cylinders larger then 10 meters?

I was wondering if any one has found a low prim solution to creating cylinders larger then 10 meters. If so, how?

Oof, this one just isn't do-able. In order to simulate a round surface, you need plenty of faces. You can do cylinder-type shapes larger than 10m, but they do get pretty prim-heavy.

Depends on your definition of "low prim." Large cylinders are not hard to create by combining cut sections of 10M cylinders together. For example, putting 12 pieces together, each comprising 30 degrees, will give you a large 360-degree whole that's about 32 meters in maximum diameter. 24 pieces, each a 15-degree arc, will yeild twice that diameter.

So, making the circumference doesn't take very many prims. Filling it in is a different story though. To make a large cylinder appear solid takes a lot of prims. No way around that.

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly, so feel free to clarify. However, from a mathematical perspective, what you're suggesting is impossible. If you take a cylinder of radius r, then the circumference of this cylinder is given by 2*pi*r. If you cut a sector of 30 degrees out of that cylinder, you are left with a sector comprising 2*pi*r*(30/360) of the circle. The radius of a circle composed of 12 of these sectors is then 12*2*pi*r*(30/360) or... 2*pi*r. Which is what we started with. Thus, you can't increase the radius of a circle simply by cutting that circle into sectors and recombining them.

This jives with my own personal experience. The only way would be if you're combining the sectors in a novel way.

take a look at the Space Needle in Miramare.

You need to squash the cylinder. For example a cylinder with the following dimensions would get you started x:10m y:2m z:whatever you want as height.

now, link that to a center point prim and copy and rotate. The roatation will depend on (in this case) the y dimension and the distance from your center point prim.

I imagine you understand what I'm saying. If you still have problems, IM me anytime

Champie

Ah, so the trick is to make the sections out of parts of ellipses rather than circles. It won't be a true circular cylinder, but it should be close enough (and besides, nothing is truly circular in this polygonal world).

Teh only way to do this is with the tools provided by Cadroe Murphy. You can find him in the people find and the tools are still in his backyard I believe. It does use a few prims though,depends on what you call "prim heavy"

it's not the only way. And, if you want a curved edge as opposed to a series of straight lines, the technique I described above is an excellent approach.

Your math is assuming the cut sections are of circles. The only way to make a half cylinder account for less than 180 degrees is to make it a half elipse instead of a half circle. I'm sory if I didn't make that clear enough. I just assumed you would get that. I have a habit of making those kinds of assumptions sometimes.

Anyway, what you want to do is cut a cylinder in half, but not from 0 to .50. SL has a habit of bending the ends at the origin and at the half way point when cylinders are compressed into elipses. Instead, make your cuts off center. .60 to .90 works just great. After you make the cuts, now size the object to 10 on X, and 1.71 on Y. This will give you a 30 degree arc. (it might not be exactly 30 degrees at those dimensions, but it's damned close. I didn't do the math. I just laid out a giant circle diargram texture, and lined up the arc by eye.) Put 12 of them together in increasing 30 degree rotational increments on Z, and you've got a big cylinder that's about 32 meters in diameter.

In the attached image, you can see my av, standing on a 10x10M cube in the ceter of a 32M cylinder. To see an more permanent example inworld, come to Indigo, and take a good look at the Defiant. The bridge cap is a cylinder that is about 25 meters across. I built it exactly this way.


Cardroe's tool is great, but as Champie said, it is far from the ONLY way or the best way to do it. It's wonderful for making large objects quickly, but if you use it, keep in mind it can only do flat faces, not curves. If you want a seamless cylinder with a perfect, circular curve to it, you're going to have to use cylindrical arcs, not cubes. That means doing it by hand until and unless a similar tool is made that employs arcs instead of cubes.

Yeah. What she said.

Um... yeah... what he said..

Well just to be argumentative, I think it is the "best' way to use Cadroes tools.

The other procedure described is not going to give you anything as close to a circle as Cadroe's tools will. It will also take you much much longer to make.

Since the original question was from someone who did not seem to be an expert builder yet, to suggest they do this long, long, process of manually pasting elipse sections together is not that helpful IMO.

The procedure described also won't make a circle anywhere as large or as precise as Cadroe's tools.

