New Land Owner Questions..

I've been a resident since June, but just recently decided to stop renting and become a landowner. I wonder if there are any in-world tutorials on two of my biggest problems: duplicating and linking prims and editing land? I must be doing something wrong, as when I position my 'camera' just right to view a prim I'm working on, and then I 'edit' it, my POV gets abruptly changed.. It's VERY annoying..

Thanks
Taz

Tasman:

There is a setting, I believe within your preferences, that will allow you to disable this sudden camera movement upon editing. I would tell you exactly where the setting can be found, but I am at work right now and cannot double check it. Poke around, you will surely find it.

As for tutorials, I highly recommend you visit the Ivory Tower of Primatives. There you will find a very elaborate building tutorial.

Good luck Tasman. If you ever need any help, please send me an IM.

Taz...

For any prim editing, I recommend waiting until AFTER you enter edit mode to set your camera. The drastic reorientation happens for every one.

My practice is to enter edit mode... If you move your avatar, you will stop editing the current selection, but the edit window will remain open. Inn this state, if you select an object, the camera will not radically swing.

For inworld editing tutorials, I have not found a more comprehensive prim manipulation tutorial than the Ivory Tower of Primitives. Use find and it will guide you . You can also check out Robin Soujourner's very excellent texture tutorial in Benten... good stuff...
The particle lab is also handy. again, "find" will help you.

To join two or more prims, you select them both by selecting all the child prims first (Use shift-click to select more than one prim...) and select the parent prim last. Once you have all your prims selected, ctrl-L will toggle your link status. To unlink the entire object, just select...
To detach a single prim from an object, use edit parts (or something like that... It's the check box at the bottom of the editing states column (Location, size, rotation, etc...)) and then click the prim and hit ctrl-L.


For land editing, the tool is not as intuitive. I can only recommend experimentations.
The Revert land is a handy thing if you want to revert the land to its pristine state.... Just select "select Land" and drag a boundary. then select "Revert Land" then hit "Apply to Selection" button at the right.
In similar fashion, you can flatten land, Smooth Land , Raise (within limits) or Lower (within limits) land.
There is also the Bulldozer, which can be set to small med or Large. When you use that, you just drag the square active area over the land of your choice and it will automagically do whatever is selected. The bulldozer is good for fine work, but for big stuff, you will rpbably be happier with the Select Land.

Yes, the Land editing tools are KLUDGY. But they are all we have at the moment...

For the POV problem, make sure that auto camera movement is turned off. Go Edit -> Preferences -> Input/Camera, and uncheck Automatic Edit Camera Movement and Autmatic Appearance Camera Movement. Click Apply and OK. Just so you know, the appearance camera setting doesn't actually have anything to do with this particular problem, just the edit camera, but it's still annoying and worth unchecking. Also, 1.6 had a bug in the camera where it would flip around and zoom out when closlely focused while editing a small object. That bug has been fixed in 1.7, but if it's still happening to you, report it (Help -> Report Bug...). Most likely it's the auto movement that's the problem though.

As for linking prims, with the editor window open select a prim, and then hold down shift and select all the others you want linked. Press ctrl-L and they'll link together. The last prim selected before linking will always become the "parent" prim, the one that controls the set, and all the others will be its "children". Select the linked set and you'll see the parent highlighted in gold, and the children highlighted in blue. To unlink, press ctrl-shift-L.

Editing land is pretty self exlanatory, as long as your on land that can be terraformed. If it can't it should say so in the description. On the editor window, click on the the steam shovel icon at the top right. Your land should turn blue-green, indicating that it can be edited. If you don't want to see the blue-green color while you're working, uncheck "Show Onwers". On the left of the window you'll see radio buttons for various things you can do to the land like selecting portions of it, raising it, lowering it, flattening it, etc. On the right is a pull down menu for the size of the brush you want to use to "paint" the effects onto the land. Play around with the options and you'll learn what they all do pretty fast. If you have any specific questions, come on back.

Cool!

Thanks Chosen... A new trick or three for Alain!
BTW, when is that Niagara Frontier Get Together gonna happen? <<Blatant Threadjacking>>

Thank you all very much!

I'm going in-world this evening and try out your suggestions.. I've heard of the Ivory Tower of Primatives but have never been there.. I assume I can do a find on that name...

Thanks again,
Taz