Questions about building and selling models.

Hi all,

I was thinking it would be fun to open a shop and sell some 3D content but i can't find much info on the subject. Also i'm pretty new to the game, actually only a couple of hours with this character but i have played this a couple of years ago for about a month.

1. Is it possible to import models from 3Ds MAX to Second Life? If this is not possible you can probably ignore the other questions as don't want to learn the ingame prism editor for everything i create.

2. Is there anyway to try this out without owning land? So i can see how stuff works befor i pay for land? Some offline server to test out stuff?

3. At first i would rent a shop or something, but is it possible to buy an entire empty place for lets say a shopping mall and how mutch linden or US$ are we talking about then? I don't nececarely want to make profit but i certainly don't want to spend 100's of dollars monthly for it .

4. With all the free content nowadays, do people still pay for some quality content?

5. Any other important stuff or tutorials i should know about?

6. It costs money to make money they say, but i like i said i don't nececarely want to make money just not lose that mutch . But about how mutch would my initial costs be to set up a shop and put some quality home made content in it?

Thanks in advance!

1. Yes, provided that you can upload them in a form that SL recognizes as a sculpty. Don't discount SL's native building tools, however. They are versatile and simple, and you will need to learn how to handle them if you are going to do anything creative in world anyway.
2. Use the Beta grid.
3. Read at https://land.secondlife.com/en-US/?lang=en.
4. Yes. People will always buy quality. If your creations are unique and fill a marketing niche, someone will buy them. Setting a price that lets you cover the cost of your time, advertizing and rent, however, is just as tricky on SL as it is in RL.
5. Start with the tutorials and the sticky threads in these forums, then keep exploring the Web. There are loads of tutorials out there.
6. How much money will it cost? Ummmm... How long is a piece of string? There's no way to give you a meaningful figure, because there are way too many variables. Best advice -- don't sink a lot of money into rent, at least, until you really know what you're doing and have scoped out the market. See how other businesses are set up, learn what other content creators are selling in world and on XStreetS, and look at lots of sites before you commit to one.
7. Oh, and don't call SL a "game." If you're planning on using it as the base for a business, think of it as a business place and do your business planning as seriously as you'd do it in RL. You can have lots of fun selling creative work in SL but if you are "playing," that's a good way to lose L$ before you know which end is up.

Hey thanks!

Could you give me more info or a link on subject 1? I can't seem to find anything on building stuff. Except using R-mouse -> create ingame ehhhh i mean inbusiness program . But i can find any import tools. What forms does SL recognice for sculpts? Max can do loads but doesn't it just import .obj?

Read the sticky thread on sculpties at the top of this forum and then try http://home.comcast.net/~pixelforgeltd/Tutorial.htm, which was written for people who are using 3Ds Max.

Thanks that was a good explanation but i am pretty mutch dissapointed as well. I realy didn't like the result. And you can probably optimize the sculptie a bit more with the cage but still complicated meshes and especially large extrusions seem impossible to recreate.

But theres light comming as i just found this "http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/linden-lab-offically-announces-mesh-support-in-second-life-at-slcc"

Hope it won't be to long befor this is implemented but i think it's worth the wait.

Rolig Loon - thanks for informative answers ! It helps me too.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Creation_Portal
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Creation_Portal

(And the wiki in general)

The ability to upload mesh models is coming, but don't hold your breath. It was only officially announced recently, with a small demo being shown at SLCC this year. I doubt we'll see this in any usable form until some time next year.

Also, don't rush in to anything. There are lots of residents that have been in SL for years and still get surprised by what others show to be possible. Before buying any land, trying to open any shops, or doing anything at all that would have you spending money, you should stroll around the grid, go sightseeing. Get suggestions for some of SL's most well made sims.

I'd also at least recommend getting a feel for SL's tools. They're kludgey, limited, and not at all designed with professional use in mind, but creative people can still do some impressive things with them, and you'll need to know the basics even if you wait until mesh importing is added and do all the modeling, texturing, and whatnot that way.

Hey, you might be right about how long this is gonna take but they already used somekind of import program for the avatars right? I am aware of the fact that the engine needs a lot of work when everything gets real 3D and there need to be polycount restrictions or the game will get realy laggy. But the hulk in the presentation showed they have most stuff done. It still might take months or even years but let's just hope this is implemented before 2010.

I doubt one needs knowledge of the ingame building system when we are able to import meshes to the game. I even think the ingame building system will be totale useless for people with minor understanding of somekind of 3D software. Offcourse scripting and animating will still have to be done but for static objects i'm pretty sure you just pop in a mesh and position it.

As Penny said already:

"Also, don't rush in to anything. There are lots of residents that have been in SL for years and still get surprised by what others show to be possible. Before buying any land, trying to open any shops, or doing anything at all that would have you spending money, you should stroll around the grid, go sightseeing. Get suggestions for some of SL's most well made sims."

Sorry, but you're maybe some kind of "over-motivated" in your plans!? Remember there are so many others and it's hard to become known a bit at least. So IMHO better cool down a bit and after getting more information and maybe opening a shop actually don't get disappointed if nobody takes notice of your great work...

It would be foolish to ignore the native building tools in SL. They are incredibly easy to use and are surprisingly versatile. It would be hard to measure how much of what you see in SL was built in world with those simple tools, but I would not be surprised to find that it's still well over 90%. That's not likely to change much even when it becomes possible to upload mesh models.

From a practical point of view, even if you import objects from the outside (at L$10 a pop), you still need to manipulate them in world to get them positioned properly and to match them to whatever is around them. You need the Edit tools to do that. Also, even if you import the objects you intend to sell, you still need to build the shop and all the vendors to sell them in. You could certainly go to the trouble of importing those as well, but it's faster and easier to make them in world. And free, too.

A good craftsperson learns to handle as many tools as s/he can. A carpenter who only knows how to use a Skil saw is out to lunch when s/he's faced with a job that can be done faster and more efficiently with a hand saw. The same is true in reverse too. In SL, successful content creators generally learn as many building methods as they can, and learn enough about texturing, animation, and scripting to make more than one kind of product. They can run circles around people who only know how to do one thing and only have one tool in the toolbox.