I am not trying to be mean here but this is just bad advice to suggest that the elipse thing is the way to go. It is a clever solution, but now the tools exist to do it right, it's hardly a practical suggestion. Especially if you dont have all week to build something.

.

Depends on your definition of "best." To me, "best" means the most perfect looking end result. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but by the sound of it I'm guessing that to you, "best" means having to do the least amount of work.

From a work reduction standpoint, Cardroe's tool is great, but from a perfect-looking end product standpoint, it has a lot of drawbacks. The biggest is the afore mentioned use of only straight lines as opposed to curves. The second biggest is the fact that it leaves seams, which is even mentioned in Cardroe's readme notecard in the tool's contents.

The reason for the seams is because LSL places objects based on their individual centers, completely without any concern for whether or not the corners meet. Therefore, depending on the thinckness of the boxes, the facets can appear to join seamlessly at the corners or to have huge crevaces inbetween them. For example, take a ring of boxes and make them each 1/10 meter thick. The ring probably looks pretty seamless. Now make the same exact boxes 1/2 meter thick, and you'll see crevaces at every joint. That's just elementary geomtery.

Until the script gets smart enough to account for the thickness of the boxes it creates, and then to offset the box locations accordingly so that the corners meet, this will always be a problem with automated building tools.


WHAT?!!! Did you look at the picture I posted? It's a perfect circle. No seams, no gaps, no corners, it's a circle.

Look, Cadroe's a great guy, and he's made a really nice tool which is very useful, but he'll be the first to tell you it doesn't produce the results you're implying it does. It cannot create real circles, period. All it does is make faceted approximations of circles. As I've said several times now, if facetss are what you want, then the tool's for you. However, if you want actual circles then you have to make them out of arcs.


Yes, anything done by hand takes longer than doing it by automation. However, this particular task doesn't take long to do at all, especially if you lay out a diagram in advance to work on. The circle in the picture I posted was made in about 10 minutes. A second one would take all of 3 seconds. One to rez it out of inventory, one to stretch it to the right size, and one to apply a texture. Okay, so the height might take an additional 10 seconds or so, since the height of each prim has to be entered individually, a task which takes about 2/3 of a second per prim. So, 10 minutes to do it from scratch the first time, and then 13 seconds to do it again every time after that. That's pretty quick, isn't it?


I totally disagree. Ignoring for a second your implication that the original poster wouldn't be skilled enough or intelligent enough to follow the instructions that I and several others have laid out, what is more helpful, giving someone some automated machine that they'll have to rely on to do their work for them, or providing them with the knowledge they need so that they can learn to rely only on themselves? The axiom here is as old as time, "Catch a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

What I consider "not that helpful" is to deny someone knowldege and training that they can benefit from. The original poster didn't say "can someone do this for me or else can someone give me a machine that can do it?" He said "How do I do it?" I took that to mean he wanted to learn.

You criticize the act of giving how-to advice to someone who might not be an expert. Well, I think it's pretty obvious that the only way to become an expert at anything is to do it, isn't it? Practicing and challenging yourself by doing things you haven't yet mastered is what expertise is all about. Teaching a person a new skill means giving them a lifelong gift that they will take with them and that they will beneifit from forever. Handing them a machine that does the task for them is a quick fix that will leave them hadicapped as soon as the machine is no longer available or the situation changes.


Once again, WHAT?!!! Math is math. Whether it's done by a machine or by a human being, it's the same exact math. It's not like we're calculating quantum gravity here. All we're talking about here is some very basic geometry, and tiny bit of artistry. That's it.

I've made seamless, perfect circles well over a hundred meters across with this method. Just because you've never done it doesn't mean it can't be done. The method is flawless. The only variable is the skill of the one employing the method.

I guess maybe there are 2 types of minds at work here. One that says, "This isn't working so therefore it can't work," and one that says, "This isn't working YET so therefore I've got to get better at it." I live in the latter category. It would be great if you'd join me over here. It's a lot more fun, I can assure you.


I know you're not trying to be mean, but I'd encourage you to think twice before making judgments about what doesn't constitute "good advice" and what is not a "practical suggestion." Please realize that what you're doing is actively trying to discourage someone from learning a valuable skill. That is the very definition of bad advice.


