For Building Big Stuff

ok - I am about to get Skidz Primz and TexTure Aligns - are they worth it?

Would there be another product (that will do the same as the 2 above products) that would be easier to learn and give me more bang for my buck?

Any help would be appreciated.

I've never used Skidz Primz (never heard of it until just now, actually), but after reading the website for it, I'd say save your money. Most of the building tasks it alleges to make faster look like they can be performed by hand just as quickly, if not significantly faster, simply by utilizing SL's built-in ruler functionality. There's never any need to do all the cutting and pasting of numbers the website claims you have to do without the product.

The only Skidz Primz function the site mentions that really looks like it's worth using is the mirroring. But since you can find a perfectly good alternative for that on the scripting forum for free, Jeffrey Gomez's Prim Mirror, I see no point in spending money just for that.

The videos that were supposed to convince me only confused me, as they don't actually show what the system might be used for. They only talk a very little bit about setup and interface, not about actual use at all. I want to see the user actually build something with the system, to showcase what it exactly it does that I couldn't do just as quickly without it.

Can someone with experience with this tool comment further? Is there some super powered mojo this thing has under the hood that the website just fails to mention, or is it primarily aimed at people who just don't know how to use certain of SL's built-in tools?


I've never heard of TexTure Aligns either, but scripted texture alignment tools can be time-saving. I use one called TexFix, myself, for planar surfaces. For non-planar surfaces, I do the alignment by hand, using an alignment pattern, as I've never met a script that has any prayer of understanding how I want things to be aligned across complex structures.


In any case, since your concern seems to be about "big stuff", I'll say this much. I've built on every scale you could imagine in SL, from tiny jewelry, to sim-sized replica starships, to full-scale recreations of RL buildings so large that each building spans several sims by itself, and everything in between. Except for the number of pieces involved, and the occasional need to move your avatar around to combat LOD culling over distance, there's nothing inherently different about building a large item than a small one. Don't ever let the size of a build intimidate you. Simply disable camera constraints and unlimit the select distance, and you can build at whatever scale you want. The process is the same, no matter what the size.

Rachel

I researched all the builders tools over a year ago and basically got my list down to 3, 1st there was builders buddy from the forum (link below), Prim.Docker and Skidzprims.

Builders buddy was not my choice as then a newbie I was unsure about scripting and stuff.
Left with the latter 2 I compared them both, watch Skidz videos and looked at the Prim.Docker in world.
The 2 are very similar working on the same click select method, you create 2 prims, drop the script in it, open the hud and click on the co-ords and the prims will align. There is also the option of using the built in prims with both but!, you would not show as the creator.
I have built houses from creating just 2 prims with the scripts and then using the classic drag and copy method, there is no need to ever create another prim or add anymore scripts.
When you are finished you select a button which will then delete the scripts from all prims. Very user friendly.
My conclusion after the comparison was to buy Prim.Docker and my reason for this is that Prim.Docker did exactly what I wanted and that was to speed up the process of aligning prims.
SkidzPrimz was far to involved and is definitely more advanced than Prim.Docker but Prim.Docker is clean and simple with no extra menus, just the hud and away you go.

One thing I will point out, with Prim.Docker and I am going to take a guess at SkidzPrimz as well, they cannot line up tortured prims that have been cut, hollowed and tapered etc.
There are a few techniques you will need to know to enable you to use them to accomplish this task.

With regards to TextureAligns, hopefully someone else may comment but personally I would not use such a tool as I deisgn and create all my own textures and know exactly where they should go etc. Prim.Docker does have a texture alignment tool with it but I have never tried it, cannot comment on SkidzPrimz.

Although both claim accuracy and seamless results, I can say that Prim.Docker is not 100% accurate and most likely SkidzPrimz will be the same.

I wish you luck with your choice.









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I have them all, Skidz prims, Prim Docker, Virtual builder and maybe a couple others. Guess what...

When i build something i use the tools the lindens gave me. I discovered that the learning curve on the aftermarket tools is too great and the time saved when using them is not enough to matter. Also there is always something that each aftermarket tool wont do or will do but not how i wanted it to. Some added additional prims in perfect alignment with the first one and i didnt realize it until i linked the thing and moved it and went O.O i forgot a piece and looked at the moved build and everything was there. So...aftermarket tools...thumbs down.

However...
I do rely on a texture align'r on some things from time to time, although it mostly depends on how much trouble it is to align by eye. The master Chosen Few posted a great tool for aligning textures so go get ya some of that cuz its free.

