Iggerent noob builder question

Hi all: what filetypes are importable onto the grid, and in the case of vehicles, houses, etc, what scale do they need to be?
Thanx
Lexi

There's nothing for actual building, apart from using Sculpted Prims, which enables you to export a texture based on certain types of mesh which can then be applied to a single prim. It's rather a complicated subject - http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims should start you off, and threads on this forum.

There are systems that will take a model in some file format and then turn it into prims, but I wouldn't use them except in special cases - they're not what you'd call efficient.

clarification: can I upload poser files, or autocad files, or???????. I have a RL friend who does 3D modeling who has kindly consented to allow me to upload examples of his work to see what I can do with them in SL, and he needs to know what specific formats will upload onto our grid.

You cannot upload arbitrary 3D models. In order for a surface model to be compatible with SL, it must be built in a very specific way, which is 99.99% guaranteed to be unlike the way your friend likely would have built his. Modeling with SL in mind is different from modeling with other things. Just as you wouldn't use a film-intended model in a video game, and you wouldn't use a game-intended model for a high quality rendering, you wouldn't use anything for SL but an SL-intended model.

See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims for more information on how SL-intended models need to be built.

Since you mentioned Poser specifically, the answer is no, you cannot import Poser models into SL (as you probably guessed by now from everything I was just saying). But what you can use it for is making animations for avatars, and for testing clothing and skin textures. You cannot use it for modeling.

As for AutoCAD, there is a program called Henshin, which will take an AutoCAD model and reproduce it out of prims in SL. I'm not an AutoCAD user myself, so I can't speak to how well it works. See /8/e2/209025/1.html for more info. I don't know for certain, but my guess is Henshin will require you to build your CAD model in a specific way that will be SL friendly. I'd be very surprised if it can work with just any old CAD file.

In any case, so you know, at least 90% of what you see in SL was created using the in-world building tools. The capability of "sculpting" for SL (using external 3D modeling programs like Maya and 3DS Max), has only been around for a few months, and in its present form it's not ideal for most situations. If you want to model for SL, learn the internal tools first, and learn about sculpties second. Don't waste your time thinking about importing pre-existing models. That's just not how SL works.

Ah! This I understand! All right. So I can create poses and animations with poser; that's good, because I have an older version that a friend gave me when she upgraded, and now I have a use for it. I'll check with my friend to see how he built his models; perhaps we can adapt some of them. In the meantime, I'm going to try out some of those apps mentioned in the knowledge base in addition to using the in-world system (which I am practicing the basics of on my property). Thank you, Chosen. Consider yourself the very first recipient of the Lexi Imako Big Wet Bugs Bunny Kiss award.