.

Anonymous said...

To let you know i have become very good at replicatng floors and ceilings, if anyone would like to nail down a specific time I would be very happy to show you how I built my library very quickly and basic linkig and unlinking prim techniques. If here are more people who would also like to take part in the class i would love them to join. Also we have a free tp in the library on the 6th floor in case anyone is interested. NOT the main library transport sysem, and it is near the bookcases. If there is anyone who needs something built or help just holler, RedDog Maynard is always online, and if you need space my library has it should you want an entire floor for your group.

Narasi said...

Thanks Alex, that will be great to get some pointers on how to build stuff. I had Dennis to arrange for someone to make some presentation this week. It will be a good idea to actually do the presentation for the whole class. If that does not work out I will definitely be interested in meeting up with you.
Thanks
Narasi

DMBrown said...

I had some of my own adventures lanscaping and interior decorating this past week when I tried to outfit part of our patch of The Swamp. I didn't really try to built anything, but I made a fair amount of low cost purchases from SL Exchange.

Modifying a Parthaneon into a courthouse went pretty well, when I added in church pews, theater seats, and office furniture.

The 1L$ Lab building I purchased was another story. I threw it into the hillside once, threw it out over the "ocean" once, and completely lost it once. When I finally banged it in to place next to the courthouse where I wanted it, the roof was askew, so now you could say my lab roof "leaks"!

Looking at things when I had to leave, I may have to pick up both buildings and their contents and move them, to make room for the rest of my groups buildings. Oh well, live and learn.

Doug