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I use TextureAlign on occasion, it's fantastic at what it does best, and thats perfectly align a texture across a myriad of prims with the face showing in a given direction. You *could* do this by hand with a handy calculator and an hour of your time, but TextureAlign does it in less than a minute. Performs exactly as promised, and the creator, 10khz Tone, gives wonderful support. If you need such a tool, you won't regret buying it.

Big Edit: I got the names mixed up. I do *not* recommend TextureAlign, but rather JeXTone EasyTexture, created by 10khz Tone. It's far better than TextureAlign. see what it can do here:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=291485

Agreed, I do not think you can use anything that will align your texture other than the repeats and offset from the edit menu and understanding your texture and it size.

I created one texture recently and using a calculator to set up it offsets and repeats textured of 180 prims. I don't think you could do that with a script.

or do I stand to be corrected?

Edit
I also meant to mention, Chosen, is the Texfix any good for planar as I have never heard of it?

Yes, to be clear, tools like EasyTexture are using Planar mode. If you are texturing items where everything is an 90 degrees of each other, by hand is fine. But I challenge anyone to texure this by hand:

I am seriously thinking about this LOL.

But! It would not be seamless the prims are overlapping

I like it. It might not be the world's most powerful script, but it's quick to use. Just set your repeats and offsets on the parent prim, touch it, and the texture snaps into alignment across all the others.

The only catch (with any scripted system) is you do need, of course, to drop the script into each prim you want affected. It is a minor annoyance to have to do that, but there's no way around it. And no matter how you slice it, dragging a script from inventory a hundred times is infinitely faster than adjusting the offsets on a six hundred individual surfaces.



Actually, I'm pretty sure a one-armed, half blind, six year old could texture that by hand. It's just a question of how long it would take.

Me, I could do it in probably ten minutes or so. That is, of course, about nine minutes and fifty nine seconds longer than the script would take, so the script is the clear winner in terms of time.

Remove time as a factor, though, and the script is not any smarter than a person. I'm pretty sure, for example, that any person could figure out that if the whole object is, say, 20 meters across, then the planar repeats per meter should be set to 0.05 in order to make the texture span once across the whole thing. And any person is smart enough to figure out that if an object is rotated 45 degrees, then the texture's rotation to keep it aligned with zero should be -45 degrees. I'm sure you'd agree that all of that is perfectly elementary, common sense math. After that, it's just a question of offsetting by the right amounts, which is easily done by slapping an alignment grid pattern onto the thing, and lining up all the numbered squares. Or you could that part mathematically as well, if you're really into math. That's all the script is doing, after all, is simple math.

Again, it's a ten-minute job. Maybe 20 if you've never done it before. Strictly speaking, even though texture alignment by hand can be tedious and time-consuming, it is among the more intellectually simple tasks that any SL builders will ever do. Anyone can do it.

As I said, t's not a question of can it be done, but simply of how long would it take. There's absolutely nothing that can't be done by hand.




Yes, it would.

You're probably assuming that since the prims are overlapping, you'd see flicker, right? Well, technically, yes, the surfaces would flicker from frame to frame. However, you can only detect the flicker visibly if the two surfaces are differently textured. If you've got exactly the same texture in exactly the same alignment, there's no way you can see the flicker. The two look exactly the same, so the flipping back and forth between them makes no difference to the overall look. Make sense?

I do this all the time. It works just fine.

I was only joking, I do this all the time as well especially in Arches and does make sense.

I don't use any of them. I build by the numbers. When it comes to lining up walls, divide the wall thickness by two and then take that in from the edge of the floor prim. And if I do any building by eye, I use the grid and the snapping function.

The only thing I would want from skidz is the texture of the prim, to quickly eyeball which way the skew/shear goes and the side number. But then, for 90L and a little time, I can make those myself.

You obviously haven't met some of the people I have. I had to explain to someone yesterday what a *profile* is. They were looking for my profile in their inventory...

You're right, given enough time, a monkey can bang out the works of shakespear on their typewriter. I just don't have that kind of time.

I have built by the Numbers and with Skidz Prims. My main point between the two. when building large structures by the numbers I some times end up with those flashing lines on the joints when I build them by hand. Even if my numbers are exact. With Skidz Prims I do not get that. Another good reason for using Skidz is the auto fill feature (that's not the name but I'm not in-world). You can place 2 prims an odd distrance from each other and have the prim between the two auto fill that space.

You can make yourself the creator of every prim that comes out of Skidz Prim. There are full directions included on replacing the default "prim" inside the tool. Takes all of 2 minutes to do.

