Brand New, How to build House???

Hi there,

I'm brand new here. I'd like to build a house, nothing bigger than the 512m2 that is given with an account.

However, I have NO clue how this is done. The create stuff is pretty complicated in my opinion and I can't find a good teaching site.

Looking to make a VERY basic house with 1 large meeting area and 4-5 small rooms.

Would this be doable? If so is there a site that will teach me how to do it? Thanks for your help, this all seems very complicated to me.

Hi Armor and welcome to the forums

There are plenty of prefab houses you could buy, some are freebies, some you will have to spend for. I am not sure on the best way to aproach prefabs so I'm going to let someone more knowledgeable answer that.
As for learning, there are plenty of classes in-world which would teach you a lot on building. The Ivory Tower Of Primitives has good tutorials. I would go there for the basics. Also if you search for places like NCI, they have building classes available.
Others in the forum will be able to give you more info I am sure, but i am all out lol. I hope you have fun.

Hi Armor,

I'm reasonably new too and have been playing around with the building feature. It takes a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and trial and error before you get the hang of it.

I gather you've found a space (often referred to as a "Sandbox" to practice building? If not, search "sandbox" and find one that suits you.

The land doesn't come with the premium account, the "ability" to hold land comes with it. You still have to buy the land.

Once you're on a bit of space that lets you build (maybe a sandbox for now?) right click and a pie menu will come up. Click create and read all of the options that come up in the edit menu.

It took me a while to actually realise I should "read" the menu. From there, click on the shape you want, then click one of the choices "position" or "stretch" or any of the others and the coloured arrows and boxes will come up. Use these arrows and boxes to manipulate your shape into what you like.

Click on the tabs within the edit menu and you can change the texture of your shape (click on the texture square and it will open up a menu where you can go to "Library" and there are heaps of textures and objects etc etc that are, by default, in your library that you can use). There are also colours and a heap of other things. Have a good look around at the options in the edit menu and play play play!

All I can say is, muck around a bit and you'll get the hang of how it all works after a while.

Hope that helps a little. It's quite interesting once you get the hang of it.

Lotus

Hello Armor and welcome to the forum

You are asking a lot of questions in one really.
First of all to build your own home you'd need to buy or rent land.

You can buy land on the mainland if you have a premium account. Otherwise you could rent land from another resident.

To find out more I refer to Raymong Figtree's signature:
"=>Get live help for your SL real estate questions: Search "Land Answers" in Group. The SL Land Answers Unlimited group will be the first listing. Join the group and start a group chat session to get your questions answered live by a resident land expert!

We now have our own Land Answers Wiki!
land-answers.wiki.zoho.com. Seek and ye shall find!"

Once you have land you can build on it.
If you need information on how to use the building tools you could take an inworld class, which you can find in search, or also inworld you could go to the Ivory Tower of Prims, where you will find tutorials on building.
Of you're left with specific building questions, you could ask them in the building tips forum, a bit further down the forum list.

You could also try building in a sandbox (to be found in search) first, before you buy or rent land, which would be my recommendation.

Hope this helps!
Enjoy yourself

Welcome to the forums!

There's actually a special forum for Building Tips, at /8/1.html, but I checked and they don't seem to have any helpful "stickies" posted there for beginners (which is odd). But reading "back posts" may be of some use when questions come up.

You'll find that both space and prims get used up quickly on a 512. You only have 117 prims, so you'll want to be careful not to use many for the structure and leave most of them for furnishing what you've built. And space is tricky: avatars are big clumsy things, and the default camera position is way up high and behind the head, so they need high ceilings and a lot of room to move around. So, 4-5 small rooms and a meeting area is at least two or maybe 3 floors in a 512. And floors use prims. There are tricks (three floors in two overlapping hollow cubes, for example, can give almost passable ceiling heights), but they're, well, tricky.

Armor, just a quick note to clarify the 512 you mention. As has been said you need to buy it. Premium account doesn't give you the land. It covers the tier for it so there is no monthly bill. If you buy more land, you go into the monthy tier bracket as stipulated in land use fees in your account page.

WOW, Thanks for all the help. I never imagined I'd get so much help on these forums. I will take your advice and play in the sand box, I did find that and I'll go to the Prims place and see what that holds.

This might not be ther right place for it, but generally speaking, how much would the land cost to hold a 512m2 house?

Also, where can I find the pre-fab houses one of the posters was talking about?

Thanks again!!!!

Ahhhhh I understand now! I've been trying to work out what this tier business was about.

What days are learning days?

Everdays, that what!

(yes I said 'everydays')

Hi Armor,

The 512m2 refers to the plot of land you can hold without paying tier, not the house you might put on it.

As for how much a 512m2 plot costs these days....I'm not sure, but there is a land for sale search function inworld.

There's freebie houses and huts in your library folder in your inventory. There's also builders that have freebie houses "for sale" so to speak.

Have fun

In-world, you can Search / Land Sales, specifying "For Sale - Mainland" and Area >= 512 to get a listing. You'll see some around L$4000. Those are much more likely to come with spinning adplots right next door than they are to have yummy Linden water, though, so... prices can be easily double that for "prime" property--which you may not need.

Freebies in general, including pre-fabs, are all over, but helpfully collected at YadNi's Junkyard at Leda (211, 28, 55).

Hi Armor, welcome to the forums.

As has been pointed out by someone else, it'll be pretty difficult to build a house with 6 rooms on a 512 m2 plot, but should be an interesting challenge.

As for freebies, you'll find some very good prefabs for 512 plots on SLExchange, or check out the many freebie or L$1 places inworld.

Yadni's, Freebie Warehouse, Freebie Dungeon, Enkythings (L$ 1) all have freebie houses and even small castles.

I second a visit to The Ivory Tower of Prims. It's brilliant. Take as many explanatory notecards as you can carry. You'll find them at each of the demonstrations of how prims work, or how you can work prims.

Have fun and keep coming back here.

That is not hard to do - I built a house with 2 rooms in 10 prims - 8, actually, including teleporters. Add about 35 more and it is very possible.

Armor, I learned the old fashioned way. I spent a few hours in the Ivory Tower of Primitives, which has excellent walkthrough, hands on tutorials. Go there, and master the basics. Go to the Gnubie Store in Indigo and pick up a few texture packs, as well as getting free texture packs from NCI. Go nuts in a sandbox. NCI has those.

Welcome!

I second the suggestions given.

You could also stop by TUi, we have alot of classes on building. I'm starting a building basics class, so if you want I can let you know when the class goes public. I'll IM you a landmark to TUi inworld. Mainly our classes are free of charge but maybe a few cost only $10L.

Feel free to IM me in world if you have questions or need help. I'm currently building my own home so if you need help I could pass some pointers along

Armor, I'm currently building out a half sim project. Most of it's prefabs, but there's a lot of custom work going on, too. I'm currently working on a two-apartment "basement rental" located below a big prefab house perched on a steep hillside. IM me in-world and you can come on over and hold while I hammer.

You can learn a lot from an evening or so working with the building tools.

One of the fastest ways that I learned basic building skills was to pick up a freebie house with mod permissions, tear it apart and rebuild it with fewer prims. I was pretty proud of myself when I got a 64 prim house down to 47. Plus, it showed me how prims are stretched, how textures work, and how they all link together.