building a house

i want to build a 2-story house. i have never built a house before, and i don't know anything at all about building a house. any suggestions on where i can get some good information on the basics of building a house?

Hi Jinne,

If you'd like to IM me in-world, I'd be happy to try to help if I can. I'm not a master builder by any stretch of the imagination, but I've learned a little since I've been in SL....and I'd be more than happy to share whatever I can with you.....

Hi Jinne,
The best advice I can give a budding builder is to learn the tools. The create and edit window is your friend. There are many additional tools out there in the world and they will enhance your abilities but the best tool that you have is between your ears. A good imagination with loads of presistance is what seperates the good from the not so good. I dont profess to be a good builder but I know how to link a prim.

You can not have enough textures too...well you can but the texture is by far the most important part of the illusion. There are thousands of perfectally good free ones out there too. If you can fool the eye the battle is won.

find a quiet spot and....PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. (prims are cheap and disposable)

The weekend is coming up and it looks like bad weather here so that means marathon SL sessions for me (woot) Contact me and I can show you some tricks and help you if you want.

Go to the Ivory tower of Prims, it is a self guided tour with workstations all along it to teach you step by step building!

Another good way to learn is to pick up some of the freebie houses that are around, rez them, and take them apart to see what the bits look like.

Oh, and keep it simple for a first try. Building really is a lot easier than it looks, and you can turn out a simple house that looks ok quite quickly, especially if you find some decent free textures. But if you get overambitious before you're familiar with how it works, its easy to get discouraged. My first house was little more than two rooms piled on top of each other with a ramp for stairs, but it looked ok (if you didn't get too close) and made me realise that I could build, and gave me the confidence to keep trying.

Hello Jinne ….

Welcome to the wonderful world of building,,, there is a lot of excellent advice in this thread. Couple of other thing I would like to mention is to read though some of the other post within this forum (BuildingTips) there are a lot of great and experienced folks in here, and some great tips. I myself in no way can be called a “master” builder, but I have picked up some great tips from all the great people on this forum. Also you may want to check out some of Torley Linden’s video tutorials on building http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials. Again welcome to the world of building and as Eyerocker has said … PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

i appreciate all of your responses and your helpful suggestions. i will be contacting those of you who have offered your help inworld. i'm absolutely sure i will need all the help i can get! thanks again!!!

Can i just add that my latest project is building skybox apartments and I've been practising for nearly a year now, and yet still just by taking prims and manipulating them in various ways I am still learning. Texturing done properly is really boring, so if your not bored aligning 3 different sides of a cube on an hourly basis your not texturing correctly

Go find a house in your neighborhood that you like, and think wouldn't be too difficult to replicate.

Bring your camera, or a sketch pad (or both).

Knock on the door, and ask them whether you can take some snap shots of their house, as a reference for a 3d model you're making--they'll either look at you like you're a MIB, or they will gladly agree.

Snap a bunch of shots of the house, from all angles. Get close-ups of trouble spots. Do the same thing with sketches...

When looking at any reference object, always view each 'piece' or 'segment' of that object as a primitive shape--break it down to simple shapes. As you become more and more familiar with 3d modeling, this will become second nature to you.

After you've sufficiently compiled enough reference material to work out the model, take it home, and begin construction. When building, take windows and doors into consideration--this way you don't construct the walls, and then wonder how you're going to put a door in there. You'll learn quickly, that constructing around doors and walls (in Second Life anyhow) is a necessary step (3rd party 3d apps let you boolean shapes into other shapes, similar to a cookie cutter, but SL doesn't have this ability).

ADD: also, while you're out taking reference images, you are simultaneously taking texture references--the next tool you want on your Bat-belt, is the ability to create your own textures. There are tons of tutorials online concerning texture creation...it's a good idea to learn the tools of the trade.

I know it can be intimidating learning about modeling and texturing...there is so much to learn--hopefully though, you're going into this with willingness and excitement. Each tutorial can be fun and exciting if you have the right mindset.

Good luck.

huh! well yes can't disagree but if someone explained to me that thats how to build a house in SL the first week I was here, I think i would have hung myself

I'm guessing you mean my advice? I agree, that could be a little disconcerting to a novice, but it's the advice any professional CG artist would give a budding modeler. If you're going to do it...do it right. Make it easier on yourself by getting reference images...

I wish someone would have told ME this kind of stuff when I first started.

I could of just said put a triangle on top of a box...

Building in SL is like anything, you get better with practice and everyone here has offered some great tips. Basically all I can say is dont push yourself to make something complete with all intricate details right off the bat. I lived in a square box with an extremely peaked roof for the longest while until I started learning the tricks of the trade.

There is a place called Builder's Island...or something of that nature that has free builders tools. One of them I highly recommend is the measuring tape. It gives you the average sizes of walls, doors, etc etc all with a click

Have fun!

thank you, michael. just want you to know that i appreciate your suggestions very much. and once again, thanks to all of you. nice to know we can get such helpful responses here.