Rails question

I'm building myself a house that has a loft.. I want to put a rail on it, but I'm curious as to the best method. I tried a long, thing, waist high prim with a rail texture.. but it doesn't look right, the depth just isn't there. I don't want to build one out of prims, as that will add a lot of prims to the build. I've no experience in sculpties to know if they would be useful or not in this case. So my question is, what is the best method? Should I learn sculpties, deal with the texture method not looking that good, or suck it up and add the prims?

Thanks,
Minosha

thats kinda like asking should i eat fish, chicken or beef
you dont like the alpha texture try a better one?
dont want to waste prims but want detail
you gona have to put a lot of time in to learn sculptys to make a railing.
maybe buy one or have some one make you one?

the best method is the one that looks good in your design and uses the least resorces

Err...not really. At least, not for a very basic railing. In most programs, you could learn how to make a simple railing relatively quickly, and make one very easily. There are tutorials out there for the basic idea for probably every mainstream 3d modeller that's used for sculpties, and if a more specific one is wanted, it wouldn't take long, being such a simple endeavor.

(By a simple railing, I mean a single long top section, with multiple straight supports extending from the floor)

I'm not looking for anything super fancy... the main reason I didn't like the texture with alpha is that when you looked at it from the top, you don't get the depth on the straight supports. I guess I take a peek at sculpties.

Another option is to compromise: make the handrail at the top of the railing from a prim...a long thin cylinder for example, and make the balusters from a texture applied to a flat prim. Two prims, dimensional where it counts, flat where it counts less. In this solution, the appearance of the railing will be highly contingent on the quality of the balusters texture graphic.

FWIW, this is how most handrails are made in SL.

I would not make this from sculpties unless the balusters were a critical element of the build and I had to conserve prims.

If you are talking about spiral staircase rails, use a Cylinder prim like this and size as needed:

Size X = 9.5
Size Y = 9.5
Size Z = 5.0

Rotation X = 0
Rotation Y = 0
Rotation Z = 90

Path Cut B = 0.980
Path Cut E = 1.000

Hollow = 95.0

Twist B = -180
Twist E = 0

Taper X/Y = 0

Top Shear X/Y = 0

use the scuplt-o-matic demo in it's sandbox. I've recently discovered this most baudacious device.
Sri Syadasti (5, 86, 37)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sri%20Syadasti/16/75/37