A friend just recently gifted me the JexTone Texture tool and it's quite amazing. Imagine having a house with odd size prims.. like over the door? Just use the tool to texture the entire face of the house... seamlessly. Before I've had to use a calculator to figure out the alignment on the prims over the doors and then fiddle with the offset adjustment and it NEVER was perfect... can't be by that method. But using the JexTone, it takes about 2 minutes to texture the entire side of the house perfectly.

If you snap to the on-screen rulers, you won't get those gaps either. I'm not saying you shouldn't use your SkidzPrimz thing if you really like it. I'm just saying there's really no need for it. To me, it just looks very unnecessarily complicated. The rulers work great, instantly.



You can do this very, very quickly with the on-screen rulers as well. It's not quite "automatic", in the sense that you are moving your hands and dragging things the whole time, or doing math (whichever way you prefer it), rather than entering a series of commands, or clicking a series of buttons, and watching as the machine does the rest. But I'd argue that it's got to be at least as fast, if not faster. It just takes a little mild effort to learn the how-to's is all.

Again, that doesn't mean you shouldn't use your scripted thingy if you're more comfortable that way. I'm just pointing out that the built-in building tools work just fine too.


Uh, why not? I started using a scripted solution a few months ago for alignment on planar surfaces, only because I happened to stumble across it, and it looked like it might speed things up a bit (which it did). Before that, I aligned everything by hand for about 4 years. I never had any trouble getting things to be exact.

Even during the period right after planar mapping was introduced, during which the system had a terrible bug in how it did the rounding of numbers, it was still not that hard to align things exactly. You had to alter your texture a little to make it work was all. This was annoying, of course, but it didn't make anything impossible to do. And today, with that bug having long since been squashed, there's really nothing standing in the way of perfect alignment by hand.

As I said earlier, it's not a question of what's possible to do, just of how long it will take.

And, at the risk of going off on a little rant here, now we're diving into the heart of what I dislike about these scripted tools. With all due respect to the exceedingly clever and talented people who have put so much hard work into writing the scripts, these items do present a significant danger. They allow people to do work without first having to learn how. That kind of ignorance can be dangerous.

It's like handing a first grader a calculator, and saying "OK, now let's learn to add and subtract." The kid won't learn math; he'll learn how to push buttons. 2 plus 2 will equal 4 for him, not because there's any substantive principle behind it, but because that's just what happens when you press those particular buttons. There's no real understanding there. Take away the calculator, and the kid will be crippled.

Or for a more close to home example, since we're talking about building, ask a modern crane operator some time if he thinks it's "possible" to lift a 70 ton stone block 40 stories into the air by hand. Chances are he'll say no. Yet the Egyptians did exactly that 4000 before such a thing as a crane had ever even been imagined.

It took them 40 years to build a pyramid back then, of course, but they did it. So in that example, just as in the ones that have posed in this thread, it wasn't a question of could it be done, but just of how long it would take.

All the statements in this thread so far about what supposedly can't be done by hand are direct evidence of the damage these automated tools can cause. Clearly some people, not all, but some, are operating without any understanding at all of what's actually going on in their work. That's not good. If and when the rules ever change, those people will be stopped dead in their tracks.

But master the underlying principles, though, and you'll equipped to cope with any change that comes along, forever. Maybe some people don't care about that, and for them, there's probably nothing I can say to make them care. Those people are welcome to stop reading this right here and now. However, for those who are interested in being a stronger, more robust, and more self-reliant 3D artist, I'll say this. Put the scripted tools away for two months. Do all your work by hand during that time. Learn what really can be done by hand (which is everything), and pay attention as much to the why's as the to the how's as you proceed. And if you need help figuring anything out along the way, ask.

Once you've done that, and you really have mastered the concepts involved, if you still feel your scripted stuff is faster or somehow better, then by all means start using it again. But this time you'll be doing it because of what you know, not what you don't know. You'll be able to recognize each tool as a convenience, rather than as a necessity, and that will make all the difference. Trust me; you'll be glad you did this. The quality of your work will increase immeasurably, and you'll probably cut your build times in half. A little understanding goes a long way.

It's not that any of these tools are inherently bad, any more than a crane or a calculator is bad, so don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I'm sure many of them are excellent at the tasks they're designed to perform. Just don't ever fall into the trap of thinking you can't operate without them. Of all the pro-quality bulders I know in SL, I can't think of a single person who relies on those things, and their stuff turns out just great.

As I said, I went years before bringing any scripted items into my toolbox. The presence or absence of those items never affected anything except the amount of time that certain tedious actions take. That's it.