Prims 101
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Lasher Oh
Smelling the coffee
Join date: 3 Apr 2007
Posts: 140
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04-16-2007 16:08
Hi.... I'm new to SL and I've been trying to find out more about prims. So far I have managed to understand thhat Prims are an SL lynchpin and want to understand more about them but after searching and searching I can't find any substantial explanations. For instance I look to renting and I see something like this...
"rental house now for $500L each per week with 200 prims."
Now what exactly does that mean? Why just 200 and could there be more ? And what could one do with 200 prims is that a lot or is it hardly any and why does soe rental adverts talk about sims and not prims, it's all very confusing and I guess what I'm asking here is if anyone knows where I can find a Prims 101 resource.
I'm sure everybody had to start somewhere
Lasher
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Raymond Figtree
Gone, avi, gone
Join date: 17 May 2006
Posts: 6,256
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04-16-2007 16:16
Prims are primitive objects. Most everything you see in SL is made up of prims. On the mainland you can "rez" or place 117 prims for every 512 meters of land.
For example, a house might be 45 prims. a chair five, a beach ball 1. If you wanted to furnish your house with lots of furniture, you would quickly be interested in prim counts becuase they add up fast. On the first page of edit you can see how many prims a selected object is.
I rent 4096 meters of land on an estate which gives me over 900 prims. That would seem like a lot, but after you place all the trees, furniture, house, hottub etc., you find you are almost out of prims.
I'm sure more people will be chiming in, but there's a start for you.
_____________________
Read or listen to some Eckhart Tolle. You won't regret it.
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Tyci Kenzo
K2 Owner and Designer
Join date: 8 Dec 2005
Posts: 285
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04-16-2007 16:18
200 prims is not alot but if your just starting out and trying things its a decent number
you can find low prim small homes or rental properties that have homes on them and then you can use the 200 prims for furniture and decorations, you will want to figure out exactly what the prim limit includes and excludes
all furniture, decorations, things you place out in your home is made up of prims
rental ads that talk about private sims means its an island owned by a resident and not a mainland sim..private sims can have alot of great benefits you just need to figure out exactly what you want for a place to call home
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Raudf Fox
(ra-ow-th)
Join date: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 5,119
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04-16-2007 16:18
Without reading the full of the advert, I'd think that it means that you rent the house and have a 200 prim limit over the amount of prims in the house. Prims are the basic building blocks of SL, such as furniture, trees, things like that. Attachments are also made of prims.
For the best guide on building in SL (including some very helpful info on prims beyond just building) try looking up the Ivory Tower of Prims in the Search feature. Wonderful place!
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Clarrice Cinquetti
\m/ รดรด \m/
Join date: 20 Jul 2005
Posts: 259
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04-16-2007 16:20
Prim is short for primitives. Primitives are cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc. They are the basic building blocks of objects in secondlife. For example, a basic flower pot could be just 1 prim, a hollowed out cylinder. Or a beachball, 1 sphere. The more complex the object the more prims it took to create it. So 200 prims is what you have to use to fill your house with furniture or landscape your lawn.  just a basic explanation, I am sure people have better ones Also try the Ivory Tower of Prims in SL for great tutorials on using prims. edit *twilight song starts, think we all posted the same time, lol!*
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Suzi Sohmers
Registered User
Join date: 4 Oct 2006
Posts: 292
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04-16-2007 17:42
Just to be clear, Raudf is right that attachments are made of prims too, prim hair, prim skirts and other clothing, jewelry, can take scores, even hundreds of prims when you add them up, but they don't count towards your prim limit. Only the prims placed on your land count towards its limits. I rent about 1500m of land with 420 prims (including the house) and that's just about enough. But everybody wants more prims!
Love Suzi
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Yumi Murakami
DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat!
