Help me out Forum people!

Ok so after a long time I managed to build my own mansion on my island. I suck at building, but I worked like hell on it and its 90% done.

What I need are opinions for the ground floor. Right now its a huge open space and I have no idea how to divide it. I need opinions, critiques, ideas etc etc.

If anyone has free time please stop by Jacana 191,67

I may not be there or online so IM or notecard or post thoughts here please. Critique the whole build if you want. Any ideas on how to proceed from this point would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I'd consider two general uses: Work and play.

Play, in a mansion, says "PARTY" to me. Put in a dance floor and a huge big screen TV and some comfy conversational groupings for your friends to come over and have a good time with you. How about games? Maybe a shooting range.

Work: What do you do in SL? If you like building, and what you build is smaller than, say, a mansion, then why not have a workroom to do it in? Put in a measured grid on the floor and one wall, and have your textures in boxes. Put up a big "chalkboard" where you can upload sketches of your newest brainchild. If you're a photographer, put in a studio with lighting and poses and backgrounds. And so on...

Kitchens in SL are decorative rather than functional. If they're used for anything, it's for a change of pace in roleplay. But lots of people like them. If you think a house isn't complete without a big kitchen, go ahead and build one!

How about a quiet place to relax? An indoor garden with skylights, and gentle fountains, and butterflies and hummingbirds.

ooooo this is always fun! its like looking at the new houses in RL i will drop in and see! i wish there were some more invitations like this because so many have those red tapes or the orbs not that im complaining i just like to look

please don`t take this the wrong way, i even placed 100 arrow prims after reviewing an architect when he was finished with overlaps/gaps

the building is to cubick
the moment it rezzed, i saw overlapping prims all around with the effect of large pieces of texture flickerings
it is HUGE with 1 MAJOR problem, your almost out of prims to finish it, let alone decorating

personal
texture windows, i can`t explain it, but i dislike them
brown extirior texture, can give you some better light textures if you want but this would prolly give the neighbours a migrane as it`s a beach

on that note, i`ve been in your shoes with building my first big house, wish was a 90x40 mansion aswell (just abit more prim heavy )
but after all my builds and places wich have been from a small plot to 1/4sim to own island, the best thing to make is what makes you feel at home instead of impressing the neighbours in size

feel free to dropby at Sensual Estate if you want to see what i mean

I like cubic style

im still fixing the overlapping prim thing. its tedious but its being done

every one their own taste

still size vs prims will be a big issue, cause when your done, your almost out of prims

Navistar, I sent you a notecard in-world. Let me know if you do not receive it

There are some opportunities to save prims in the current build, but in fact the vast majority of the prims currently on the parcel are used not for the building but rather for all the other items. For example, one could harvest quite a few prims just by rebuilding the beach section of dock, stretching out one walkway and its supports, rather than pushing four of them together.

On the house itself, one could save perhaps a dozen prims by finding places where two are stacked on top of each other but use the same textures--notably on the back and sides of the structure. The main "prim hog" of course is the "Open Staircase" in the main entry hall; I'm guessing that's to be a major design feature, so it's probably not subject to compromise, but there are some fairly attractive part-sculpty stairs (with hidden, non-phantom ramps) that save a lot of prims and work much better than prim stairs for avatar legs not of the standard, superhuman length.

Now that megaprims seem to be about as stable as normal prims, there may be an opportunity to cut the total prim usage of the structure nearly in half by substituting 20x20 panels (or larger) in the floors and roof. But it's probably wise to make sure the design is what you want first, before retrofitting the megaprims.

Purely subjectively, I think the build is too large for the parcel. If it were my place, I'd try to create more of a relationship between the interior and the outdoor spaces, and use the structure(s) to help *define* some interesting outdoor spaces. (I know: the tropical island terrain somewhat limits the landscaping palette, and you've already got the ubiquitous dock and boats, but... well, outdoor spaces are often more popular than the inside of a build--and usually require fewer prims to make interesting.)

Apropos "boxiness": it looks as if you're already thinking of opening up the entry to be two floors tall, with a railing on the 2nd floor; I think that's a good instinct. That relieves some of the boxiness on the inside, vertically. One could break up the uniformity of the plan view (or "footprint" too, perhaps by letting the main entry protrude or be recessed from the front plane of the structure; I think it would make the whole building feel more "grand"--and more residential.