It doesn't take "all week." It doesn't even take all day. As I said, the 32 meter circle in my snapshot took all of 10 minutes, starting from scratch.

However, even if this were the most time consuming thing in the history of SL, which it's not, the fact is you only have to do it once, and then you're done. Actually, I'd suggest doing it 3 times, and then you'll never have to do it again. Make a 12-section version, a 24-section version, and a 48 section version, and then take them into inventory where they'll sit, ready and waiting for each and every project that requires a large circle. The twlever can be used for any circle up to about 32 meters across, the twenty-fourer for anything up to about 65, and the forty-eighter for anything up to around 130 meters or so. Hell, make one with 96 sections, and you can make a sim-wide circle. Take each one of them into inventory as one object, and you can then instantly rez a circle that can be stretched in seconds to any size up to and including the span of an entire sim.

I know from previous experience that it is impossible to win an argument with you, but I think you are making a mistake if you think that "winning" an argument is the same thing as being right.

It seems to me that you have a great personal investment in such argument "winning" and I dont want to disappoint you, but I don't like to argue unless there is a possibility of some kind of resolution, so this will be my last post on the matter. Therefore you "win," even though you are still not actually in the right here.

My reason for posting was actually just to be helpful, and to try to answer the original posters question. I dont think you can say the same in all honesty, but I dont want to put words into *your* mouth either.

If the original poster is still reading after all this, I would still suggest trying Cadroes tools, they really do work much better and much quicker than the elipse suggestion.

Please note that in essence both methods produce the same "not circle" shape, as each other. The elipse method leads only to a "rounded" version of the exact same shape (i.e. a roughly circular object made of sections), but the arc of the circle is not true, and there are seemingly some divots missing on the edges as you can see from the picture that was attached to a previous post. You can also see quite clearly that the cylinder made with that method is not truly round any more than one made with Cadroes is. A cylinder made with the Cadroe tools, having many more sections to it, can be "rounder" however than the so-called round cylinder made with the elipse method AFAICS.

The "Cadroe tools" method is far easier and more flexible, and if you want accurate circular shapes that are reproduceable it is the only way to go. It also has the added advantage of being able to make all kinds of round shapes, platforms, cylinders, tori, spheres etc. all with great accuracy and in practically no time at all. Try making a seamless circular platform out of 30 wedge shaped pieces without it. The "gaps" that Chosen notes only occur if you use the wrong tool BTW, so you can ignore a large part of what he is saying about the "gaps".

In any case (again addressed to the original poster), it matters not to me which you picked, I just wanted to be sure you were aware of what people use *now* to make cylinders and circles vs. the elaborate workarounds that existed in the *past*.

The elipse method is extremely clever as I said, but time consuming and unless you are especially talented can be frought with error and innacuracy.

I say this from great and long practical experience since I currently live in a round house with a 60 metre diameter and have spent almost my entire time in SL working with rounded shapes. In fact all my houses are round spheres or domes.

Chosen Few is very intelligent, but very wrong in regards this issue IMO.
I would suggest getting the tools (cause they are free), and trying each.
That alone will make all this blah, blah, blah, completely irrelevant.

Diane, have you seen the space needle tower?

The circular platforms were constructed by me using the method I described (the fact that they say hank ramos is because I started to project by using a prim that was sitting in from of me, and it happened to be some cube that I got from the old USL in Phobos).

Anyone who has any questions about my advice can refer to that as an example of what they can expect.

Additionally, I have already met with Kurt Zidane and showed him the expected results and again explained the procedure. I would be happy to hear that he got the results he hoped for by using any possible method, as long as he gets what he wants.

I don't understand the argument really. There are a few ways of creating a larger than 10 meter circle in SL. The method you choose depends on the results you want.

Champie

Too many words to read? You disappoint me, Dianne. I thought you'd be curious to learn a thing or two. If you do want to go back & read, I outlined how the arc method is NOT time consuming, and how it can be used to instantly create circles of any size. If you'd rather go on believing you're "right" in your ignorance, that's your perogative though, sad as it is.

