A real basic question

My first newbie question.

I can only view my avatar from the back. Unless she's sitting, I can't seem to position her for a front view or pose. What am I missing or doing worng?

It is hard for me to grasp why or how, but there is no normal, convenient, built in way to set one's default view to look at the avatar from the front. It is possible to do this, but it takes sneaky tricks.

However, to just get a look at yourself in a front view , just press the alt key down, click on your avatar, and mouse around.

The also works for other objects in your view.

It would be so nice if we could have a "Spyro mode" movement system.

Hold down alt. Notice the cursor changes from an arrow to a magnifying glass. Now whatever you click on will become the camera's focal point. Keep holding alt and the left mouse button, and you'll be able to move the camera by moving the mouse. Up and down movement will zoom in and out, and left and right movement will orbit the camera around the focal point.

So, to see the front of your avatar, simply hold down alt, click on the avatar and drag the mouse to the left or right to swing the camera around until you're looking at the front of the av. To return to normal view, let go of alt and the mouse, and tap any arrow key.

In addition to zoom and orbit left/right, you can also pan and orbit up/down. Use alt-ctrl and alt-ctrl-shift while clicking and dragging the mouse. Eventually the controls become second nature to you, and you'll move the camera as naturally and thoughtlessly as you move your own eyeballs.


Just so you know, this type of camera control is typical for all 3D modeling applications. The specific key sequences vary from program to program, but the zoom/orbit/pan style of control is common to all. It's pretty simple, once you understand that it exists.

Thanks for the quick reply. Next step is to take the jump from the training island to the main land.

Don't feel like you have to rush.

It will be a much more pleasant experience for you if you get the hang of things in that enviornment so you can hit the main grid with confidence.

Welcome to Second Life.

I constantly have my camera controls up. I don't remember the drop down title at the moment, it's early and I'm not in SL. But if you go across the top, it's either the second or third one over, look down and X camera controls, it will bring up a moveable pad (I dock mine in the top right corner) and play that way.

This way I don't accidentally alt click on someone then my camera ends up following them.

Ditto...I use the X Camera Controls in tools/world menu all the time to swing around.

I used to use the camera controls but was constantly frustrated because they moved things too much or too little. Once I got used to alt +mouse or ctrl+alt+mouse I never went back to camera controls. I can get much more precise camera control using the keyboard and mouse.

I did not until just now know these keyboard shortcuts. All this time I've been opening the camera controls thingy every time I want to pan the camera.

Thanks for all of the advise.

I definitely will not go to the Main Island until I've worked on more abilities on Help Island first. I'm just starting to get a clearer picture of how detailed and intricate SL actually is! Just reading some of the threads on this forum is very humbeling.

Is there a specific amount of time allowed on help island before you're sent to the main island, or is the choice solely up to you????

Hi Carolyn

I don't know if there is a limit - I couldn't wait to get off LOL (although on reflection, I could have done with a bit more time).

When you do make the jump, two places you might like to consider are NCI (New Citizens Inc) (Kuula 54, 175, 29), and The Shelter (Isabel 39, 232, 80). Both these places cater for newbies. There's advice and loads of freebies and they're friendly and welcoming. The Shelter is a non-profit recreation center for new residents, and supporters of new residents. Our goal is to provide a positive & supportive social environment for those looking for one in our overwhelming world.

You might also want to try courses aimed specifically at newbies. Although they're all held in-world, you don't have to be in-world to find them. Click on the Community tab at the top of this page. In the left-hand column you'll see Events (near the top). Click on that and in the drop-down menu select Education). NCI run courses; SL Library also does a kind of fresher/freshman (LOL) course, and there are loads of others. If you search in-world by pulling up the Events tab in Search, and again filter out anything but Education, you can also get the system to send you a notification when the course is about to start (if you're in-world at the time).

Don't wait too long before taking the plunge - there's a whole beautiful, wonderful, world waiting for you. Enjoy!

Hello Carolyn


When you enter the main grid it may be worth paying a visit to The Tower Of Primatives, which will enable you to have a better understanding of the basic building and design resource within sl.

There is a similar place to learn to understand textures, but I cannot remember its location or name, perhaps some other person can post here with that info.

Regards

John

There is no official limit, but once you leave, for whatever reason, there is no going back. I kept one alt on the Help Island for about a month, attempting to explore every last nuance of what was there, and meanwhile helping people as I encountered them. The only reason she left was because a grid crash and my logging back in before HI came back on line forced her to the mainland and the Linden Live Help staff refused to help her to return. (I later found out that a Liason might have been able to return her to HI).

Welcome to SL, and have fun!

Once again, thanks so much for all of the advise!!!!

Right now I'm going to search the knowledge base for more information regarding appearance and how to work the inventory. I'm having a problem in not being able to "Create a new Outfit" as described in one of those revolving ? notes. The icon for creating a new outfit isn't active under appearance. ?????? It suggested that I save my current setting and make a backup folder. Can't seem to do it. I also tried to create a new folder and copy contents from one to the other, but failed with that attempt as well.

Any way, I'll always welcome more tips and Information. But right now, it's off to the knowledge base.

Those who want to use a Help Island after leaving the Orientation and Help islands area can now use the public Help Island, easily findable in the map's region search or the Search dialog's places tab using Help as the search term.

You'll have to wait for an update before the features for saving new outfits will work. It's been temporarily disabled, because the Lindens discovered an exploit that could use that feature to gain inappropriate permissions to purchased outfits, They have figured out how to fix that, and will release that fix shortly.

Thanks for the update!!!!

Hi Carolyn,

There was a recent exploit related to saving appearance and so that feature was disabled temporarily while they corrected the problem. For more info on it, go to http://blog.secondlife.com and read the last few entries.

Welcome from another newbie!

Grace McConachie

I pretty much had no choice when I left HI. I kept crashing and getting bumped to mainland, a linden put me back on the island about 3 times before I finally said the heck with it. Never got to explore HI LOL

that being said, I suggest you leave HI whenever you feel like it (admittedly I only read the first page of this thread so it is possible you may have already left LOL)

One place to check if it has not been mentioned is Yadni's Junk Yard, lots of cheap or free stuff (I think he still has free stuff)



Good luck with SL

Thanks for the additional information Grace and Rhaorth. Call me a chicken, but I'm still on HI. Meeting quite a few great people that have been added to my friends list. I'll probably make the jump some time next week. Unfortunately, I can't spend as much time in SL as I would like to, so it takes me days to accumulate a few hours.

Again, thanks for the info, welcome and support.