How to build this without using an alpha texture?

I want to now how am I going to build the 4 hollowed circles on a cylinder and possibly more. Is there a way to do it without making a texture for it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USAF_M2HB.jpg

You're going to have to be a bit more specific about what you mean. "Four hollowed circles on a cylinder" could mean almost anything. How about posting a picture? Even a hand drawing would work.

Oh sorry. I forgot to post a pic of it.

I don't think you can do that without textures - curved holes on cylindrical prisms are outside of SL prim capabilities.

Sculpties came to mind, but I'm pretty sure they are limited to convex blobs with topological order zero.

There are four possibilities:

1. Use an alpha texture. This is the simplest and best option. I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to.

-OR-

2. Instead of using a real cylinder, construct a faux cylinder from cubes. An octagonal configuration should do nicely. If you texture it well, it will be pretty hard to tell it's not actually round. For the holes, just pt several hollow the cubes right in a row, and change their hole shape to circle.

-OR-

3. If you want to get closer to how SL actually builds cylinders, then you want 24 sides, not just 8. In that case, hollowing the cubes to form the holes would be out, since each hole's diameter is a lot bigger than 1/24 of the cylinder's circumference. Instead, you'll want to use solid cubes of varying lengths, tapers, and skews, to outline each hole. Depending on how round you want the holes to be, you're probably looking at around a hundred prims or so to build that little cylinder.

-OR-

4. You could sculpt it. You'll need to learn how to use a third-party 3D modeling application, and you'll need to learn the ins and outs of how sculpties work. You'll need to use some trickery to get the appearance of that many holes into a single sculpty, bit it can be done. Or you can take the simpler route, and use multiple sculpties.


I wouldn't recommend options 2-4, since they're far more procedurally complicated, resource-wasteful, and lag-inducing than just slapping one alpha texture onto one cylinder. But if you really, really, really don't want to use an alpha texture, those are your options.







@ Malacchi: I'm not sure what you mean by "topological order zero", but I can promise you sculpties are absolutely NOT "limited to convex blobs". They are actually the most precise, and most versatile modeling medium we have in SL right now. They're capable of being molded into just about any shape you can think of, from organic "blobs" to sharp-edged mechanical-looking items, to shapes that are not even possible in the real world, and everything in between. It's just a question of learning how to use them.