Finished object not all linked?

I finished my first object - thanks to those in building and texture forums for your generous advice - but I see I cannot link all prims together. Being a pool the "water" is set to phantom, so I have to make do with keeping the water and the linked pool prims unlinked from eachother. Is this okay and what's done? When I give it away or sell it, will the pool fall apart? (this looks as I type it like an extreme newbie question)

There are a couple of approaches to this.

The simple method is to have the water for your pool be a seperate phantom object, and then select first the water, and then shift-click to select the pool, and take a copy of that into inventory. this will make a combined object in inventory that has both linksets as a single inventory item. When you rez this from inventory, it is teh two seperate parts still. But to move it you need to keep everything selected.

The higher-quality method is to script the pool so it rezzes the water plane as needed.

You could use chat commands such as "/33 water fill" and "/33 water drain" to rez and to delete the water plane. Or you could have buttons on the pool rim to do this. Or a menu could offer the commands for this.

If you really wanted to get fancy, you could also add commands to adjust the water level or the depth of the pool bottom...

Thanks, and thats what I did re selecting everything to bring back into inventory.

Now when people get this if I select it to nomodify nocopy etc to give away or sell, they get it as one piece and cannot reposition the two parts?

But can they use the nav crossbar and rotation to position the pool to the proper place as a single object?

Most commercially sold large groups of prims like houses use a rezzer system that allows you to place unlinked sets of prims on the ground, then move into position using the rezzer box. do a search for rez-faux, rez foo jack in the box, titan, to name a few.

Dont think I understood. There's never a time when a painting for the wall or an object does not need to be placed correctly. A freebie object I put in my hand was face down, and I could edit and rotate the device to fit properly.

If my pool was set down the way it is with the water unlinked but everything rezzes correctly, would the entire object be positionable without any special products? As an acquired item but not in the creator's possession will it remain a consolidated object? Or will my pool come apart?

Holocluck, if you use a scripted packaging system, like Rez Foo or Rez Faux, as Blaze suggested, then the positions of each object in the system will be locked, relative to the packager object. Move the packager, and everything else moves along with it. It's a little time consuming to set up, since it requires dropping a script into each piece, then taking all the pieces one by one into inventory, and finally placing them all in the packager's contents. But once it's all set, it's good forever. Just touch the packager, and the build will appear. Move the packager, and the whole build will move with it. Touch the packager again, and you can delete the whole build instantly. I use Rez Foo, myself, and it works great.

Another option, is you can simply select all the objects at once, and then take the whole selection into inventory as a single item. You'll see the icon in inventory will look like a pile of little boxes instead of just a single box. This indicates that the item has multiple unlinked parts to it. When you drag the item out of inventory to rez it in-world, all the pieces will be there, exactly where they're supposed to be. If you have your editor already open at the time, all the pieces will be automatically selected, and you can move them all at once. If your editor wasn't open, then it becomes a pain, since you need to go through and select all the pieces if you want to move them all. So whenever you see that little pile of boxes icon, always make sure your editor is open before you rez the item.

The third option, which Ceera suggested, is to have parts of your build act as rezzers for the other parts. For something like a pool, this is often the best way to go. The ability to turn the water on and off on command can be useful.

Thanks

So these are commonly used. I'm wondering how easy it might be to edit the existing script so the water remains phantom and both sections are linked. I never cold coded in vrml just tweaked here and there.

So if I used this rez foo or whatever, I put this thing into the world and move every link or lost object into it? I dont seem to have a perspective of it. What if you have 20 prims precisely positioned? Then I need to move each of these into this tool and reposition?

No special scripting is required. The phantom objects will remain phantom, and the tangible ones will remain tangible. What you can't do, though, script or no script, is link a phantom prim to a non-phantom prim, and have them both remain intact. An object cannot be partially tangible. It's either all or nothing. So your water will always have to be a separate object from the solid parts of the pool.


The work flow is as follows:

1. Create your build.

2. Rez the packager object, and place it somewhere near or in the build. Usually you'll want it centrally located.

3. Place the "structure piece" script into each object in the build. Within a second or two after you drop the script in a given piece, you'll see a message appear on-screen, informing you that the object is now locked onto the packager. If you move the packager at this point, the object will also move. If it's 20 meters south of the packager, for example, it will move to stay 20 meters south of it, wherever the packager goes. But don't actually move it yet. You want to finish first.

