making homes in 3d

the building tools in sl are great.

if someone wants to use a 3rd part program to make stuff outside of sl what software do they use and how do they import their creation into second life?

let's stick to buildings/homes on this topic. ie structures or skyboxes whatever

there are a few dodgy 'home made' tools that some people use, nothing solid I am afraid. some are for sale here, http://www.xstreetsl.com/index.php, they have mixed reviews. Mostly people just use 3rd party to render baked textures and make sculpt maps.

I try to work in AutoCAD like it only has the shapes and size limitations that SL has. For example, in making floors, I dont go any larger then a 10x10 square. While not exact in any way, its the best option I find right now at least for a general idea of how things will look and a semi-correct prim count.

There is an AutoCAD add-on that works inworld, but I haven't heard any really good reviews on it. So its just sitting in my inventory.

SL uses geometric primitives. Other 3D applications use polygons. The two systems are basically incompatible.

Your best bet is to build using the in world tools.

I’ve yet to find any 3rd party software that will reliably allow me to build houses offline and import them. I create sculpted elements offline and then incorporate them into a build once uploaded.

There was talk some time ago and threads posted here in the forums about an offline builder. (try searching)

I have not seen for some time what the outcome of this package was, whether it was in beta testing or was actually made official.

Apart from that there is no other program or software package that I know that will allow you to import/upload objects into SL.

Prim Composer is the best offline builder I've tried. It is a unified prim and sculptie building system for 3ds Max. It includes software to upload to SL or Open Sim. Best of all, it's free!

http://liferain.com/downloads/primcomposer/

Use OpenSimulator (http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page) to run a sim on your machine.

Use Second Inventory (http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=612924) to back up the creations made in the OpenSim you run on your machine so you can then upload it into SL.

There is the program known as AC3D

it has a importer for in-world importing of the legendary .tri file of AC3D

heres a video of the tri creator in action
and box creator in action

Tri
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmt3TkjdqH8

Box
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjSYwOydZlU&feature=related

The one mentioned above in 3ds max is the closest you will get.

However, the prim alignment in SL is still borked (on the alignment .0005) so regardless even if you do manage to import you will get the joy of minimal cracks even if you then Jextone the baked texture over.

I don't think SL is a good platform in terms of 3D development for reasons already mentioned above, if you have models already made e.g. in elementary form in Google Sketch Up you might be better looking at it's outputs into other platforms rather than Second Life. It depends on what you are using them for of course.

The one thing I do like is baking the texture/applying global lighting elements then uploading - that's the one benefit I have found.

There's a set of scripts for Blender which lets you create basic primitives.

http://halfpastnull.com/?cat=36

I believe you can find more about it there. Blender also lets you export certain meshes as sculpties with Domino Marama's scripts (the scripts will create compatible sculpt meshes to rework, and also features an exporter complete with LSL code). You could in theory create an entire house out of two to four sculpties using mega prims, make them phantom, and then fill in the important geometry with transparent regular prims in world so you don't pass through everything.

But that only gives you the same building tools (or less, since a lot of the grids don't work 100%) that you have if you just build in-world in the first place. Why bother with that, except for having lots of prims available to play with, and no one to distract you?