Building Idea

As of late, I've been in the sanbox, working on an idea that struck me. I decided to see if I could make an entire house, including the frame of the house, support beams, etc.

I know it's more or less a waste of prims, considering no one will see the frame, anyways, but I felt it was worth the challenge. Has anyone else ever considered this idea and if not, what do you think of it?

Actually, I design a building with the "frame" in mind.

Wherever two ninety degree walls meet, I usually put up a "frame" at the intersection, to hide the oddly-meeting walls. I do this enough times and the "frame" of the building becomes self evident.

And now, back to drinking.

Still up at MSU,

LF

What I've been doing is making a wall, then making it hollow until the point where it looks as though four equally thick beams are positioned to form a square. I then place two beams diagnolly criss crossing across the square. Walls that have doors and windows in them are a bit more difficult.

Go to Alua and look for my house there, it has all the support beams a house like that would need ^_^

One tip though, never use a 10 x 10 cube, hollowed, as the based for your four walls. It is hard to texture properly inside, hard to add doors and windows and messes up the camera view when "focusing" on it.

It's much better to just use four prims (one for each wall), it's worth it.

lol Damien, though a couple of hollowed cylinders makes for a cool hut.

And yes, I've used beams... specifically, roofing beams of a barn-in-a-box I made for the Linden Farm Expo ... it should be still out there somewhere...

a note on texturing inside of a 10x10 cube hollowed, i've found out that you can texture the inside walls individually (slelect texture) and adjust the repeat settings to make it look the same as the exterior.

I've done this before and its great fun and gives you a great sense of accomplishment even if you don't use the house to live in. The very first thing I built was a house made "RL style" and it gave me alot of insight into how to build a more prim friendly house and make it look good.

Only tip I'd have for you is what has already been said...Don't use a hollowed square, just go ahead and use 4 prims and then use your criss cross or vertical (thats what I used, then inserted horizontal beams to make windows) beams to make the frame. My house ended up being somewhere around 600ish prims, I can't remember for sure (its lost forever with my old account ).

Have fun with your build!

I recently went on a kick of building structures out of, um... interlocking blocks. (I don't want to get myself into any trademark trouble. )

Very wasteful of prims to build stuff out of little blocks that are .5 m tall, but it's impressive in a way, and gives you a sense of accomplishment that slapping down a 10m cube just can't.

It would've been a lot more impressive in the old prim-tax days, but then I wouldn't have been able to afford to do it back then...

Hey LF, I know a few people who went to Michigan State!

Good, I probably drank beer with them this weekend

LF

I did actually do that, but it was for a playhouse, not a real full size one. I built one in RL and wanted to see it in 3D, including planning out the frame construction, so I used SL building tools as a CAD program essentially. I thought it was the coolest thing around when I linked all the exterior walls and pulled them up to reveal the frame. I'll show it to you in-world if you want.

So quit hanging around here and build it already!