Build Classes?

I'm new to SL (a week), and already am caught up in building since it somewhat mimics what I do in RL.

I'm looking for some free building classes - rather than spend hours searching, I thought I'd come ask the veterens here. I have taken one TUI beginner class for a fee, and it was informative. But those classes are not held very often, and not always convenient for me... plus, if I can learn the same for free, I'd certainly like that

Any help on this?

Thanks in advance!

LedHed Lederberg

Hi Ledhed

There are a few free classes each day if you look in search / events.

Also - Ivory Tower of Prims is excellent for examples and primers on building and shaping prims. Can't remember locations (and at work so can't get to SL) - do a search for it.

Other thing - is just play! There is only a limited number of actions you can do on prims, but when you start playing with all the settings and linking prims and using textures - the world is yours.

Find a sandbox and play!

Jon

This is bad advice.

Sandboxes are for bragging, shooting, driving cars, crashing cars, sorting through your inventory junk and leaving out gigantic builds to impress people.

There are no public areas for learning how to build, but you can sometimes find remote private properties that have 'build objects" left on. As long as you clean up after yourself, this is the only really good place to build.

LedHed--

I second the suggestion regarding the Ivory Tower of Prims. It will run you through all the building basics.

I haven't yet visited it's new location; but in it's previous location, you were permitted to build inplace while going through the many stations.

You can build along at the new Ivory Tower location too, in Natoma. Autoreturn is set to 60 minutes.

My Favorite Place for free classes is New Citizens Plaza,
its one of the best places for Learning and more.
They have a Sandbox and know how to deal with Griefers,
you will meet nice People with lots of knowledge
and have a good chance to get your Questions answered.
Another good 'School' is 'Teazers' - they give a lot of free Classes.
Both are easy to find if you use the search Button.

I was at a few Classes at TUI, too - sorry, i dont like it.

Welcome to SL!

I'll 3rd the recommendation to visit the Ivory Tower. You can practice your builds here too.

As for Teazers (or whatever they call themselves now... TUI?), Check events regularly. They normally hold classes hourly, various skills. Building is good, but you should take a few of the others too, to learn the basics of scripting, etc.

Putting it all together is where your builds truely become special. Anyone can build a house, with a little practice. But knowing how to texture it properly, knowing how to make your own textures, knowing how & when to use alpha's, where to place your scripts (even if you can't script yourself) and what scripts to use (e.g. a sensor vs a listener). These are things you can learn at the more advanced classes at teazers.

Also, search for the "Academy of Second Learning" (dunno if they still exist, i'm assuming they do). This used to be Teazers competitor and it's classes were every bit as good, and in some cases, better, than Teazers.

I do -NOT- recommend that you follow Jeremy's advice. Many of us who own land also have sensors to detect "visitors" to our land. Mine will let you know that it has detected you and is scanning what you are doing, and IM's me with a report. I've banned people from my land for using it as a sandbox. 2 days ago i banned a young woman who built a scripted floor covering not only my land, but the entire sim, border to border, including Linden land. Talk about lag. The linden who came out to clean up the Linden land was extremely unhappy with her, to say the least. It's incidents like these that cause those of us who are landowners to react negatively.

Jon gave you some good advice, find a sandbox. Avoid the popular ones since those are griefer magnets. Avoid the weapon testing ones, for the same reason. Go to the out of the way ones and the monitored ones (some actually have an in-world monitor/guardian... whatever you want to call it whose job it is to keep the peace). The aforementioned woman's build was actually not too bad. Nice texturing, seamless prim placement. In a sandbox, her skill would have been admired and appreciated.

I have taken classes at all of these establishments, and they are all good. All of them have taught me to build, given me free supplies, and have been positive and helpful. I am always impressed by the willingness of residents to help noobies.
If it wasn't for the fine folks who teach, I don't think I would be able to do it. They, along with the helpful avatars in this forum are an ever ready source of help and understanding.
RE: Sandboxes. Before I had a lot of land, I used them, but they were fraught with griefers, so I build on my own sandbox. If you are not a griefer, you can come there. Just look for DrFran's sandbox. It's in Yeolmae.
Teehee, I am not in world right now, so I will give the coordinates later.

The Ivory Tower is indeed a must see location, you will find instructions on any building problem there and save yourself tons of time. This is just reiterating what I said Stephanie. I did not mean to suggest that people build where they are not wanted, just that if the land is not being used and building is allowed, it's pretty much your best bet for building in peace.

