Windows and Doors

I have completed numerous building tutorial series within Second Life. When I began trying to create my first structure (a life-sized sand castle) I quickly realized that my skills were seriously lacking. I got as far as creating a cube and hollowing it out but then realized I had no idea how to cut holes for doors and windows or how to carve out other parts of my building.

I then read that much of what is created in Second Life is done using external 3D modeling tools. When I began to research external tools, I found that it was difficult or impossible to import the items (sculpties?) created with these tools into Second Life.

I guess my first question is “Should I be able to create my buildings (including carved out windows and doors, etc.) with the tools provided by Second Life or do I need to be looking at other 3D modeling software? If anyone can offer any suggestions on where I should go from here, I would be so appreciative. Thanks in advance.

A VERY high proportion of the things in SL are built in world with SL's standard tools. There are good external tools for 3D modelling, and they are obviously necessary if you are making sculpties, but most items you see are not sculpties. You ought to be able to pick up basic building skills by following any of the excellent tutorials at the Tower of Prim, or by taking a class in world. Check the "Events" tab in Search and look for Educational offerings. There's usually several beginner building classes every day.

As for "carving out" places for windows and doors ..... well, it's not done that way. I suggest that you do a quick search of this forum by typing the word "window" or "door" in the Search window at the top of the forum. There are usually 2 or 3 "how to" questions related to making openings for windows and doors each month. Rather than repeat them again now, I'll just point you to them. If you have questions after you have done a little reading and experimenting, come back and ask. There are lots of friendly, experienced builders here.

99% of everything you see in SL was created directly in-world (not counting textures, of course, which can only be created externally). Sculpties are relatively new, and are not entirely practical for everyday building purposes. Most builds are made from regular prims.

So the answer is no, you don't necessarily need to use any external 3D modeling programs to build successfully in SL. They can be of tremendous benefit, of course, but they're not strictly necessary.

Get good with regular prims first. Learn sculpties second.

small remark, 'cutting' as such would also add unnessesary to the overall primcount. Unless you need 'functional' windows (eg open / close and pass though) use transparent textures for windows
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it is absolutely true that alpha textures does interfere with transparency in any other prim that overlap the alpha surface, just as pointed out below -gues its a question of whitch tradeoff is the less evil :)

SL's building tools don't support Boolean or other cutting operations.

Here's how to make a wall with a window and a door opening...

Rez a box, make it the thickness of your wall, say .25m. Make it as long as from the corner to the door. Make it as high as the bottom edge of your window opening.

Shift+drag a copy of this piece upward. Place it atop the first piece. Use the sizing handles to drag it so that it ends at the edge of your window opening.

Shift+drag a copy of this piece to go between the window and the door opening. Resize its width to fit.

Shift+drag the original prim you started with to form the upper portion of the wall, enclosing your window opening.

Continue in this fashion until your door is framed also, and your wall is complete.

Shift+drag and resize a piece next to the window opening to form the window pane. Make it thinner than the wall, texture it solid black and make it about 75% transparent.

You can often save on prims by hollowing one out to form a window opening, rather than framing the opening with pieces.

You can save even more prims by using a solid wall with NO opening, and applying a texture to it with an alpha transparency where the window is supposed to be.

Sculpties are, as you've said, about the only objects that can be created in an external 3D application. In fact, what you are creating and importing is a texture, not an object...you are making a UV weight map, an RGB image that uses color values to define the X,Y, and Z coordinates of a sphere that is distorted ("sculpted" to form the desired shape. This map is then applied to a spherical object in SL to distort it and make it appear similar to the model you created in your original 3D application.

Sculpties are great, but they have a major drawback. Their appearance is a viewer-side phenomenon. Their "real" shape is still the orginal sphere. Therefore, they must almost always be made phantom, or avatars would be bumping into unseen sculpty spheres all over the place.

Just in case you don't find the right things when you search the forum archives, let me point to two threads that add some thoughts to Lindal's nicely done comments:

/8/8d/261971/1.html

and

url="http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=266414&highlight=window"]http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=266414&highlight=window[/url

There are many good ways to create window and door openings, as these threads and others suggest. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, so there's no single **best** way. It's a good idea to practice several different methods so you can choose what fits your project of the moment.

This has its disadvantages in that the alpha-sorting problem would make things look odd. Plants, trees, fencing, hair, anything with transparency that is too close to the wall or viewed from certain angles may not render correctly.

Thanks to all. This has been most helpful. You guys are terriffic!

Another solution is to go to a sandbox, but watch out for a private owned! In public sandboxes are some griefers or nuts around who slow down your building activities. They steal your prims or sell you unworking things they get for free!
There exist a lot of some in SL and you have to pass a enrollment thru their managers first. After you are a member and you can left your started builds sometimes up to 3 months - depending upon your personally primuse. In well organized sandboxes you will find some nice people who help you with your questions. But mostly as i said only in the private holded sb's.
For closer building learning go to , there are all explanations for building purposes. Have fun!! (HTTP code is off here to post proper functioning links)