PRIMs are our friends - The Building Blocks of Secondlife Society

I think if Frank Lloyd Wright was around today he would have the time of his life on SL. His eagerness and work ethic in real life, creating the majority of his building from the age of 68 to 91, is nothing short of staggering. The apparent ease of creating a masterpiece on virtual scraps of paper; his ability to rapidly transfer those concepts to the drawing board and further to recreate them as monuments and records of their time, and ours ¬- would only have been surpassed by the ease of use of "prims" on Secondlife (SL).

My question of all questions is "what would Mr. Wright have made of the simplistic 'prim' - the building block of SL society?" I can only wildly attempt to feel the difference he would have experienced between creating a building in RL and a whole town in Secondlife, with all the trimmings, in the same period of time (probably less).

What new wonders would FLW have created? With the lack of restrictions in SL, so obvious in comparison to RL, the imagination of most creative architects is mercilessly tied down. Would he have chosen to use the innocuous "sculpty" so desired by up-and-coming SL building designers, the sculptured look that omits detail, evidence of quality and time spent ensuring beauty and a home presence. Or would he have opted for the "building block" that so delivers an accurate SL match to his own designs and creations. The prim provides abilities and characteristics so flexible, to even, possibly, enhance a Lloyd Wright building.

Fallingwater, Winslow House and the great Robie House are amongst the examples of what a "prim" was made to reproduce. How could the RL or SL architect (designer) fail to notice its qualities to bring SL ever closer to real life?

"Low prim count!" is the rallying cry of many new SL building designers today. Why?

Do we live in boxes in real life, or have walls that plainly touch the floor, absent of style or finish; do we have rooves made out of two intersecting blocks and be-devilled if they don't match up? In RL we are not happy to live in a "shoe box" with 2000 of our neighbours within earshot - well we might have to but I am sure, given the chance, we would not; and we don't have to, in SL. We strive (or dream) to upgrade our home to something we can be proud of; a home that we can show off to our friends, "live" in, and throw a party or two.

Quite "Frankly" - pun obviously intended - given the chance in real life, we would have an original house, with great detail, plenty of hanging space, lots to talk about; and, small enough to be "snug". We would also expect this original one-off home to have its own "space", surroundings that enhance its beauty so as to blossom and show off.

Maybe this is not possible for all in RL, but it sure as hell is in Secondlife. "PRIMs are our friends" - not our enemies; we want more around us not less! We want quality and to be able to say: "Look at this, every piece hand crafted," not... "Oh yes, it's just a picture," (anyone can download a picture).

We have become too prim conscious, I am sure the great Frank Lloyd Wright himself would have said: "Design and build - hang the prims", and what better testimony would it have been (oh to dream).

Use prims, forget the counting, draw on originality and make SL a worthy place to live in. I personally hate, with a passion, looking at a never ending land of boxes, show me a well built house anytime, and I will show you a visitor who says: "Wow! Did you really build that? It's amazing! I love it!" and I am telling you its feels great to hear. It is worth ALL the extra prims you put into your structure.

Make Secondlife a quality place to experience virtual real life.


Johnathon Seetan and Wikka Fhang
Castlehill Complex.
- producing quality homes, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright - (with lots of prims)

-------------------------------------------------------------
Come visit us at Ivory Beach, or just IM me anytime with your comments.

they all still look like squares to me? except the one A-frame

I'm all for detail, John (May I call you John?), but I think you need to take another look at some of your builds. You use more prims in places that it awards no aesthetic advantage.

A 20 meter (Guesstimation) pillar should not be 6 primitives when 2 or 3 will give the exact same visual result. You also seem to use some odd choices of prim type, or settings, that cause the prim outline to be more complex in edit mode, which is visually not-so-pleasing, and let's face it, people who buy your creations are going to have it selected, at some point.

You can use cut and hollowed cubes for right-angle beams, and get the same look, if you try, in half the prims.

Not everybody has the prim allowance required for large-prim builds and furniture too, and you should recognize this, and work with the tools given to accommodate that.

In many cases, more prims actually _detracts_ from the aesthetic of your builds, such as the stairs in the top of your 'GreenBrier' house. Where two steps are possible from one normal prim, or that entire stair with one sculpty, you've used one prim for each step, and they overlap slightly. If you look from the side, you'll notice a bit of 'texture jitter' from that.


I suggest you take advantage of Second Life's lower limits than reality. That is, things don't need to be built structurally sound. Where in real life a single piece of wood, cut at an angle, may be worse for a building than two separate beams, in Second Life, there are no such worries.

