The Basics of Wing Making?

What are they? I've just started on SL and I really enjoy it. I'm not a newb with Photoshop(quite experiences, actually) and am a rather fast learner. I've done a few custom skins for me and some friends, but I know nothing of building. Can anyone help me out with this?
For the most part, I know of "the sandbox' however I've had trouble finding it (the search tool in the map didn't help so much...). Anyone willing to "take me under their wing"? *snickers at her lameness* I would be most appreciative! :D

Generic advice...Free...worth every L$

Search for Sandbox again. Pick one that is down the list and not extremely popular. Or, go build at NCI (New Citizens Inc.)

A wing is just a thin prim with a picture of a wing on it. You draw the picture with PS or Gimp or something. The parts of the wing that don't exist are just transparent (use 32-bit tga or png).

for example. Rez a box. Make it 1m x 1m x 1m. Put a picture of a wing on opposite sides. Make the other four sides completely transparent (or better, drop a tranparent texture on them). Then shrink the transparent sides to be as thin as possible.

That makes one wing. Make another one. Position them at an angle, and link them together. Take them into inventory. Attach them to the back. Position them to look like wings...

Lesson two

Make them flexy. They will wave around as you move.

Lesson Three

Script them to flap, extend, furl up, display naked pictures of the three tenors, or whatever your wings need to be able to do.

What Lee said. I suggest you include Lesson Two (make them flexy) with Lesson One, though. You have to make sure your texture is oriented to the "root" of the flexi. If you start by rezzing a cube and make it flexi, the "root" is facing the ground. So, make that be the side that faces your spine.

It's MUCH easier if you have them oriented correctly from the beginning rather than trying to retrofit them after the fact!

I sell a lot of wings and I'll tell you that scripting for movement is the toughest part, assuming you want scripting. The way SL handles rotations and flexis in combination is mind-bogglingly complex, to me. @_@ And remember it handles it differently depending on whether it's a worn attachment or rezzed in-world!

Texture tip #1... since almost all wings involve the use of alpha textures, make sure you learn how to make a nice clean alpha'd edge rather than having a fuzzy white or black edge. There are a bunch of different ways to do it.

Texture tip #2... (which I tell all designers, not just wing designers) I suggest you focus on creating original textures or using textures you have the legal (copyright) right to use. That's what's worked out well for me and my customers have said they're glad to know the textures are all legal!

Lesson four: the feathered prim wing

Make an ellipse of a generally small size.

Copy it many times, and use these copies to form an outline of your wing. Copy a lot more and use to fill in the wing. No flexi allowed for this method, but scripts for flap and such work.. though you have to make more wing types fro different positions..

deffinatly go to nci at kuula like lee said, there you'll be able to get a free box of wings and most of them are modifyable so you can actually look at how there made, there are all different types, from the box with wings on, to the full prim ones.

also check out natalia's blog. http://slnatalia.blogspot.com/ under build/tutorial section there is a whole page on making flexi wings, i used it to flexify some wings for a friend and she loves them, that page made it very easy.

-Crunch

What a great thread and it was exactly what I was looking for......I've just completed an av and the only thing that's missing are the wings.....I'll give it a try in-world later on and see how it goes.....

Thanks for posting.

Another couple of wing tricks:

Don't limit your creativity to flat box prims. You can get much more beautiful wings by using cut and hollowed cylinder sections! Harder to get the textures positioned just right, but the curves are worth the efort.

Make multiple sets of wing prims, and use scripts to show/hide various pairs of them. Starchaser Webb made a pair that I have, and they can display three different positions: wide spread, mantled and closed. They also use all curved prims. (He isn't selling them directly any more, as he has closed his last store in SL. But they can still be purchased by sending him an IM.)

ahhh, sweeeet. Thanks everyone! You're a great help! And the link to slnatalia's blog helped loads as well, great for beginners! ^___^! I'll be sure to come back if I run into any problems ^ 3^ <3

kyaaa, I'm back. So I made a wing out of a sculpty and I'm trying to figure out how I can reverse/mirror that wing so it's not backward on the other shoulder. How can I reverse the image map so that it does this?
I flipped it horizontally in PS and it still came out the same as the other. So I flipped it horizontally and vertically.. x.x and again, still the same. Is there another way I can manipulate the image map that'll make the sculpty mirror?

aha! Fix3d!
So here's what'cha do (if you didn't already know, like me). Once you've mastered Wings 3D (or any other 3-D program that doesn't have the mirror option) take the image map into a paint program, flip horizontally(and vertically if you want to save the time of turning it over in-world ) and INVERT the colors.

:3 happy win -making!