4. Once you've got all the pieces scripted, take each one into inventory.

5. Now drag all the pieces from your inventory into the packager's contents.

6. When you're done, touch the packager, and then follow the pop-up instructions to finalize the package. Your build is now packed.

7. Touch the packager, and follow the pop-up instructions to rez the build. The build will appear, with all the pieces in their proper places, relative to wherever the packager happens to be. If you move the packager, the whole build will move with it, automatically, and the whole thing will stay intact. If you want to delete the build, touch the packager again, and follow the pop-up instructions. If you want to freeze the build in place so it's no longer bound to the packager, again, touch the packager, and follow the pop-up instructions

8. You can now take the packager anywhere you want, and rez your build wherever you need.


For a demonstration, you can check out Rez Foo on the island of Mew. Rez-Faux is a lower priced alternative. I'm not sure where it's sold, but you can search for it in-world easily enough. Builder's Buddy is another alternative, which is free. You can find it on the scripting forum

LOL, totally backwards.

Builders Buddy is free and the script is available in the Forum.
/54/2b/96792/1.html

Rez Faux costs around L$600 last time I looked and can be purchased inworld by searching Rez Faux.

You could set the water prim to flexi which is phantom by default and then adjust all the options so gravity /wind ect don't affect its movement. Then you can link your water to the structure leaving it phantom and the rest solid. : )

Whoops. Sorry about that. Thanks for the correction, Larrie. I'll edit my post.

Wow! I have no idea what side effects this carries, but it worked. This might be awesome LOL Thanks

Update: The side effect occurred during show and tell.

When I tilted the pool to show them what it was filled with, the "water" slid like jello, which in itself isnt terrible. But it didnt go back when I rotated the pool links to level with the ground. It stayed standing up. I think if it at least wriggled back I'd have nothing to worry about.

Back to ye olde drawing board.

Rez-FOO is a paid-for product. Rez-Faux is a freeware alternative.

Rez-faux is similar to Builder's Buddy in capability.

Rez Foo has more features, and is designed more for the professional Builder to use in packaging items for resale.

ANY of the packaging systems can handle something as simple as a pool and its associated water plane.

Heh, funny story. Gives me an idea, actually. Instead of a pool, how about you just call it a Jello-wrestling pit?

In any case, I can't for the life of me figure out why you consider it so crucial to have the water linked to the pool, Holocluck. No other builder of pools in SL would be concerned with this at all. It's perfectly normal for builds not to be all one linkset. In this particular case, it's a problem of physics. But there are many other reasons why a build might be more than one linkset. I'll name a few of the common ones:

1. Size - The vast majority of builds in SL are simply too big to be all one linkset.

2. Prim Count - A single linkset can only have 256 prims in it. Any build that has more must be linked in pieces.

3. Organization - More often than not, the only practical way to keep things organized is to go with multiple linksets. For example if you're selling a house full of furniture, you wouldn't want to link the furniture to the house or people wouldn't be able to rearrange it.

4. Functionality - Some items won't work properly if they're linked to other items. Doors, for example, often need to be separate from the rest of the structure. Furniture items usually need to be independent so that their sit targets can work properly. Etc.


Having builds in multiple pieces is just a normal fact of life in SL. That's just how it works.

You've already been given lots of solutions for how to package your water with your pool. You can simply take the whole thing into inventory as a single multi-object node, or you can put all the pieces into a scripted packaging system, or you can set up a simple script to have the pool rez the water on command. All of these things are what every single builder in SL does every single day. Just pick one of the options and be done with it.

its better to have the pool rez the water in this case. There is a free hot tub floating around that has full perm scripts in it so you can study how they did it. Or look on the forums/wiki for how to get one object to rez another via script using various methods. Its actually pretty simple to do - make your water, set ite phantom and all that stuff then take it to inventory, then put that water inside the pool structure content tab. Then make a script inside the pool structure thats something like this:

