Build menu guide

I've been through the Wiki and don't see what I am looking for...

Has anyone created a guide to the options on the build menu? Such as what does Plastic as a material do? etc....

A lot of it is self explanitory, but i would love to have a guide that I could turn into a notecard for quick reference in-world.

You know...I'm really wondering about the materials myself...most the time I just forget about it and build everything as wood...

...does it really make a difference? Do the physics work differently somehow? Or is it just for s&gs?

As far as I understand it its to do with how the object reacts to things that happens to it. Physics is one example.. I heard it can also effect sounds when things are walked on..

Tutorials

I must admit I have been in SL for a long time and I am not too sure what they do either. I do know that if you set an object to light it does emit light in a sense, it just looses all its shadow rendering and if you have local lighting on it will cast actual light.

The other materials I know they do make different sounds when you run into them. I am not sure on the physics thing but its possible, I have never paid enough attention. My best guess would be that rubber would bounce better if this is true.

ivory tower in noyo (208, 185) has all the info one could want about building, including what the material types do and a demonstration of them



jester


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One caveat: When I went there, that part of it wasn't clear. It inadvertently gave me the impression those settings would make the actual object look like it had a rubber base, or whatever. I had to have a friend set me straight on that one.

coco

It's mostly physics and collision sounds. The "light" prim is the most important one that folks would use, but... try not to use it too much, for your neighbor's sake.

NEAT HOT TIP though

If you select the "side zero" of a prim (ie the top of a cube), and color it black, and then change the material to light, the rest of the prim will "glow" with a lit texture, without the annoying light spillover onto other prims. Great for nighttime vendors.

LF

Thanks, I didn't realize my exhibit in the Ivory Tower on material types might confuse people, but I can see how a few of the demonstrators might do that. I made objects that were meant to look like rubber, metal, glass, flesh, metal, plastic, etc. And then set their material types to the types they were meant to illustrate and then set them physical so the effects of the material type could be seen and heard when you kick them around as an avatar. I did this because I thought it would be more clear than kicking around a lot of white cubes with different material types. I'll remember to edit the notecard to provide a disclaimer that the appearance of the prims are not changed when you set a material type (except for the light object, of course).

When I made a cartoony plastic baby doll for the plastic demonstrator, I started to get a bit carried away and created a Homer Simpson head and stated that in a future release of Second Life, "Homer" would be a material type. He makes a 'Doh!' sound when you kick him. I hope that won't require a disclaimer.

Lordfly is quite correct, material types only alter collision sounds and bounce properties of prims when they are physical and strike other objects, or when they are struck by physical objects and avatars. This happens whether the prim is set physical or non-physical (but not phantom, of course). I don't have any numbers on this, nor were the Lindens I spoke with on this matter able to give me any. I made fairly extensive tests of each type, and wrote out my results in a purely subjective way. I tested them by making a sort of "Newton's Cradle" using point to point joints and kept notes of my observations.

At one time the Ivory tower included this Newton's Cradle as an exhibit to demonstrate joints...but the side effects were horrendious and I took it down.

My biggest struggle in making the Ivory Tower has been to make it clear and comprehensible to all; I'm still heavily tinkering with the design of the building. Actually I'm building an entirely new one in Natoma to incorporate what I've learned about building since I built the original, and to update the content to reflect new additions to the Second Life editing interface.

Lumi