I also recommended cleaning up after yourself and being polite.

As you say yourself here though, there simply are no good public sandboxes to go to. The only (few) good ones are monitored (i.e.- private) spaces. Even quiet little known sandboxes like Plum are laggy griefer-filled nightmares of junk and abuse now.

I challenge anyone to name a single Linden sandbox that is a "nice" pace to build where you are likely to actually learn something and have a good time doing it. They just don't exist. Newcomb is the closest being "script free" but even that is brought to it's knees regularly by idiots and mostly just full of piles of junk and money-stealers.

Hey LedHed. Yes, I remember you taking my class, but no... I don't remember it costing you anything. Our classes at TUiNeo are free, I don't know who asked you to pay, certainly wasn't me, your instructor. Neo doesn't charge for classes.

I actually played around in a sandbox last night - can't remember which one - just chose it at random. Got a couple of people wanting to test weapons on me and walking all over my builds, but found more people working together and helping out with build problems. I was lucky enough to be there during a wipe of objects so got to carry on with a nice empty region.

I have just got back into spending more time in SL after some RL issues...

However, in the past I have been to loads of classes - not sure if any were yours Mia. DrFran is right - people give up alot of time to hold them and help people out with building questions. I learned loads of shortcuts and easier way of building what seemed to be complicated stuff - well worth attending as many as you can.

I guess i have just been lucky in sandboxes in the past as well...

I also find reading through the forums for tips and help with issues useful.

Which reminds me - better get back to my day job !!!

I'll check out all those other sources. I found the Ivory Tower after posting here.

Mia... I paid L$50 for that class. I found it through the regular search menu. Don't know why I was charged either. Incidentally, I learned some good stuff in that Lvl 1 class, and I thought you were a very good instructor.

Thanks to everyone...

That's what I'm asking. Who did you pay the 50 L to????? It wasn't a class that was costing anything. And you didn't pay me. I always turn down every tip a student gives, and there wasn't anything on my account to show I received anything from you. Our classes don't cost a thing.

Please, tell me, if someone demanded money from you, I have to speak to them immediately.

That is ODD..cuz i dont know either that TUI NEO class cost sumthing...Are U sure it is on TUI?

I've taken a number of classes at both TUI and ASL and I recommend them to any new residents I run into. Not only do you get a good feel for building, learn what can be done with prims and some great shortcuts, but you also can collect a nice variety of scripts and textures.

I took a particle class at ASL that was just the best. I didn't have a clue about particles and came away with a good all around knowledge of what could be done with them. It was a very hands on class, we had a great group of people, the teacher was ready to let us play and experiment and we just had a blast. Plus a cool field trip at the end.

TeaZer University classes are always free, and all of the supplies for the build are provided in each class. I now have a huge collection of gestures, textures, objects, animations, and pose balls, just from taking classes. Hooray for the patient instructors who stuck by me when I was SO noob.
That's why I became an instructor there.

I teach at NCI on Wednesdays at 10pm.. the advanced building Flexi and Light class.. all classes at NCI are free and we have tons of freebies! We also try our best to keep griefers at a minimum..

Come on down to New Citizens Inc

Yay... I guess I'll have to chime in and follow DrFran and Rowan to advertise for our School

To clear up any confusion, I talked to LedHed (the OP), he said no, he didn't have any transactions showing he had to pay for his class at Neo, someone had just spread these rumours about Neo. He said he could come here to clarify it, but I told him no need to.

And yes, our classes are always free at *TUI*NEO!! Woot!! And you get lots of free textures, poses, scripts etc. in your supplies, plus the most experienced instructors in SL. Our instructors are there to help you in all the questions related to building, scripting, even any issues relating to SL in general, and the quality of classes is kept in check. As in LedHed's case, we were going to get to the bottom of who was scamming money from him, report the person and re-emburse his money, but as it turned out, there was no need to.

We're also continuously looking for new instructors, to bring their fresh views and enthusiasm into our school, and have experienced teachers guiding them on their way.

We're here to help you get the best out of your experience in SL and guide you on your way to become a viable content creator in SL, and maybe even make a good living out of the skills you learn under our guidance.

Luckily for you, the student, the schools in SL are plenty and many great classes to choose from. No matter what the school, we're all there to give you the best SL has to offer, and give you the means to make it in SL. So check out those event listings for Education, take your pick and learn as much as you can! That's what I do too