From: Alkin Noel
However there are some explanions that are still confusing like using the alpha channel's maybe i will write a tutorial when i get the hang of it.
Read the sticky at the top of this forum, entitled "Transparency & Alpha Channels: The Definitive Guide". If there's any part of it you don't understand, ask away.
From: Alkin Noel
But one question i cant find the answer too is " Is there a 3D program i can use offline that works with SL" its frustrating that you must be online to build and creat`?
Search the building forum for "Offline Builder" by Jeffrey Gomez and "Maya to Second Life" by Adrian Eisenberg. The first is a plugin for Blender, the second for Maya. So you know, they don't work the way you probably think they do. They do not allow you to create arbitrary meshes and bring them into SL. That's impossible. What they do do is they allow you to create in Blender or Maya the type of parametric primitives that SL uses, and then the text data that describes those primitives can be used for reproduction in SL.
For best results, model in-world. It takes a little getting used to is all.
From: Alkin Noel
Another question "is there a way to extrude from another surface?" I mean lets say i want to makea body amor like a gladiator is waering then it would be nice if you could create the body amor siply by extruding from you avartars shape like the cheast get the point ?
SL does not support extrusions, or any other method of surface modeling. It uses a unique set of parametric objects, more akin to solids than surfaces. The reason is because unlike any other 3D environment, SL is 100% user created, and 100% streamed. There is no permanent geometry whatsoever. The world changes literally every moment.
There are many problems that would need to be solved before arbitrary meshes could work in SL The biggest is level of detail. Most amateurs are not going to have the time or the know-how to create meshes with pre-set variable LOD built in, so we'd need a way for the system to automate it. Unfortunately, there's really no good way at present for the system to intelligently judge polygon reduction over distance. It could be done strictly by math of course, but the results in many cases, if not most cases, would be less than pretty. For example, you could model the Statue of Liberty in exquisite detail, and from up close she could look great, but from any significant distance she'd probably look like nothing but a lumpy green blob as her polygons begin to reduce as the camera moves further away. That's a hard problem to solve.
The alternative would be not to use LOD, but if you think SL's laggy now, imagine what would happen if poly counts were never reduced by distance. There would be very few computers on Earth that would be able to handle SL in any semblance of real time if that were the case.
Another problem is bandwidth. If arbitrary meshes were to be used, the instructions for how to create every single polygon would have to be streamed to every single client for every single model. That would be an incredible amount of data.
By using a common set of parametric objects as building blocks for everything as SL does now, the process is streamlined. Since every client computer enters the world with foreknowledge of ow to make each type of primitive, the only data that needs to be streamed is where to put the prims, what size to make them, how to rotate them, etc. That's a relatively tiny amount of information.
Also, how to you calculate physics with an arbitrary mesh? There have been many suggestions on this, but none have been ideal.
LL has said many times that they do want eventually to allow mesh modeling in SL, and when that day comes, we'll all rejoice. However, these technical obstacles have to be overcome first, and none of them are easy.