Why you keep insisting that the curve of the circles are "not true" is beyond me. It's completely nonsensical to say that 12x30 doesn't equal 360. Cut a round pie into 12 pieces, and it's still a round pie. The fact that it's in slices doesn't make it any less of a circle. As for the divots at the joints, those are only on the inside. The outside is completely seamless, and for the ten millionth time, is a perfect circle. I did say I was talking about circumference, not about interior, which is another matter altogether. If you'd actually read lengthy posts instead of ignoring them, you would have caught that.

As for your allogations that I have some personal stake in being right, you're partially correct. I do have a personal stake, but it's not about me being right or wrong. The way I look at things, the more people are well trained in how to do things in SL, the better world we all will inhabit, and I do take the quality of the world personally since I live in it. It really, really, really annoys me, therefore, when I explain to someone how to do something, and then you chime in and say my methods cannot work, even though they do.

I simply don't understand why you feel the need to do this time and time again. All you accomplish is to annoy me, and potentially to confuse the people who desperately need good advice. Every time you interfere, I end up having to spend considerable time re-explaining and re-explaining so that the person who asked the original how-to question will understand that everything I've said does in fact work, and that you are simply bad-mouthing what you don't understand. Then you read the re-explanation, you assume I'm arguing with you, and you respond in kind. Why can't you simply just say, "here's an alternative," instead of automatically insisting that things you don't know how to do can't be true?

If you've got alternative advice, great, the more the merrier, but kindly stop saying that things can't work just because you don't understand them. You're only embarrassing yourself in the eyes of the people who do know how to do these things, and potentially confusing those who don't. That's really not good.

I should add, I have not used Cadroe's tools, but the results are impressive. And I would suggest that anyone looking for help in building should take Diane's advice and investigate it, try it, use it.

Champie

Okay.

Violating own rules here to respond for the *last* time....

A lot of what you are saying here is personal and uncalled for.
I very carefully avoided attacking you personally in any way although I dare say I find you at *least* as irritating as you seem to find me.

I want an apology.
Seriously.

You are being condescending as always, but this is also very rude and again, much too personal.

Insults again.

The picture you posted clearly shows an imperfect circle made up of arcs of not quite the right sweep. That is what I based that on. Perhaps the picture is innacurate or misleading, I dont know.

This is all just insults.

You assume far to much, you read in motivations and thoughts that just are not there. In fact I read your entire post. I just did not think it worth responding to point by point. I dont agree with you is all. I have my reasons.

For you to be-little me personaly just because I dont agree that you are right is the lowest tactic of argument there is. Again, apology please for these entirely uncalled for personal remarks.



Again, almost every word a personal insult based on nothing at all. You are painting me as actively trying to screw with you and actively trying to confuse the person asking the question in the first place. These are lies, and it is libelous of you to imply such things.

For all your logic, I don't believe you have a clue as to your own emotional involvement in these debates you set out on. You have exagerrated everything here and used hyperbole extensively.

You make me out to be some kind of monster because I have disagreed with .. lets see... *two* things you have posted? And then imply that I do this serially, as in "time and time again" and "the millionth time" ????

Get a grip,.. and as I said, wake up to the emotional content of your own writings.

In reality, we have only "debated" on two posts to my recollection, this one, and one previously.
Hardly a "miilion," or "time and time again."

And after you insulted me to death the first time we talked, I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt and forgave you. I can't believe I went against my intuition there and allowed the fact that we have some friends in common to make me think you were only unintentionaly mean.

... point form just so we're on the same page:

- It is clear to me now that this insulting behaviour is habit with you and far from unintentional.

- If you dont apologise immediately in *public*, I will report this post.

- I am not interested in getting another whiny "private" apology just so you can lambaste me in public again, so dont bother to IM or PM me about this.

- At the end of the day I am muting you, so if you do it after that, I will never know if you apologised or not and the AR will fly!

- It will be only one of many times you will be reported for such behaviour I am sure.

Strictly speaking, an arc taken from an ellipse is not the same shape as an arc taken from a circle. They are close of course, and an arc of an ellipse is far closer than a straight line (which is what you get if you make your circle out of flat pieces, as Cadroe's script will, assuming that you are using the same number of prims to make the circle using the two different methods.

