Getting serious about a build idea. Need suggestions to help make it happen.

Alright. I have been toying with the idea of doing a multi fascited build for a few weeks now. It will be my first "From Scratch" build, and as per my usual learning curve I am jumping in way over my head and learning to swim from there. So ok, I am looking at doing a Prim/Vehicle battlesuit from the BattleTech universe. Ultimately my vision has something where an Av can get in and out of, can move around in and fire its weapons.

OK, so first I will have to build the battlesuit it's self, so my questions will start there. First is there any suggestions or tools that would help in assembling multiple prims? For irregular shaped prims is it easier to learn to create prims or image maps to create the desired effect/shape? Can flexi prims be used between regular prims to create flexible joints? Any other tips on creating a form to be animated later? OK, for custom textures, are there any suggestions on how to get started with them?

All I know is this when it comes to wearing flexible prims is that if you don't know what your doing that any movement of the avatar or prim on flexible merges into the avatar body and makes the avatar wearing it naked. I learn this hard way making or trying to make prim pants and shirts.
Body armor often takes lot of prims. My friend makes body armor max I seen him use for one outfit is 250 prims. I have watched him make things and I am not quite sure how he does it still even after watching. But it does require a pose stand. I tried several times and its bit of challenge.
A veichle to get the script to work if you want the armor to function as veichle you have to use set maxium prims like 31 from what I was told. Though I may be wrong.

Everything you need to put together your prims (excluding sculpties) is available in world.

- For starters, you should probably look in to playing around with prims, their shapes and possible manipulations. Use them to put together what you want and 'link' them together by hitting ctrl+l. This will allow you to have multiple prims be treated as one object.

- Keep in mind that there is a prim limit on vehicles (I believe it is something like 30 prims? I could be wrong). There are ways around this - such as creating much of the vehicle as attachments that would be worn by the avatar, while the basic prims of the vehicle itself would hold the script for movement as well as an animation override for the avatar. In this regard, you should probably research vehicle scripts as well as animation overrides.

- If you do choose to go the animation override route, you will either have to find an appropriate pose to insert in the override OR you can create one yourself using one of the free av animation programs out there, such as Qavimator. An animation override in this case would ideally 1) Lift your av to the appropriate height 2) Pose your avatar within the construct

- Additional texture work may or may not be required, depending on what ultimate finish you are looking for. Any texturing you will need to do can be accomplished in a graphics program that handles TGA or PNG, such as Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or GIMP.

- As for flexible prims - flexis are intended to react to movement, gravity and wind conditions. As such, they have one fixed point and one moving one. They become suitable for things like hair, cloth, moving wires etc... but it seems like you are hoping they would also be appropriate for joints - which I don't believe they are. While Sculpties may allow for a more organically shaped prim, I am still not sure if they would be appropriate to what you are thinking of. Can you name the sort of component that is to bend?

31 is the maximum number of prims that SL allows to be linked together (described above) and moved as if they were one prim. It is possible to put several of these together to make a huge building and move it around for correct positioning on a parcel, but if you want a vehicle that will move from place to place, I believe this is your maximum you can work with. OTOH, if you are WEARING something (a battlesuit sounds like something you would wear), I don't know what the prim limit is, but compared to 31 it is clearly very, very high. It may be the limit is what you can wear without crashing a sim. O.O.

For the flexable joints, I am looking at the knees, hips, elbows and shoulders. The rest will be ridged with torso and head assembly on a "simple hinge" to give access inside. There is no need for the ancles as is seems the foot and lower leg assembly is ridged as well, the same is true for the hands as they would be housed inside with a grapple claw on one arm and a main weapon (Gatling Gun, Laser or Flame Thrower.) on the other.

At some point, likely a later version I would like to have a Get In and Get Out animation as well, is that possible at all?

OK, quick sketch reveals that I am sitting at 26 Prims roughly for it minus any taken up by the main weapon or grapple claw, assuming that each flexible join is its own prim and that the lower leg and foot is made up of two prims. This would make a crued model anyway, but it would be noticable as what it is. There are other details that would be add prims to that. 31 Sucks as its seeming as I think that 45 is more where I am heading unless I can eliminate some prims by combining them. I guess I could save 8 or so at the joints. :|

The 31 prim limit is for physical vehicles; linksets (attached or not) are limited to 256 prims. So, I suppose, each attachment point could hold a 256-prim linkset. And there are *non-physical* "vehicles" that exceed the 31-prim limit, but a satisfactory illusion of smooth motion is much more difficult to achieve without physics. And, indeed, there are *wearable* "vehicles" combined with appropriate animations that get around the 31-prim limit and use regular avatar motion controls (and are much better behaved when crossing into no-object-entry parcels!) -- .

