A critical skill for SL building is mastery of your camera controls from the keyboard. This will allow you to look at your building project from all sides, zoom in an out as required without moving your avatar. The specific keys vary between Windows and Mac. Throughout this site when you see two modifier keys, the first one will be Windows and the second for Mac displayed in this fashion Alt/Option. In general the Alt key on windows is equivalent to the option key on Mac and the Control key on Windows is equivalent to Command or Open Apple key on the Mac. (Thank you Steve and Bill!)

 

The following is a summary of the keyboard shortcuts for camera positioning:

Alt/option click on any object (other than the sky) to to zoom in and out on that object with forward/reverse motion of your mouse. Sideways motion of your mouse while holding this modifier key will rotate your view around the clicked object.

Add the Control/command key stop "zooming" and add rotation around the object in a vertical direction.

In practical use while building, I might Alt/option click a prim to zoom in close, add the control key to orbit your object in all directions.

Press the ESC key to return your camera view to normal, behind and slightly above your avatar.

Find a summary of these an other ways to move your camera view here.

Quicktime Required

• Press the Build button at the bottom of your screen.
• Close your chat bark if open, by pressing the ESC key. Now type the B key. ESC key will also work if your Communicate window is open but the window will stay open. The goal is to make sure SL does not think you are attempting to chat when typing the B key.
• Finally, you can right click the ground and select Create.

Select the shape from the available basic prim shapes at the top of the build dialogue and click the ground or other surface to Rez. (make sure you are on land you have permission to build on. If you are rezzing prims inside of an existing structure, make sure the prims of the structure are locked, to prevent accidental deletion or modification.

You will often need to return to a rezzed prim to make further edits. Right click the prim (Mac users with a one button mouse can Command click) and choose Edit from the pie menu. If the prim is linked to other prims, you will need to check the box: Edit linked parts. Select the appropriate tab for the edits you need to make.

For maximum control, you can just type in a specific size in meters for X,Y, and Z dimensions. An example of when this is useful is when a geometric object is being constructed based on exact angles and dimensions; say a octagon shape floor. By defining numerically exact dimensions for the sides of component triangles, the angles of the vertices can be exactly defined.

 

Similarly, the position can be set numerically. Be very careful with this technique. If you accidentally enter a number incorrectly you will move your prim so far it will be lost. i.e. under ground. Often it makes sense to round the position of a prim to whole numbers to make it easier to use the grid or manual entry to position this or related prims in a build. For example, I might edit the illustrated prim to 42, 70, 22. (Don't round the Z number down if it will put the prim under ground.

Try this, rez a cube, sit on it, set the Z number to 300 meters. Press the tab key and you will find yourself teleported to 300 meters. This is the basis of how many teleporters work.

Drag corner stretch handles to resize in 3 dimensions uniformly.. Drag the handle in middle of each face to resize in only that dimension.

To move or position a prim or linked set of prims, right click to edit (if needed) and drag the Red (X), Green (Y), or Blue (Z) arrow tips. To move across a plane, say the X,Y plane, drag the triangle shaped icons. the green arrow represents South to North and the red arrow West to East.

Using the modifiers in tandem will let you produce a huge number of special shaped prims. I find myself using just basic taper and hollow options occasionally. Rather than spending time with trial and error with these options. I purchased Prim Finder for $290 Lindends This tool will let you rez a large number of shaped prims that are made using the modifiers. I find it easier to start with these prims and modify them for my use.

The following Show Me video illustrates how you manually modify a basic prim's shape using the options available in the Object tab of the build dialogue.

QuickTime Required

Duplicate a prim
If the prim is not selected, right click it and choose edit. Now hold down the shift key while dragging one of the arrows. If you select the Green arrow and drag, the new prim 2 will be exactly lined up in the Y direction. You can also type Control/Command D to duplicate a prim, but shift dragging gives you the advantage of having the prim aligned in one direction to its parent.

 

Use the Grid for adjoining 2 prims.