I won't comment on the rest of this flame war, except to say that I would think it invalid to say that some other suggested method is bad (and should not even be tried) unless it clearly is inferior in almost all cases. If one truly believes that it is inferior then one needs to be prepared to defend that position, otherwise one should not be surprised to find oneself in a flame war.

Dianne, look, you are blowing this so out of proportion, it's unreal. I am very sorry that you were offended, but you must admit you seem to have a pretty short fuse for these things. The last time you got angry at me, was after I paid you a compliment. A compliment for god's sake. I still find that one baffling. I understand that it had to do with a misinterpreted phrase, but I'm still more than a bit puzzled why you flew off the handle so quickly after we had been having what I thought was an intelligent conversation. Why you couldn't say, "Wait a minute, do you mean what I think you mean?" instead of automatically assuming my purpose was hostile, I cannot fathom.

As for what you're now calling a "whiny private apology," I only approached you privately because you had said you were muting me so I didn't think it would be possible to clear the air on the forums. Ordinarily I never discuss forum business inworld, ever. While we're on the subject though, don't forget, your own apology to me for your misinterpretation of my comments was just as private. You left it at "I'm much nicer in person than I am on the forums," and you never even tried to apologize publicly, as you are demanding that I do now.

I'm also sorry that you choose to view my answers to people's direct questions as "condescending." I'd like to remind you that in this thread, as well as in the other one, it was you, not I, who went around telling people their advice was bad and that their methods don't work, even though they do. You were the one who said your own methods are the only ones that work, and that those of others are "sloppy" or "bad advice" If that's not condescending, I don't know what is. I was the one who repeatedly said that there is more than one way to do things, and that alternate methods are welcome so that the one asking the question can get the most possible information, and then decide on what works best for him or her.

I'm also sorry that when I point out that you have attacked my methods by saying they don't work, even though they do work every single day, that you call that an example of me insulting you. If you truly believe that, then the fact is you are insulting yourself, since all I did was point out what you said and how it made me feel. The cycle in both threads has been I explain how I do something, and then you jump on it and say it can't work that way, even though it does. Then I explain over again that it does work, how it works, and why it works, and then you say I insulted you. None of this makes any sense.

As for your points, I'll answer them:


I never intentionally insulted you. I think you should take a good hard look at your own habits of interpretation.


Threats? You're kidding, right? You really think that's the way to patch things up? I'm trying to find a way to make things right, and you're making threats. Wow,

Okay, so perhaps I let loose a bit more than I should have in my last post, given that I've had previous experience with the shortness of your fuse. For that I do apologize. However, I cannot and will not apologize for defending myself and my methods against your attacks, or for speaking up about how your attacks make me feel. My only regret is not finding a way to say it that you could understand, since clearly you missed the point entirely.


I'd hardly call it "whiny". I had to work pretty hard to reach you. I invested the better part of a day into trying to repair relations with you. I thought by the end of it, you understood that my compliment to you in that other thread was meant genuinely, and not sarcastically as you had thought. Perhaps that was farce to shut me up, or perhaps you meant it. I don't know. All I do know is I didn't insult you then, not once. If you choose not to believe that, that's entirely your own doing.

As for the current situation, yes, I let a little anger slip after you repeatedly insulted me by saying that the step-by-step explanations I had volunteered my time to write were worthless, simply because you can't understand why someone would rather build by hand than let a machine do it. It wasn't much anger though. The harshest thing I said was "I'm annoyed." I'd hardly call that an attack. I'm sorry you took it so badly, but I'm not sorry I expressed how your words made me feel.

Anyway, at this point I don't plan on having any contact with you that I can avoid, since it's impossible to predict what might set you off. So, there's no need to be concerned about IM's or PM's.


Once again, I'm sorry for the fact that you've so misinterpreted what I've said, and that you've chosen to view my self-defense as an insult towards you. I'm sorry that you feel the right thing for me to do would have been to simply hide in a corner while you ripped apart my teachings and tried to convince people that only you know what can and can't be built in SL. I'm sorry that you believe that there is only one way to do things. I'm sorry you've decided to think such horrible things about me. I'm sorry you're not open to more possibilities than your own assumptions.

