How to make Objects...

Hi I was wondering if there is a tutorial or a class in Sl that I could take to learn to make objects and furniture and stuff for building in SL. I used to go to a different 3d chat and learned to make objects and furniture for it and it was great fun. I make them in a 3d modelling program called trueSpace. So, I do have some modeling experience. Since I am new here I have no idea where to start learning how to make things.... thanks to anyone with info on this


Tisha Rosebud

Welcome to SL, Tisha. If you have modeling experience, you'll quickly discover that SL's buidling tools are very, very simple. To the experienced modeler, they are almost frustratingly simple at first, but they are very easy to learn.

To answer your questions, there are lots of inworld classes you can take, and there are thousands of tutorials. For classes, check the events listings inworld or on the SL website. For tutorials, read through the building & texturing forums, and take a look at the listing of fansite links on the the SL website. Many of the fan sites have tutorial sections (which reminds me, I'm way behind on getting that part of scifigeeks.net up & running).

You'll find that SL is quite unique on the internet in that it's chock full of the friendliest, most helpful people you'll ever meet. Take some classes, read some tutorials, and don't hesitate to post any questions you might have.

Oh, and just so you know, if you've got a question like "how do I build a chair," you'll get the fastest response if you post it in the building forum. If it's more of a "how do I paint the chair so it looks like it's made of mahogany," then you'll get the fastest response here in the design and textures forum. Have fun, and as I said, please come back with any specific questions.

Tisha, welcome to SL!

The best advice I ever got when I started playing with prims was this: "Go to the Ivory Tower of Primitives".

Take your time going through the lessons. Keep the notecards in their own folder. Go back from time to time to review the advanced lessons. Keep the landmark handy

You will find that most of your initial questions will be answered once you've gone through the tutorial there.

Hi and Welcome!

I'll add to the other posts, since you are bound to wonder, that there's no "import" feature in SL. Everything in world has to be built from the "Prims" here.

(There are a couple of things made by residents that translate other files into Prims, but, since each poly is a prim, they tend to be really prim-heavy. It's better, IMHO, to learn to use the tools we have here. As Chosen said, they aren't hard. Annoying, yes, because there are all kinds of things that you'll think you should be able to do with them that you can't do. But hard, no.)

Also, the Z and Y axes are transposed from the way they are in all the other 3D programs. That one still gets me when I move from LightWave to SL. Z is vertical here, and Y is depth. Just to warn you.

But really, do go to the Ivory Tower. Just open Find, get the Places tab, and type Ivory Tower into the Find field. There are 4 of them; you want the one in Noyo. Then tap the Teleport button and fly towards the Red Beam that goes from the top to the bottom of your screen.

Or, if you've been here long enough to already know how to do all of that, and you can use the Map, it's at Noyo (209, 187).