1. While editing prim 1, check the box labeled Use Grid (keyboard shortcut is the G key) or menu Tools: Snap to Grid.
2. Click the Options button and set the grid spacing (.25 meters for now).
3. Set the opacity of the grid, start with the slider all the way right and reduce to your liking. Close the Options window.
4. Now, change the position of the prim 1 by dragging an arrow handle. You will see a grid appear to ether side of your direction of movement. Move the mouse into this area and continue dragging. This will cause your mouse to snap to the grid. (Shift X will also move the prim to align with the grid).
5. Now that prim 1 is aligned to the grid, duplicate it by shift dragging an arrow key. Move your mouse over the grid while continuing to Drag. (mouse button stays down). Drag just enough to cause prim 2 to snap to prim 1. Because you use the grid, the two prims will adjoin with no overlap.

Quick Time Required

Frequently it is helpful to link multiple prims together. This might help in moving them as a group or backing them up to inventory. The prims should be in close proximity, but do not have to be touching. Rich click one of the prims and choose edit. Now shift click the remaining prims to select them as well. Finally, type Control/Command L to link the prims or choose Menu Tools: Link. The last prim to be added to the group is called the Root prim and will be yellow while all of the other prims will be blue. Sometimes you will required to add a script to the root prim. It is a good idea to change the default name of this prim (Object) to something more meaningful. If you right click your link group and choose Take, the name of linked group in your inventory will be the name of the root prim.

The maximum number of Prims in a linked set is 256. The maximum distance the group can cover is determined by a formula defined here. I normally do not try to make an entire complex structure one linked set, but rather link the structure into several small groups.

Right click the prim or one of the linked prims.

• Select Take to transfer the item to your inventory.
• Select More from the pie menu, then Delete or Take Copy.

1. Right click the prim and choose edit from the pie menu. If the prim is linked, check the option for Edit Linked Parts to select just one prim for editing.
2. Select the Texture tab.
3. Click on the default wood texture. This will open a window to find a replacement texture.
4. Check the box for Apply Immediately.
5. Ether navigate to a texture or enter part of its title in the search field at the top. In the example shown, I have searched for brick.
6. If the texture you want has already been applied to a prim you have rezzed; select the eye dropper and sample the texture.
7. Click the Select button to apply the texture to all sides of the prim.
8. If you want to color tint the texture, click the White texture to replace it. Using a shade of gray will allow you to darken a texture. Clicking the blank texture and a color will result in a solid color prim.

 

• When editing a prim, check the "Select Texture" option.
• Click on the side you would like to change the texture for. Now click on the texture pane as before to select a replacement texture.
• If you need to change sides of multiple prims, you can do so by shift clicking each side to add them to the selection before selecting a replacement texture.

 

 

Adjust repeats per face or meter to determine the scale of a texture on the prim. Examples of when this is needed:

• Applying a texture to a 10 x 10 m prim may look incorrect if you do not repeat the texture. i.e. Tile on a floor.
• When applying a "door" texture, you would want to adjust the scale until the texture matched the door prim with exactly one repeat horizontally and vertically.
• Wood and other textures often need to be rotated 90 degrees.
• If you apply a texture to 2 nearby prims, one wide, one thin; the textures will not appear the same. The easy way to fix this is to make the repeats per meter the same. If they are actually touching, you then might have to adjust the horizontal or vertical offset.

 

Some textures have transparent or partially transparent areas. This is different then increasing the transparency parameter in the build dialogue. This parameter can not make a prim totally invisible and will max out at 90 percent.

 

There are even reasons to make a prim totally transparent using transparent textures. For example if you have steps that are to high, you can place a transparent ramp over them to make it easy for a avatar to walk up. Sculpted prims are phantom, meaning you can walk through them. Often transparent textures are applied to a sculpted prim to make it possible to sit or walk on a sculpted prim. Shown is a brick texture which has transparent areas along the edges to add realism.

If you are having problems with a seam showing between 2 prims, try applying an alpha transparent texture to the adjoining edges. This even works when adjoining two ten meter windows to make a seamless large window.

