**1: Texturing detail objects such as chairs, TV's, etc**
When texturing something that requires quite a few textures on a small object ALLWAYS make sure you combine all the textures into 1 image. It does require some textuing skill but it is amazing at how much speed you gain from this.
One other thing i see alot of is people oblivious of the size of the texture when uploading. DO NOT use 1024x1024 textures on small objects, it is absolutely pointless and wastes a redicules amount of system ram and causes lag. dont forget ALL the textures you see have to be loaded into the system ram. and loaded out. so the smaller the texture, the better but don't go over board, i find that for an old style tv (21"
i would use a 64x64 texture. or in best case 128x128, any bigger is pointless.Also something that helps a little bit, well it speeds up the uploading proccess and gives the asset server 1 less job 2 do. is make sure you upload the texture as the power of 2, any of these combinations are ok...
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024 (try not 2 use this, only for mega builds)
So 512x128 is ok, 64x64 is ok, 234x56 is NOT ok because its not the power of 2
Second life will automaticly resize the textures to one of the above sizes, but doing this before hand avoids stretch marks and takes load off of the poor asset servers
**2: Shadows and shading effects in SL**
Despite the hipe about how difficult and prim wasting this is, it dosn't have to require any more prims. Pre-baking (putting the shadows on the texture before uploading it) the shadow onto the the texture not only makes SL look 10000000x better but it can also disguise crappy builds.
For small items such as Chairs n stuff you can do 1 of 2 things.
For better detail: Goto snapshots, change the option from "Color" to "Depth" and take a snap of the object you want to shade, then upload it into your prefured paint program, and tae out the background, blur the image of the object a few times, then re-upload it (making sure you save it as a .png not a .jpg!. and make it transparent by about 40% or what ever looks good for the setting.
If you are a newb or a lazy ass builder, then you can just use a sphere gradient, and place that under the object, it still looks much better than just nothing.
For rooms and outdoor buildings
Apply an inverted sphere gradient to the texture (such as a wall, foor etc) and then make the corners darker than the rest of the texture, then upload. it is amazing how much mor realistic it makes things look in SL.
For an outdoor building, depending on what the setting is, ALLWAYS make the very bottom of the texture look darker, and do the same on the ground texture.
If it is a night setting and you are making a tall building add a straight gradient to the texture, getting darker as it gets taller, this will add the effect of it being taller than it actually is and add realism for a night setting
Shadowing in SL will attrack ALOT of buisiness in SL, especially if your pre-fab house includes it. people don't directly notice it, but it will attract alot more attention for its "realism" look
**3: Reducing prims**
I am sure that most builders in SL have hit the dreaded and most feared "Parcel Full" or "Sim Full" errors at some point in there SL. Well most things in SL can be prim reduced and still look exactly the same
For example i am sure most of you know about the old skool hollow tricks. well for those who dont...
When making a house, or more specificly the corner of a house, rather than use 2 prims to make the 2 right angle walls, you can use 1
Make a cube, hollow it out (usually 80 - 90% is ok) and cut it so that it looks like a corner peice 2 the wall and u have saved 1 prim. not only does this save a prim, but the corners of your build will be 100% perfect with minimal effort.
As for stairs most of you know that you can find some pretty convincing sculptie stairs out there (if not i have some for sale for L$10 - contact me in-world) but sometimes these just dont cut it and look 2 odd, so rather than using 12 prims to make a flight of stairs (asuming you need 2 use 12 stairs to get 2 the second floor) you can use 6, using the hollow trick, hollow a cube by 15%, cit it until it looks like a set of 2 steps, then you will need to rotate the cube around 2 be up the right way.
more will be added later...