Join date: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 6,860
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04-16-2007 18:49
As others have said, "prims" are primitives, the building blocks of Second Life. Whenever you place an object in the world, it will take up a certain number of primitives. Each sim can contain a total of 15000 prims, but prims attached to your avatar are not counted; only prims left in the world. When you own land on a sim, you are limited to placing a number of prims equal to your fair share of the 15000 prims based on the proportion of the land you own. For example if you own 512sqm, that's 1/128th of the sim, then you get 1/128th of the prims - that's 15000/128 prims (rounded down), ie, 117. (Yes, this means that 1 prim is lost in the rounding.) Note that the prim limit sharing is only at the level of a sim, not the level of a parcel. For example, if you own two 512's that are seperate from each other, then that's a total of 1024 = 1/64th of the sim = 1/64th of the prims = 15000/64 rounded down = 234 prims; but if you want to, you can use all 234 on just one of your 512's and leave the other one empty. You can see how many prims you are using on the About Land dialog - although, confusingly, this dialog refers to prims as "objects" which no other dialog does. If some nice JIRA person could change this, it would be great.  When you rent land, however, a landlord can use some neat tricks to increase the prims available to you. It is important to remember that no landlord anywhere can make a sim have more than 15000 prims. The trick landlords use is that usually prims are not spread evenly over the entire area of a piece of land. For example if you have two houses with a road in between, the road is probably using very few prims compared to the houses (and the furniture, etc, inside them). Because of the rule that you don't have to use the prims on the land that gives you them, the landlord can give you ownership of a few squares of the road - not to build on, but just to increase the number of prims you can use in your house. This is what you often see on rental "archipelago" sims where everyone gets a mini-island; each person will also have ownership of a small area of the open water, not to build on, but just to increase the prims they have available on the area they do build on. (On private islands, this trick can be done without actually giving anyone ownership of the 'spare' land - via a system called the Simulator Object Bonus - but we won't get into that.  )
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Lasher Oh
Smelling the coffee
Join date: 3 Apr 2007
Posts: 140
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A hearty thanks to all
04-17-2007 01:42
To, Raymond, Tyci, Raudf, Clarrice, Suzi, Yumi
Thank you, thank you, for you excellent concise and easy to understand explanations and advice. It really has helped me see the bigger picture. My biggest source of confusion was wondering if the a visitor's prims to the parcel of land was counted in other words would I be limited to just a few avatar visitors, not that I ever planned to host a Glasonbury Festival in my yard. That is clearly not the case and now with some insight I can start to investigate renting a plot or a house.
Now if only LL can get their act together and sort out my membership status (have been trying to upgrade for almost 2 weeks without success but that's another story)
LO ^|^
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Valentino Tendaze
Eternal Optimist
Join date: 9 Jan 2007
Posts: 279
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04-17-2007 01:52
From: Lasher Oh Now if only LL can get their act together and sort out my membership status (have been trying to upgrade for almost 2 weeks without success but that's another story) LO ^|^
If you are just wanting to *rent* a house or land, you don't need to upgrade to Premium - you only need that if you are wanting to *own* land on the Mainland (or maybe buy your own island  Re your prims question - even once you know what they are, it can be quite hard to work out how to total up the amount of prims you are using on rental land (until you get a message from the rental box or landowner telling you you're over the limit  I have invested in a 'prim counting' script which I put in an object beside each rental cottage, and I find this really helps tenants to work out (easily) how many prims they're using. On owned land it's easier because you can use the 'About Land' Objects tab - or you won't be able to place any more objects once your land is full  HTH
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Serenarra Trilling
Registered User
Join date: 14 Oct 2006
Posts: 246
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04-17-2007 05:54
To me, the absolute best way to learn "how many prims is a lot" is to go on a very extended shopping trip. (Yes, a good answer for a lot of things, lol.) Go to places that have actual furnishings displayed, not vendors or boxes. Right click on, say, a sofa, and under the general tab look at the number of prims in that object. (Make sure that in your Tools menu you do NOT have "select only my objects" selected. This will keep you from seeing that info.) You will quickly find out that 200 prims can be used up in a heartbeat with the "wrong" furniture, decorations, etc. Looking at prefab houses is also an excellent way to see how prims are quickly used. I think this is the best way to get a grip on prim usage. And (if you like shopping) can be a lot of fun, or (if you like shopping) can be dangerous.  Good luck, and welcome to SL!
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