Builing mentor / assistance needed

Dear SL users.
I have been trying to build for about a year now. I have allot of ideas and inspirations. But there are some encounters i cant resolve such as:
Choppy/basic looking shapes,
'sparkling' edges 'witch are in my eyes perfectly alligned'
Well placing of texturing on buildings..


My main goal is to build star-wars attributes, i have no budget for fancy sculpt packs for example pistol-hafts. I do all from scratch.

If anybody is willing to help me out, show me a few tricks or even mentor me in getting better and developping my skills id be more the thankfull. I will sell my creations when there product worthy and a mentor that really put his soul into it deserves rewarding.

I am really excited to learn.

A noble request by Finrod Ghennyn.

Im in timezone GMT+1:00 by the way if that may be of any help.

...lots of good tutorials on the web.

I have followed some on the web, also visited a huge list of help-centers but neither of those could teach me enough in specialising for making something go complete. I know all of the basics but i need more details aswell as learn to handle with some shapes.

Dear avatar,

I would like to apply for the position announced by Ön!
I am his active member since 2005 already Second Life for a world.
I deal with the organization of presentations, openings and other programs since 2006, since 2007 though with the planning of fixtures and buildings and his building am busy.
My products hardly some %- it finds it www.xstreetsl.com on a web page.
According to a claim test day you're welcome undertake!
With respect: Pasa DeVinna

sparkling edges, one solution is to always texture all surfaces, even hidden ones. Make the hidden edges darker than the the surfaces you can see, usually tinting them 50% or 75% black stops this. However, I have found in some builds whatever I do a sparkling edge still occurs, but with the tint darkening it is still an improvement. I think I sometimes spend more time texturing/tinting an object than it took to build.

Oh yes, agree with you there.

Just recently (mid-day light) doing as you suggest (I learnt this the hard way a long time ago) to make the joins the same texture often and to tint down as faces (that face the sky) are brighter than the walls.

All worked well, till sunrise, then the walls were blinding white and you could then see my darker joins!

Arghhhhh !!!!!

This was were two hollowed out and tapered cylinders were meeting and dam hard to get it all aligned anyway.

Eyes are good, but calculators are better. Try typing actual numbers into the prim's edit box; this is the surest way of getting "perfect" alignment that I've found.

Calculators are great, but I would submit that the onscreen rulers are even better than that. The problem with using only a calculator is we're not able to enter enough decimal places into the editor for exacting precision. Simply putting a one-meter object 1.00 meters from another one-meter object doesn't ensure they'll be perfectly flush. One of them might be at x.0001 and the other might be at x.0009 or something. The end result is you get a seam that is 0.0008 meters wide, even though the numbers you can see tell you there shouldn't be any seam at all.

If you snap objects to the ruler marks, you'll never have that problem. Learning to use all three ruler modes well is one of the primary keys to really effective building in SL.




Never try to align anything just by eye. That's one of the cardinal sins of 3D modeling. Use the nubmers, and use the on-screen rulers. They're there for very good reason.

To be a 3D artist is to be part sculptor and part mathematician. Both parts are of equal importance. I can't stress this enough. Embrace the math and the art equally, or don't try to be a 3D artist. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I don't know how else to put it.

Now, let's make sure we're addressing the right problem. What exactly do you mean by "sparkling edges"? I'm assuming you mean the dotted lines that sometimes appear at the seams where prims meet? If that's indeed the case, then there are a few things you should do:

1. Make sure all sides of all prims are appropriately texrtured, as Dekka said. If the front and back of a cube have two different textures, such as interior and exterior wall materials, for example, it's usually a good idea to put a "half and half" texture on the the faces that are inside the wall. Divide the canvas vertically, color half the texture to match the interior surface, and the other half to match the exterior.

2. Use the numbers and the on-screen rulers to make sure your objects are indeed flush, as Pete and I said. Don't ever just go by eye.

3. Make sure anti-aliasing is enabled in your video settings. Even if you do both of the above perfectly, those seams will still be visible if AA is not turned on. Without AA, all diagonal edges will be drawn as jagged lines. (And nearly all lines will ALWAYS be diagonals, since it's pretty unusual that your camera would ever be directly facing anything from dead on.) No two objects will ever have the exact same jag pattern on their edges unless they're exactly the same size, and in exactly the same location, as each other. And quite obviuosly, two objects that are adjacent are not in the same location.

Where the jags differ in sizes, you'll see dots or "sparkles", or whatever you choose to call them, forming a broken line along the seam between the two objects. The ONLY way to prevent that entirely is to use anti-aliasing to blur those jagged lines. That's precisely what it's for.

If your video card cannot handle AA in SL, then you need a better video card. There's really no other answer.


It also occurs to me that the opposite problem, Z-fighting, could also be described as "sparkling edges". If two objects that are supposed to be flush are actually a little too close together, the overlapping texturing along the seam will appear to flicker. There are two cures for this:

1. Simply move the objects further apart, so they don't overlap. Again, use the numbers and the on-screen rulers to do this properly.