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
                
 llListen(42108, "", NULL_KEY, "" );//42108 is the channel to type on such as /42108 but you can use any positive channel you wish. You can also substitute NULL_KEY for llGetOwner() so that it only listens to the current owner of the pool structure.
    }
    
    on_rez(integer num)
    {
        llResetScript();
    }

    listen(integer number, string name, key id, string message)
    {             
   if(message=="fill") //"fill" being whatever you choose to be the word to say to rez the water
        {
        llRezObject("test_object", llGetPos() + (<0.0,0.0,1.0 > * llGetRot()), ZERO_VECTOR, ZERO_ROTATION, 0); //"test_object" is the name of your water - change that to whatever your water's name is <0.0,0.0,1.0>  is the adjusted position of where you want your water to end up in the pool, in this case 1m above the center of the item it rezzed from.


    }
}
}

Then you just type in chat /42108 fill or whatever channel and buzz word you chose. Another way to do it is to have a button linked to the pool structure rez it, which I think is cleaner and listens on a neg channel since its comming from the structure itself.

That can still happen. Lots of pools to follow.



Because when they move it into position, I dont want the "water" still where the object was dropped. That didnt happen when I dropped it. I got the impression the same thing would occur for a new owner.

At any rate it took seconds to adjust the gravity. I think I like the gelatinous nature of it.



This makes sense



Re doors: I would have thought they animated on that axis etc and would benefit from linkage.

How could you move a house and move the doors with it AND have doors animate properly?



It would be very nice if I could just highlight it all, take it, set it for another owner, and the water not separate while they edit/XY to a better spot. For the pools that phantom will getcha, but I think this flexible prim - and it's only one prim - will work so long as the "water" sloshes or goos back into place.

Nectere Niven: at some point I'm going to have to break down and learn scripting. For some pools filling and emptying would be the way to go. For many of them the combination of what they're made of and what they're filled with are their allure (if you want to call it that LOL).

Anyway thanks - all these suggestions were very helpful in familiarizing me with building in general.

Gotcha. I'd suggest you keep a few things in mind, though. In no particular order:

1. There's no need to worry about your customers being confused. People in SL (except for brand spankin' newbies) already expect, understand, and know that to move things successfully means you must select all the pieces first. Most people will automatically realize that they shouldn't move the pool without first selecting the water.

2. If someone screws up, they do have a delete key, just like you do. They can always delete the thing, and then rez a new copy to start over. That is unless you're planning on selling your pools as no-copy, which I would not recommend.

3. If you're using a packaging system (which you should develop the habit of doing, for a great many reasons), then all the customer has to do is move the packager object, and the whole pool, including the water, will move along with it.

4. If you have the pool rez/derez the water on command, then all the customer has to do is "drain" the pool, move it, and then refill it. When you think about, this is actually quite intuitive. After all, if you were going to move a pool in RL, wouldn't you drain it first?

5. If with all of the above in mind, the moving thing is really still sticking in your craw, then you can put a simple follow script in the water object, so that if the pool moves, the water will move to follow it. This way, the water will always keep itself in a fixed relative position to the pool.





It depends on the door. If it's a single prim, then sometimes it's OK to link it to something else. If it's made of multiple prims, then it most definitely should not be linked to anything else.


First, why the heck would you have need for a house to move around?

That question aside, the answer to yours is you do it in one of the ways we've been telling you. Most commonly, the house will be incorporated with sort of packaging system.




As I said, everyone already knows that if you want to move something, you must first select all its pieces. The only people who might be confused are newbies who are still in their very first day. But they'll learn from their own mistakes instantly, just like the rest of us all did. You're making a much bigger deal out of this than it actually is. Mass selection for movement of unlinked objects is an every day fact of life in SL, as plain as breathing is in RL.


You and me both. And I've been doing this over four years now. And I do it for a living. Scripter, I am not.

About the extent of my ability in that department is to take a look at other people's scripts, and make a few changes here and there to suit my needs. Sometimes it works. Other times I need to hire a scripter to write something for me.


I'm not sure how anything we've discussed could possibly change or diminish that allure in any way. Whether the water can fill/empty on command or not, it's still the same water.


No problem. Always glad to be of help where I can. Happy building.