Best Builders Tools

Hello all,

Not really new to SL (been around for 10 months now) but relatively new to building, specifically building houses and other large items.

I'm interested to know what are the best tools or utilities for building anything in SL? Free or expensive I just don't care!

Thanks in advance


Lee

Builder's Eye is a good one I use. Sit on it and it follows your camera movements. Great for macro building because you'll never have the issue of having to find the right spot to stand your avitar while building to avoid the select distance issue. Only around L$300.

Builder's Buddy is another good tool. Its a free opensource alternative to Rez-Foo and Rez-Faux. If you don't know what they are think the SL equivalent of a self-extracting zip file. Great for those selling large builds as it allows you to rez and position multi chunk builds that exceed the link distance. Many arcitechs in SL have been using these tools lately as it is a hell of alot more convienant for the customers to setup.

Entropy Creations Builder CPU. Handy little belt worn tool that allows you rez new prims by verbal command instead of right clicking and creating all the time. Also contains complex shapes like springs so you don't have to waste time torturing prims. Even comes with a platform rezzer that will take you up to 400m above ground level to give you some privacy and a lower lag place to build while in those public sandboxes.

Particle HUD, not sure if thats the name of it but it can be found in Yadni's Junkyard. This hud generates all the scripting necissary to add particle effects to your projects so you don't have to mess with too much scripting to get the desired effect.

These are all I can think of off the top of my head. Many of these you can find in Yadni's Junkyard. Builder's Buddy I know you can find in the Script Library on these forums. Builder's Eye you can find on SLExchange.

The Builder's Buddy referenced was the *second* tool by that name in SL (ok, there may have been more, but second I'm aware of). The first is a simple HUD calculator that allows you to ten key the math for building in game. I get really frustrated when I'm in an alt and don't have mine.

I can't get in game to get the location right now, of course, but its available on SL Exchange from Jeanette Hailey, item 39337.

Char

A big THANK YOU to Ron & Charlene for your comments. I'm sadly at work right now so will have to wait until I get home tonight to check out the great tools!!

At least there is no upgrade/excessive lag/mass logout/Grid repair/reboot tonight!


Lee

You cant go past prim docker! If you want seemless builds, its a must have tool. The best $500 lindens I ever spent!

copy selection / center copy, used to do align prims right next to eachother no matter xyz, well till it broke with small prims (shock there)

though brain and hands will never be replaced by any tool.

Only bad musicians complain they have a bad instrument.

Thanks for the tip on Builder's Eye... a really cool builders tool!

ShapeGen .95 is handy for making large circles and spheres. You can use it to put a circular fence around a building, making a huge circular floor, or making a gigantic sphere to hold your space station.

BezierGen makes a parametric sequence of blocks.

Skid Primz is another docker/aligner tool that seems popular, though I haven't sued it.

Are you only interested in in-world tools? There is a thread elsewhere for building out-world, and importing.

Also, there are a lot for tools for animating, texturing ,and scripting, which are also part of "building".

For example, go visit L Word island. The buildings there look fabulous, but they are in fact pretty simple. The textures on the walls are where all the amazingness is. Why build complicated windows and doors out of prims when you can just draw them. (If you can draw them, anyway.)

If I have the prims available, I'd rather have a 3D object than a drawn one.

Another cool tool similar to prim docker is Skidz Prim, they offer great support in the form of classes and tutorials. Sl exhange sells it and it is a little more expensive than prim docker but i think it's worth it, then again that is a biased opinion.

can not find L word island in SL.

Search for "The L Word in Second Life"

The L Word is a TV show in the US.

I have collected several free building tools and scripts that you can grab at my (temporarily homeless) Prim Twister's workshop. Shapegen, Pipemaker, Path Maker, Prim Twister Console, and many other tools and toys made by SL residents.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iladil/207/240/72

I saw someone using a tool the other day while they were building in the sky. The tool created a border using glowing columns around their property so they new the exact dimensions and coordinates they could build.

Anybody know what this tool is called and how much it might be?

Are you sure the tool created that ? .. The reason i ask is i do the same thing on large builds , I mark out the land using streached prims then send them up to a build platform above .. same thing ?>

If not ... have you thoght about going to the builder and asking him / her ?


If you get any responce i would be intrested to find out how this works as i would like to know how a tool could see the lin's between difrent lands then trace the edges

I have one of these tools (there are a few different ones), I did have mine out the other day as well.

Anyhow I cant get in world right now, but I will be able to later today and then I'll report back.

It's quite a handy tool, drag it out, set to the height you want and then let it wander off and map your land. You can also define the type of indicator, distance between indicators, and whether they are temp or permanent. There is also a collection tool that goes out and picks them up again when your finished.

It works by looking at who owns the land, I assume it jumps around looking for different owners and then places the indicators at the point of change.

G.

There is another tool that I got, haven't actualy tried to build a real project with it, but it uses colums you drop at a start corner, then use the shift drag to duplicate the object at the same time you are moving it and the two will be connected with particle effects. Continue to do this till you have an outline of the building, then you can use set things like height of walls, thickness of walls etc, then you hit a button and it spawns prims, sizes them, and seemlessly assembles them into the room. You can define inner walls as well. Plus floors, and you can tell it how many stories to build as long as the design is the same. It has a second mode that lets you do something simmiler to create hiped roofs. Doesn't do everything for you to make a finished house, but might be good to quickly create or experament with different designs and once you have basicly what you are looking for, you just make it perm, and start refineing it.

The program is called Virtual Builder.

It also lets you set all that, then set a scale so it builds a scale model instead, possibley for either a display room, or hollographic vendor I guess.

Ok,

I should of remembered who made it, it's by Damek Tretiak (aka the guy who does SLQuery.com)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shepherd/156/211/99

Grid, Disable Camera Constraints, Windows Calculator. Character->Show Look At for collaborating.

Shapegen is good for some stuff, and I've used prim mirror once.

Many of these look really useful, but I'm having some troble finding them, could someone help out with some SURL's please, for Virtual Builder and Builder's Eye in particulr. They don't show up in searches in SL

Cheers,

Beady Voom

Is there anyone out there who has actually used the skidz primz tool? I am thinking of purchasing it, but would like a good opinion of it's usefulness first. Thanks.

I am also interested in any comments on this program - particulary a comparison with prim docker which I have nbeen using for a few days and would certainly recommend - a bargain at L$499

Cat x