a few newbie questions

Background..so you know where i'm coming from: new to SL, just a few days old. never done 3d modeling of any sort before, understand this is different anyway. experimented for hours on my own in the island sandbox and a few others, read through the ivory tower a bit after that, knew many of the things in the first few floors by then. Have a decent grasp of the very basics, as far as can be expected within a short time anyway....

But still I have a few questions I can't find the answers to on my own:

- How exactly does positioning and attaching work? i.e. how is it decided what body part an item will be attached to if just dragged to the avatar, and how is it decided where it will be positioned and rotated relative to the avatar.

For example, how would I make something float above your head? (or is it possible without scripting?)

I tried to make a basic halo. I can manipulate a ring into one, and set it to yellow, that's simple enough, but I can't figure out how you position in about your head. when I attach it it attaches around my face, vertical rather than horizontal.

- also, this may have to do with the above, or at least be important in understanding it?: I heard something about the order you select prims when linking them being important (to determining the center...was that it?). I can't recall what this concept was called off-hand though. can anyone give me a quick rundown of this?

Welcome....

Attachments were pretty mysterious to me too...

Here's the rundown...

When an object is newly created, its attachment point is set to the default setting, which is the head (I think... maybe nose, but I am pretty sure it is the head).

If you want to make sure the object attaches to a particular part of the body, you would Right click on the item in inventory and select "Attach to..." This will bring up a menu of all the attachment points. In your case, for the Halo, select Cranium.

Now comes the fun...

Once the object is attached to your cranium, you need to rt-click on it and select Edit...
Now you can position it with respect to your avatar. There is a limited field of volume in which you can position the item. You'll know when you bump against its boundaries, though... The object will move no further.

Now if you detach the object, it retains the settings...
Now you can select wear from the object menu in inventory... Or just drag and drop it on your av... You will automatically wear it correctly.

If you give it to someone else, when they wear it, it will adjust according to the settings you put in...
I fthey want to adjust its position, they can go into edit and do so. If the object is moddable as well, they can adjust the size and fit the item to meet their own needs and proportions (As with Jewelry)

As for the Linking, The child prims need to be selected FIRST.. the parent prim is last and will be the master prim.

There is a bug where the FIRST prim determines the orientation of the axes in the edit case, as well as for certain other things (Like Center of gravity, I am told) It is SUPPOSED to be the parent prim, the one last to be selected, but it's the first instead.

Once you have them all selected, you can hit CTRL-L or choose Link from the Tools menu... nowe your eleventy-three prims are one object... but they still count as eleventy three against the primcount of the land where hte object resides.