Eliminating Seams?

When I bring two identical Prims together, to link them...

Let us say Cube A and Cube B.

When I line them up next to each other, I can never seem to get the edges absolutely perfect. Even when I use duplicate, on the first object and match the duplicates position numbers to the original, to line them up side by side perfectly. When I zoom in on the view though, there is always some annoying overlap on the edges, resulting in annoying seams with my texturing. Even when I zoom in and try to tweak the position numbers by 000.001 point or whatever, I can never seem to get the edges to line up absolutely perfect and flush.

Whats up with this and is there some sort of tool that fixes this?

I just zoom in closer and drag more carefully. (o.o)

It sounds as if you know the right tricks. Yes, there are tools that help to line things up, but basically they are doing what you are already trying ... just faster. There are limits to precision, and you seem to have hit them. Unfortunately, SL is also prone to slight "prim drift" over time, so you'll never be able to get a perfect alignment that is stable for all time. On the bright side, if you care enough to do a very good job of alignment, your work will look LOTS better than much of what people see. You are probably the sternest critic of your own work.

I just use the math and then try to not notice the tiny glitches i can't be rid of. -_-

Thanks for the answers guys.

Imnotgoing; I already do just that... infact I've zoomed in so close at times that I've actually managed to slip my camera in between the actual edges.

Rolig; you are correct. I am a very harsh critic of my own work, nitpicking over every single slightest flaw, no matter how small. I look at it from the perspective of a potential customer and try to imagine what they would think if they looked at Seam A from one specific angel of view, and it looks flawed... and then sit there agonizing myself over how to fix it, when I can't possibly get it any more perfect then it already is with SL's built in building tools.

Darion; I guess I'll just have to do the same and try to ignore those little glitches!

Thanks for the replies!

I've found that with long prims there's a rotational inaccuracy from one end to the other, even when there's theoretically no rotation, so that you can't line them up perfectly even by click-drag copying. That is, prims are rotated slightly and if you try to line up long prims you'll get a visible seam.

For smaller prims I haven't seen an alignment problem unless they're rotated, and in that case I suppose it's more rotational inaccuracy.

The position, size, and rotation parameters in SL use values with 5 decimals (0.00000). But the interface only gives you access to 3 decimals. To get your accuracy up to the 5 decimal level, you need to use scripts. The following is a simple script that you can use for this purpose. Change the nine "0.00000" values to the position, size, and rotation values of your prim, and then drop the script into the prim.

_____________________
default
{
state_entry()
{
//Simply change the values and drop script in prim.
llSetPos(<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000>;
llSetScale(<0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000>;
vector eul = <0.00000, 0.00000, 0.00000>;
eul *= DEG_TO_RAD;
rotation quat = llEuler2Rot(eul);
llSetRot(quat);
llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());
}
}

On this topic.

Does the "snap to grid" option give you more accuracy than just numerical positioning?

I also notice it's good practice to take note of the colour you apply to the touching faces which can help a lot.

EG. Don't make two prims white all over, put them together and then make the faces you can see black, so the narrow touching faces are still white.
Extreme example but this can help a lot when it comes to seeing tiny lines of pixels on joins

A built in tool i see used far too little is the magic wand.

Say your building a wall, Make your first prim, then highlight it.
click on the magic wand and choose to copy the selected prim.

now take you wand and click the edge of the prim in the direction you want to build the wall and you should be prefectly lined up with the prim you just copied and seamless.

Yup. The operative word here is "should." The real problem with this method and all of the other great ways people have suggested is that they don't take prim drift into account. SL has a nasty habit of gently tweaking objects every once in a while -- not much, but enough so that yesterday's perfect alignment is no longer perfect. I'm cursed with a mild OCD personality, so I can easily go nuts re-tweaking to compensate for drift. Or .... I can take a deep breath and find a dozen more valuable ways to spend my energy. 99.44% of the people who see my work will never notice a few prims that are slightly out of alignment, and most of the rest won't care.

Prim Docker - works really well!

Not sure how it handles tiny prims, but for "normal stuff" it's great. Only costs around 400-500L$ too. Bargain.

Even when lined up perfectly you may still see a seam. If you are using a different texture on the front and back texture all of the prim in the darker of the two and then retexture one side with the lighter colored texture. This helps reduce the visible lines where two prims are linked.

Its actually 7, some people claim that some alignment tools are acurate upto 5 digits.This is only by default and I don't know why we cannot have the option to choose.
You don't need to use scripts, you can edit your own menu see attached image for an example.

Just build using whole numbers for co ordinates and also size your prims on whole or half numbers ie 0.5 / 1 / 1.5 then drag copy, punch in the co ords in the edit window and no seams..

beautiful.........but how?

Judging from the name if the editables like size and position on this screenshot, i assume he uses an entire different viewer.

Or, and thats the second possible way to do it. He knows the proper variable names to twist those in the debug menue of the advanced options.

But anyways i want to know too

It can be done by hacking a specific file in the viewer's file directory. I believe the name of the file is floater_tools.xml. I could be mistaken though. It's been a long time since I've done this. It can be found in either ...\SecondLife\skins\default or ...\SecondLife\skins\silver. The file is long though. Finding the right values to change in it can be a challenge.

You can punch in more than 3 decimals - a lot of times I will paste the dimension from a Cad program directly into the box and while the numbers show only 3 decimals the actual data is more precise.

The most noticeable instances of the lines are when butting up 2 cut prims against each other. They seem to really amplify this weird anti aliasing thing. Correct me if I am wrong but the line problem is not that old. Several months maybe.
I used to think its my new Monitors but its not..
Also while we are Bug Bashing.. I just started to notice that when you Shift Ctrl stretch one side of a prim, the other side of it also moves irradically as if "stretch both sides" were confused and wanting to work.. and then snaps back to where it is supposed to be..