Oh, uh... but I think you'll want these things to move with the avatar body parts... so instead of being all linked together in one big linkset, you'll need them to be in smaller groups that move reasonably with their separate attachment points.

Perhaps a freebie mechanical-looking avatar might give some hints for what to attach where.

I guess the question becomes what is the difference between a wearable vehicle and a physical one? Basicly the modes of movement will be walk, run and use is "booster" to fly or jump. As you can imagine 1 Ton of man and machine does not jump without a little help.

I've considered that and even started in that vein, but the more I think about it the more I prefer it to be more "true to form" as a single piece construct around the wearer than seperate bits attached to the wearer. The fine detail work can come in later versions as I learn various ways to reduce prim use.

Contact me in World, i know someone who is absolute expert in creating things that will make your suits a possibility. I'll give you the referral there. He doesn't normally do Work Commercially, so i don't want to Flood him with people asking by Placing his name here.

Angel.

You're going to need to make a vehicle that has scripting to the extent where the legs (and whatever else) will move under certain conditions. You'll probably have to rely on textures to give it any sort of detail because of the physical vehicle limit. Also keep in mind that ground-only vehicles are hard to get around SL in since there are few roads and many cramped areas in general.

I make mech suits that I opted for the av-attachment look so I wouldn't have to sacrifice detail. I added enhancements to them so they perform better than the average un-augmented avatar and I'm adding to these as I go.

I am currently working on a way to make certain mech suits essentially "turn into" vehicles..as in become physical vehicles when they go into different configurations.

Good luck, fellow giant robot enthusiast!

Well I am certainly not looking to have it made for me, that would be really dull and I would not learn a thing. But if he is willing to give guidance I am all for that. It's kinda a doing it for the sake of doing it, not a doing it for the sake of having it project, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, I know that ultimately it will be a huge project, but that will just make it so much more worth it when it's done. Especially since I have not seen anything like it in SL that was not an Av or prim attachments, yet another reason to make it an actual vehicle.

Alright I made some progress in assembling what accounts more or less as a "Mock-up" of the battle suit. It comes in at 28 Prims currently, some can likely be removed where others need to be added as well.

I am still not all to sure on the distinction and differences of Physical VS Wearable vehicles. I gather that a Physical vehicle is a prim or prims that have Physics applied to them and may govern how they move or react with the environment. If that is the case, what is a wearable vehicle and how are they different?

A wearable avatar consists of single parts attached to your body. The movement is automatical, since the parts move with your avatar. For example, you have different parts attached to your feet, shinbones and thighs that move with your legs; if the normal avatar movement is not suitable for the prim legs, you'd work with a walk replacer that uses a custom walking animation.
Such a prim avatar can be larger than the human avatar inside. Take dragon avatars for example: the human 3D model is hidden inside a giant prim body, but nonetheless its movement is translated to the prim body parts so that scripted movement is not always necessary.

A vehicle works differently. It's a physical prim linkset in one piece (body attachments are always non-physical and "phantom", there's no collision detection). It's not attached to your body, you rather attach yourself to the vehicle by sitting on a poseball that is linked to it. Since you are sitting, the usual movement controls won't work. The linkset needs a vehicle script that acts on your cursor keys. Vehicles react slower and less exact than the normal avatar walk / flight, since your key input is first sent to the scripts and then translated to movement. It's also more affected by lag (and creates more lag).
In addition to the movement, the walking animations need to be scripted. You can't apply animation files to prim linksets, so you'll have to tell each single prim how to behave while you walk or fly.

Unless you're quite adept at scripting, I'd suggest designing an avatar instead of a physical vehicle. But if you want to learn scripting as you go along, here's a LSL Wiki tutorial on vehicles:
The tutorial only deals with the vehicle movement, not with prim animation. Means, your prim linkset will move around, but won't have animated legs or arms. You'll need to script the prim animation separately and move / rotate child prims within the linkset when linkset movement or direction key input is detected.

Alright I Have some snapshots that may help advice on how to make this work. The black metallic part is more or less finalized as far as shape and structure goes, the rest is more to complete the mock up and give an impression of the final shape. As is stands the build is merely static sculpture, a pose stand was used and the suit built around my AV, it is not attached.







The only parts of the suit that would actually be intended to move are the arms and legs. The entire torso and most of the pelvis area will be static, and the lower leg and foot portion would also be static relative to each other. Basicly the only joints that would need to move are the shoulders, elbows, knees and hips. Eventually I may make it so the front opens up, but I will settle for having it moving for now.