Offline architect tools for creating SL buildings.

What offline tools do people use to create or assist in the creation of SL buildings, houses, and etc. or does everyone create these things using the in-game tools? Seems like it would be rather difficult just relying on eye sight to get prims to line up exactly.

Then rely on the grid! snap to the grid lines and you'll line up perfectly. Its been a while since I used the building tools, but as I remember, if you slide your object along its axis from the arrow, it's free movement, and if you use slide it from above or below the graduated markers it snaps to them. The grid size is configurable.

And yes, everyone (well, all but a very few smartasses anyway) relies on the building tools to make their content - because you can't import models to SL (in any conventional way).

i found the grid really hard to use, but i'm a n00b i guess i just need more practice eh?

Is there some FAQ or other documentation on using the Grid? So far, my object editing has been a bit of trail and error.

I use photographs. Extensively and often. I build from them, but have to make changes due to SL.



One tragedy of SL architecture is the scale. Our cameras are over our heads, and mouselook really isn't 'practical' to use inside.

Resolving this conflict in the least harmful manner can make for good architecture.

Resolving it in the most harmful manner means you have just built an empty, soulless warehouse.


Play around with the 'edit' tools for a while; you will quickly get the hang of it.

As opposed to?

There are building classes in events if you look under find.

If you are not afraid of a bit of math, you can actually build a lot of things with a bit of scripting. You can find that in many cases it's possible to break down a build, or at least parts of it, into simpler parts that is repeated in some pattern, sometimes at various angles and different scales. If you build just the simplest parts and use a script to rez them at the correct position and rotation, and to resize them to the right scale, you can get pretty good results.

http://images.google.com
graph paper
ruler
compass
protractor
curve tool
big eraser
and a grip of sharpened pensils!

in world, there are a number of things to use.

i use this thing i got on slexchange.com.

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=51092

from the product description:

Rez this little sofa in world, sit on it and you are taken to 700m straight up.

The chair then builds a 50m x 50m platform for you - kicks you out of the chair - and disappears.

The platform texture is made with builders in mind - checkers, numbers, grid and marked to make measurents and rotations easy.

When you have finished with the platform - just shout /999die and the whole platform disappears and you fall back to Earth.

No frills, no bells or whistles - just a functioning chair lift and work platform."

it's pretty sweet.

There's a free "builder's SL essentials" you can get at Yadni's Junkyard that includes a box that takes you up to 300m and rezzes a workroom around you, a ruled surface, posing stand, and similar tools.

Ivory Tower Library of Primitives. Look for it in Find.

i had no idea about that! i'd have saved the 100 L$ if i had!

This is what I was thinking, wondering if I could translate a povray file into a script and use that for building. Anybody done this or found out it can't be done here?

Not sure what files that is but I'm guessing it's some standard 3d format. There's a 3d model importer made by Jeffrey Gomez that might be able to import such files, but it uses one prim for each polygon though so it's not very prim efficient.

I've seen that, but not good for me. Povray is a scripting environment, based on c like the scripting here. The scripts seem compatible but there could be problems translating, csg is more limited here (no subtraction etc.) I'll look into it when I know more about the capabilities of SL building. But it would be a way of off-line building and more mathematical and less mechanical which 'm not excellent at. And many people here are new to this but bring other external skills and want to translate them in world, and as happens in rl, immigration is a useful and creative force.

Offline tools:

Pencil
Paper
Pocket calculator
Brain

In-world tools:
Numeric position & dimension fields in the edit menu.



Menu Bar -> View -> Camera Controls... The first thing I do before even starting to build.


Once you learned to use SL's editing tools properly, you'll look down upon other 3D software in despair, believe me. There's times I wish the CAD software I use for university work was as easy as SL's build tools

Edit:
I forgot, someone mentioned the Ivory Tower of primitives... check it out! It has pretty much anything you need to get going, if you have a bit of patience.

Nah. Probably not the best way to go about it.

I am (chronically) working on a tool to cook up building in Blender. Just need more time!

I use those camera controls extensively - usually I park my avatar somewhere when I begin to build.

But that was not my point, it was the fact that you have to build around the *end user's* camera view, not your own.

Making ceilings at standard height in a structure will easily trap a user's camera in an attic.

My 5m ceilings are considered low by some, but when you think about it - people are really only about 2m tall. Even in SL - perhaps 3m?

Doubling the height of a building's ground floor, especially when you look out the windows with a camera generally far above an avatar's head, can distort things terribly unless you use every trick in the book to mitigate the problem.

That's one thing about construction in SL that really bothers me, considering how used I am to making use of difference{} CSG operations in POVRay. There are loads of features present in the POVRay SDL that would really enhance the creative capabilities of SL if they were only implemented, especially with regards to textures. I don't know about you, but I prefer to specify my textures using the patterns in POVRay's Scene Description Language and see the resulting objects essentially carved out of the texture rather than using image maps, which are unsuitable for a lot of objects. Implementing procedural textures in a similar manner to POVRay would be a great way to allow custom textures and cut down on bandwidth usage at the same time (the world is laggy-enough as it is, even on a 1500/256 connection). After all, with a procedural texture, only a few numbers (maybe a dozen at the most) need to be transferred as opposed to, say, a hundred-thousand for a 2D image_map.

You have just saved me hours of aggravation. I made my stories 3.5 m high, as that's about the height of a story in FL. Luckily, I haven't put in the floors yet, so tweaking the walls won't take long at all. Man, I hate being a n00b. Thank you!