I am not sorry for defending the truth about multiple methods of construction. I'm not sorry for attempting to let you know how you were making me feel. I'm not sorry for anything I've actually said, only for the fact that you've chosen to interpret it as something it's not.

So, if that's not good enough, then mute me if you feel you must, but that would be a shame. I teach people how to do things all the time, and there's a lot of good tutorial content out there that I've written and that I will continue to write. I'm sorry that you're unable to benefit from that.


Well, 19 months inworld, close to 800 posts, and there are only 3 people I can ever remember having a problem with, including you. One was a person who, like you, insisted that something couldn't possibly work, even though it does. This person claimed that video in SL couldn't possibly work because of some imaginary math equasion about frame rates, and she became infuriated when I pointed out the simple fact that it does work just fine. The other was SL's most notorious complainer, who attacks every single person he's ever in a thread with, so I'm not sure he really counts. Neither of them ever hinted at crying abuse though as you are threatening to do, so I guess you're unique.

If you honestly feel you've been abused, then I guess it's your duty to send a report. However, I'd like to think you're capable of making room for the possibility that you and I simply don't speak the same language, and that neither of us really understands what the other actually means. That's about the only sensical explanation I can think of. With that in mind, I suppose there's not much else I can say, since you're likely to keep on misinterpreting me. So, I leave you now, confused, perplexed, more than a bit tired of all this, and sincerely hoping you have the capacity to realize what a big deal you've made over nothing.

Uhm.. yeh..

This talk of perfect circles is silly, and both main protagonists here are speaking inaccurately.

Unless I misremember, Cadroe's tools produce polygonal perimeters, ie straight edged figures. Using more and more edges (prims) you get a polygon closer and closer to a circle. You could only decribe it as perfect or accurate for SL purposes if it was everywhere within 0.01m or less of the circle. Crazy prim count for anything big.

Building from elliptical arcs will need fewer prims than a polygon to get an equally close approximation, but it is still an approximation. Again, getting within .01m would be impractical except if very small, so no "perfection".

If we must discuss which is "best", then fewer elliptical arcs will be needed to reach a given closeness of approximation than in a polygon.

But of course Cadroes appears quicker, being automated. But it may not do exactly what you want. Indeed, I found it extremely tricky to learn how to TELL it what you wanted, and it might take you as long to learn this as it would to build yourself.

On balance I agree that it is better to spend time learning reusable personal building skills than to learn to control someone elses machine, since that itself is (in my personal experience at least) time consuming and not easy. Since learning to build yourself also can give the same accuracy with fewer prims, I think that clinches it.

Mind you, I seem to remember that Cadro will approximate for you big hollow toruses (doughnuts), and hollow spheres (all made from flat bits). Those are sufficiently tricky to build, the decision might then go the other way if time is limited. Horses for courses.

Agree with Ellie. The tool is very nice but it's only a tool. I would build manually as well.

Hi I read through the thread and am still none the wiser really...

So exactly how do you build a big cylinder again?

Sorry to soubd stupid

Well, I just started work on a beautiful 20 M diameter cylindrical atrium for a build I am designing, and used Chosen's method for the walls. I used 12 flattened cylanders, hollowed to 85% and cut at both ends. Each segment was rotated an additional 30 degrees, and moved into place. I used a building grid texture on some flat prims to lay out the wall sections on the correct positions, and was done with the basics in 15 min or less. The result, on the exterior walls, is a beautiful circle, with no visible seams. It even textured quite well, using 4 repeats per surface horizontally.

The down side was that on the inside, the cut ends angle toward the center of the eliptical cylander parts, making a v-shaped open wedge at each joint. I placed a cylindrical column over each joint, and was very pleased with the result. I think I can probably play with the cut begin and end, and use more segments, to minimize or eliminate that joint.

Making the floor will be a challenge, but I think I can manage that. For the roof, I made a 'glass dome' out of 24 flat panels and a dimpled, hollowed sphere for the top of the dome. I might even be able to re-do that with just 12 flat panels...

Thank you, Chosen!



That's me by the roughed-in door opening. I'm 5'7" tall.

==========

I also tried the shapemaker tool. So far, I haven't managed to get it to make anything other than a stack of triangular prims perched on top of the tool. Anyone have any experience using it, that can clue me in on the command syntax?