Some questions. : )

Hello all. : )

Some people have exhibited an interest in establishing a Second Life presence and are willing to buy their own island. I have a few questions and I would be really grateful if you could help me with them.

1.) Is there a way to increase the size of shapes beyond their conventional limits. For instance, is there a way for me to create a cylinder with a much larger circumference?

2.) Does Second Life have a policy with regards to policing the player use of textures? Things would certainly be easier if I could use any texture(s) I could get my hands on.

3.) If 'we' bought an island, would it be assigned to only one account? And if so, can rights be given to specific people allowing them to build on it?

4.) Any advice you can offer me with regards to player-made building tools/items?


Thank you for your time! : )

1) Well there are huge prims available, but those are kinda questionable and unofficial. Hopefully someone with more building knowledge than me can explain if this can be done with multiple prims linked together.

2) I don't understand this question. Are you asking if it's okay to engage in copyright infringement? What exacty do you mean by "the player use of textures"?

3) The ownership of the island is assigned to one account, but you can create a group and set things up so that group members can build and noone outside the group can build. Also, on mainland you can deed land to a group for group ownership, but I don't know if that's true for islands.

4) This is entirely too broad to respond to.

I ask because I see some very professional looking textures slapped on poorly made models. Don't the SL team do anything to police the use of copyrighted textures?



Thank you, I'll do some reading on this.




I'm asking whether or not players have created items to assist in the building process of models and which are seen as being the most useful.

Textures are a touchy subject. Touchy in that the images they represent are extremely difficult to manage from an intellectual property standpoint. Linden Lab does not "police" their use, per se. They employ provisions of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) to handle resident complaints of infringement. The short answer is this: You may only use textures on your builds which:

1) You have purchased from the creator, or from someone who has been authorized to resell the texture.

2) Are present in the library folder of your inventory

3) You can otherwise reasonably assume are free to use, for instance textures obtained in a "freebie" fashion. This is a gray area here, and you should be very careful. Torley Linden makes lots of textures, and gives them away for free at his office in Linden Village. You have a more than reasonable expectation that you are free to do what you like with these. Other freebies are not so cut and dry.

Textures are not a free-for-all in Second Life. They are commonly sold with full modify/copy/resell permissions so that builders can use them on projects and resell those builds to others. Usually, they are accompanied by a license agreement which will explicitly state that they are not to be resold or given away "as is", but only as a component of a build.

On Prims:

You can find the "huge prims" on slexchange.com, and Linden Lab's current policy on these prims is that private island owners are free to use them on their islands, and mainland owners are free to use them on their mainland parcels, so long as their use does not degrade performance or normal operation of the simulator servers, and does not in any way infringe on the ability of neighbors to enjoy their own land. Issues involving these prims are handled on a case by case basis, but generally speaking, you won't have a problem employing them on a private island.

These prims were created quite by accident, during the course of development of the libSL project. There is currently no way to create new "huge prims", you can only obtain copies of the originals. They are sold in various packages for various prices, including FREE.

Hope this helps a bit.

zk

Thanks very much Zaphod, I appreciate it. : )

/bow

As others have mentioned, there are unofficial "mega prims" but those are only supposed to be used on private islands. You can sometimes use building trickery to make a prim look larger than it's supposed to. For example, you can make a 20m diameter flat disc by squishing a revoluted tube flat; or you can make a prism with a 14m long base by cutting a 10m box in half diagonally (since the base is then the hypotenuse of a triangle whose other two sides are 10m)



You can use any textures you like provided you have copyright permission to use them. They can be bought in world, or uploaded from outside. Uploading textures that you don't have clear permission to use is a definate no-no, as is extracting textures from other items in Second Life that do not explicitly give you permission to use their textures on other things.



Yes and yes.



There's a number of excellent ones available, although they can be a little laggy to use. Always try them out first if you can. Be wary that they may alter the permissions on items you're building while you're building them - it won't be permanent but it may be confusing in the interim to see an object you built come up with no modify/no transfer permission because of a script inserted by a building assistant.

# 4, building tools

skidz Primz, for the win
Touch based interface to snap together prims, fill gaps, match rotations, etc. Very well made product, and probably one of the best supported products in-world. My only criticism to Skidz Tweak is that he doesn't charge enough for it!

Also look for a script called TextureAlign. It's pricey at $1100, but totally worth the investment, as over time it will save you countless hours of trying to manually align textures.

Those two are my personal top picks, but there are many other very well made building aids to consider.

zk

4.) Any advice you can offer me with regards to player-made building tools/items?


Here is a link to a discussion on the building tips forum. It discusses useful tools for builders.

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