Believe me, I am all for detail, and visual accuracy, but quite frankly, I think you're wasting quite a few prims with your builds. You could have them looking exactly (Or very very very close to it) the same, with fewer prims.

And, if you learn to use sculpted prims as well, you could actually gain more aesthetic accuracy, and probable use fewer prims, as well (Though, for thought of resources, sculpts should still be used relatively sparingly, in my opinion, when possible).

Sculpted primitives are _not_ less detailed, or less useful. Their bounding box, surely, but if you take the time to create one properly, and texture it with care, it can be one of the greatest 'friends to detail' in all of SL.

I love your enthusiasm Johnathon, but I think some of it is misplaced.

There is a distinct difference between a "quality" build and a wasteful one. Second Life may not be restrained by the same imitations we face in RL, but rest assured there are other things to consider.


Because a high prim count can actually destroy you SL experience. In RL, a marvelously complex and intricate object comprised of thousands of little individual pieces will certainly catch your eye. But in SL, that same object will catch you eye... and then drag it fifty feet.

There is a cost for everything you see in SL. No, not Linden Dollars or USD, I'm talking about rendering costs - for your computer. Every object has to be drawn by the computer of the person looking at your build. More objects means more things to render - and when you factor in textures to put in every prim, it quickly becomes a serious strain. Several hundred prims with various different textures can bring even the most powerful computer to its knees. This is what so many residents incorrectly call lag. Suddenly walking into a high prim/texture area and BAM, their frame rate drops to half a frame per second. This is of course a very general statement - there are so many more factors that play into this... but at a high level, this is still a valid point.

Computer rendering aside, what about land prim limits? The average joe living on a small parcel has a very limited number of allotted prims to work with. One high prim object can EASILY eat up the entire parcel prim count - leaving him sol if he wanted to do anything else with his land.

Don't get me wrong, high detail is something everyone would do well to strive for - but not at the cost of efficiency. What good is a super detailed car if you can't ride it? What good is a lavishly crafted house if you can't spare enough prims to furnish its empty rooms? What good is any kind of build if you can' even look at it without your viewer grinding to a crawl?

True elegance is derived from the marrying of visual quality and functionality. Do more with less. That is the hallmark of a skilled builder - in any medium.

I always bask in the irony of teaching the "One Prim Wonders" class while wearing a 222 prim spiked neko tail. =^-^=

Finding the happy medium between creating an engaging build, and not having every detail of it constructed with prims is the struggle . . .and indeed the passion . . .of every devoted builder in SL. In my experience, the most unimaginative builds consist of "flat" construction, in which a complete wall texture, including transparent window, trims, siding, etc, are worked into a single texture and used in a single-prim wall. From a distance, the illusion holds, but when you move close, any "reality" completely falls apart and you're very aware you're looking at a prim. However, if you're building a background structure that isn't intended for close inspection, this sort of work is very functional and saves prims for your other builds, as well as ultimately your client. A good builder will thus look at how his building will be perceived, either up close or from a distance, and build accordingly. Prims are the currency of content creation in SL. They are a scarce commodity even when you have a dual-sim project and 30,000 of them at your disposal, and they should be used wisely. While I'm a firm believer in being willing to invest extra prims in order to make an even more immersive build, you also need to identify how to make the most of your prims with clever graphic design, "prim torture," and how you construct your prims to interact with light.

In building, my goal is to create a structure that is taken and appreciated for its whole, rather than the sum of its parts. When I build a house, I want my audience to identify it as a house, rather than a bunch of textured prims. Indeed, my goal is to not make it readily apparent by casual observation how I put things together. "Escaping the box" is what I try to do with all my builds. To do this, you have to realize that constructing in SL is really about perception, communicating shape, and trying to utilize light, shadow, texture, and color in a world where light and shadow operate by different rules than our eyes normally perceive in the real world. I can't emphasize enough the power of graphic design in texturing. A good moulding texture created in photoshop with a fine hand on light and shadow will utlimately create a far more believable impression on a single prim, than stacking four or five prims to create a beveled moulding.

Ultimately, nothing we make here is "real," so shaping every detail isn't necessary to communicate the shape of what you're building. But on the other hand, you need to be willing to invest prims in a project to achieve the perception you're after and escape the dreaded "box." In my opinion, good graphic design skills coupled with a firm knowledge of SL's prim texturing controls and a fine hand in making and "torturing" prims is far more powerful in constructing an immersive build than constructing every detail from prims. Good texture work can actually give you far more detailed and believable work than relying on prims alone.

And yes, I believe Frank Lloyd Wright would truly love Second Life, although he'd probably never publicly admit it. lol