-OR-

2. Assuming both objects have the same texture on them, adjust the positioning of the textruring, so that the the overlapping portion is the exact same part of the texture on both objects. Technically, the flickering will still be there, but since it's flicking between two instances of the exact same pixels, it won't be detectable.

There are scripts that can automate the texture placement, or you can do the offsetting by hand. I do both. If it's just two or three prims that need adjusting, I'll usually do it by hand. If it's a whole bunch, I use a script called TexFix, which I found either on OnRez or SLExchange (both now incorporated into Xstreet), years ago.



Another possibility is you're talking about the alpha sorting glitch. This is when two or more 32-bit-textured objects that overlap in 3D space appear to jump in front of each other, or to cancel each other out. The ONLY solution to this is just not to overlap 32-bit textures ever. In video games, that's easy, since a team of professionals creates every single design, and they make sure always to work around the issue. But in SL, it can be more difficult, since even if you do everything right, your neighbor might not, and then you've got a problem to solve that you didn't even create.

Don't overuse 32-bit texures. Make sure you're using only 24-bit textures unless you absolutely, positively, 100% NEED transparency in the image. It's a common mistake for new texture artist to assume that "more bits" must be better than "less bits" so they save everything as 32-bit in the beginning. Don't do that. The extra 8 bits in a 32-bit image constitute the transparency map. 24-bit images have no transparency; 32-bit ones do. Computers don't sort transparency the way human eyes do, so it's best practice never apply an image with transparency unless you absolutely have to.

See the transparency guide at the top of the texturing forum for more information on this.





The best advice I can give you is to examine objects that you don't think are "choppy" or "basic", and take a look at how they're made. Beyond that, it all comes down to getting used to the tool set.

I know you said you've been trying for a year now, so I certainly don't blame you for seeking hands-on guidance, rather than just reading a post like this one. Here's one suggestion. Have you been to the Ivory Tower of Prims? It's very educational, if you haven't. It shows how to make nearly every shape that can be made from every prim type.

I know it might not seam like it, but eventually this stuff does click. It just takes longer for some than for others. Sooner or later, you learn to "think in prims", and then it all just falls into place. But until you reach that point, you're going to be a little frustrated. If someone can give you a bit of a boost in-world, great. But if not, there's still plenty you can learn on your own.

In the mean time, consider it a good thing that you're not satisfied with what you've done so far. It means you WILL get better. The last thing you'd want is to be complacent, and just remain at the same level forever.




[EDIT] Read Seven's post below. A lot of people find the my alignment pattern to be quite helpful. I'm not sure why I didn't think to mention it myself here. Sorry about that. See Seven's link for the Xstreet listing, which itself has links to the thread in which I first published the image, and to a tutorial somebody put together for some ways to use it. I'm glad to see it's gone to good use.

Blow is my original, more generalistic, response to your question. [/EDIT]


This is a skill set that can take a long time to develop. Notice I said skill SET, not just skill. There are many factors involved. For one, you'll need to learn how SL's texure placement tools work, obviously. You'll also need to learn the basic principles behind texturing itself, just to begin understand why the textures you have to work with won't always be the same proportions as the surfaces you're applying them to, and how to deal with the situation when they're not. And of course, you'll need a good sense of artistry, proportion, and scale.

All that is just for starters. There are no quick fixes here. Texturing is a HUGE subject, far bigger than building (not that building is small either). If you're committed for the long haul, you can learn to be very good. But it takes time and practice, practice, practice to get good at any art form, and the digital arts are no exception.





Here's one option you might want to consider. I'm in the finishing stages right now of putting together my Photoshop For SL Users class, which I'll be teaching at Xeniversity. If you're interested, watch my forum signature for announcements, and keep checking the calendar at xeniversity.com for scheduling. I haven't said much about it in threads because I don't think it's right to use the forum as an ad space. But since you did ask for in-world help, I did want to let you know that the class will be an option.

Additionally, I'll be doing a parralel course for Paintshop Pro, alongside the Photoshop one, in the future. I don't have a specific ETA on that yet, but it will likely start some time in the first or second quarter of next year.

I've also been asked to do a building class, which I'm considering. But I haven't made up my mind yet.

As far as textures going on right:

There is a freebie called "Texture Alignment Pattern" on xstreetsl:

https://xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1444355

that helps quite a bit. Because all of your prims are different sizes and orientations, you need to rotate some, use different numbers of repeats, and fix the offsets.

It's tedious, but worth it.

It's not hard to calculate repeats, but you can eyeball them with the texture alignment pattern.

Oh cool, I didn't realize someone had put that on Xstreet. I'm also not sure why I didn't think of mentioning it, so thanks for the reminder, Seven.

/me grins

I use it all the time. Thanks!