 

Finally, landscape flowers and trees often use a transparent mask, since it is not possible to make prims in the shape of a detailed flower. These textures are made in an application like Photoshop.

When you are creating a building, you can add detail in the texture rather than by creating new prims. These textures can actually be made from photographs, but usually need to be tweaked in Photoshop to remove camera angle distortions. Shown is an example building side. Even though it is just one prim, the texture, which contains shadows makes the building appear as if it has lots of 3d components.

There are a number of parameters on the Texture tab that can be used to add realism to your texture.

• Transparency: The Transparency of an object can be increased to 90 percent. This is the usual way to create see-through windows, but it can also be accomplished with an alpha mask texture.
• Glow: This causes the texture to be very bright approach ing white. Could be used on a light or jewelry.
• Full Bright: Normally textures grow darker or brighter to match the location of Second Life sun and sky and will be very dark at night time. You can over ride this by Checking the Full Bright box. For example if you make the inside wall textures of a classroom Full Bright, the room will appear "lit" even at night time. It is always good to make projection screens and signage Full Bright.
• Mapping: If a texture is distorted on one side of a prim, you can often fix the problem by choosing Planar mapping.
• Bump: Add roughness of various types to an otherwise smooth texture.
• Light: This parameter is located under the features tab. It causes an object to light up its surroundings. The most frequent use is to apply this to a white light globe. You can can also make a totally transparent "phantom" prim give off light. These phantom lights can be placed in areas that are too dark for added ambiance. You can even wear one in from of your avatar's face so that your face will be lighted even when standing in dark areas.
• Flexible Path: I have not found a practical use of this parameter other than modern art sculptures, but it is fun to demonstrate.

 

There are many Second Life Tools for expediting building. One of my favorites for working with Prim positioning and texture alignment is Prim Docker. You can find this product for $499 Lindens ($2) at the following Second Life location:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jeolla/238/228/86

Prim Docker allows you to exactly align edges of prims, precisely adjoin two prims, and to align and scale textures across multiple prims. Watch Youtube Videos here.

While building everything yourself is more rewording, you can get free or purchased structures from hundreds of places in Second Life and in XStreetSL.com. Unfortunately, many prefabs will not allow you to make edits. The New Media Center r has several buildings which are free and editable. You will want to edit, at least to change the textures so that your structures different from others using the same resource.

Your projects will seem much more real if you add ambient sounds. This might be as simple as waves crashing, rippling water, birds, or the murmur of a crowd. Sounds can be uploaded, purchased within Second Life or Xstreetsl.com. "Valid sounds are any .WAV file in standard PCM format, 16-bit/44.1kHz/mono or stereo (which will be converted to mono anyway), less than or exactly 10 seconds in length. (10.000 seconds is fine, but 10.001 will fail to upload; to the degree of one sample makes a difference.) Sounds cannot be saved as 8-bit, 22.05 kHz, or any other frequency.

Lock Prims
The mostly likely thing to happen to that new building you just finished is for YOU to accidentally delete part of it. This can happen very easily when you are editing near by objects. To prevent this, just select all the prims in an area and check the Lock option in the Object tab.

Store Rezable Copies in Your Inventory
There are Second Life tools for sale that make it easy to keep a complete version of each of your builds in your inventory ready for you to drag out if the original is damaged or if you just want to use the building more than once. Most of these applications will only work on objects that are marked as copyable in their preferences. This means generally you can back up things you have made with no problem, but not all things you have purchased.

 

There have been instances where the database that holds hour inventory is corrupted and all contents lost. To protect yourself against this, you will need to create a 2nd avatar and give him/her a copy of your builds.

My favorite tool for backing up my builds is called Rez-foo. You can purchase it for $2500 Lindens at:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Mew/104/152/751

That is about $10 US dollars, but well worth it, if it prevents you from having to rebuild a complex project, it will be money well spent.

Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life

CTER Video Tutorials

Killer Guide to Building in Second Life

Creating Clothing in Second Life

Build Tutorials

Ivory Tower (in SL)

Second Life Resources (meta list)

Video Tutorals from Torley