Free "take it apart" building tutorial in the shape of merry go round

I have spent some time building a "tutorial" merry-go-round which is intended as a free building teaching/teach-yourself tool.

It is a little ecclectic because I have tried to highlight a few different building styles and examples with the various "rides"... including a little robot/mecha, a blinking furry head, a cell-shaded creature, an example of using prims for light effects, etc.

The entire thing is free with open permissions, with all scripts and textures included. I wanted to give people something to take apart and learn with their hands, but I have also included several notecard tutorials (with screenshots).

So far there are written tutorials on how the roof canopy was made, how to cell-shade, how to make a blinking head, and how to use translucent prims for lighting effects. The merry go round rotates on and off with the click of a green or red button, and I should add a tutorial on how that works too.

I am still tweaking it, but wanted to offer it up to anyone who wants to play with it and give me comments for improvement, or for anyone who wants to take it apart and try to learn.

Send me an IM and I will drop one into your inventory.

I'll stick some pictures below


PS. thank you to eltee for allowing me to include some of her particles, to cereal milk for allowing me to include his 256-grid for free (sooooo useful), and to davy flytrap and the Scripting Tips forum folks for help when i got stuck on a few things.

PPS. another thread reminded me to note the IP rights of this thing: it is fully public domain. You can do whatever you want with it (although I sure hope no one gets their hands on it and tries to sell it as-is). If you use it to make a really cool carnival ride and are able to sell that, I say more power to ya!

Thats a amazeing form of a tutorial, would be good for people like me,
I get lost on all of those subjects, or at least forget it the next day.
Good job! =^-^=

Sure this'll help loads of people with unfinished projects

That look very cool! Is it rideable? I've been workign on a carousel ride myself, and have yet to find a great solution. Vehicle seems to have the most promise, but the prim limit is pretty harsh. Anyway, I'll be looking for you in world to get a copy!

Oh my gosh... what a fantastic idea! Its so nice of you to do this for the community.

it is indeed rideable -- uses the SitTarget function to position you properly on the seats, and it spins. (of course when it spins the animated textures go a little wonky, but I gather that will be fixed in 1.6.1)

I should have mentioned that it runs to just under 160 prims (I tried to walk the line between looking decent and prim-efficiency), so unless you have a nice prim count on your own land, you'll want to dabble with it in a sandbox.

thanks for the comments, and I'll be sending em out!


PS - quick note to beginner builders who see this thread and want a copy (I hope!), if you unlink it and want to relink it all, make sure that the center pole remains the parent prim in the link set. If you click on the info-box on the center pole, which describes how the canopy was made, it tells you more on how to control what is the parent prim.

Great Idea!

I learned a lot of basic scripting and building by taking things apart. I used to spread out in the corner of a sandbox and pull free stuff apart to see how they made it. I called it Disectiong Freebies.

Great idea, the tutorial notecards are a lot better than trying to figure it out on your own, Ill have to check it out.

He great, man. I'm still learning, and love to pull things apart to see what they are made off. And i'm glad to see that you touch some subjects that i still hadn't started with.
I will be sending a IM your way.

Wonderful idea, Foresti

When I was new (a year ago), I used to roam the world looking for modifiable objects to tinker with. That's how I learned much of what I know now. Too bad your tutorial wasn't around durring my noob days



~Olympia

Wow! Awesome! Thank you! I thought I'd understood "cell shading" but now I see there's an even better way! ^_^

OMG WHAT A WORK OF ART!!!

This is truely EDUTAINMENT!!!

Forseti, kudos... now I must find one of these merry-g's to ride!

on it's way torley

Dreams Lightcloud caught that a few of the scripts inside the prims were still no copy/no mod.
(thank you!)

I have fixed that. If you want a new version, please let me know.

out of curiosity, a bunch of people have now received this -- what did you think? useful?

This looks really cool! Can you toss a copy on me?

-Ghoti