very noobie question
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Wanda Rich
Registered User
Join date: 22 Apr 2006
Posts: 320
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04-25-2006 12:08
ive just bought my firsdt time land and i'm cracking on nicely but i don't seem to be able to make a prim that is the full dimension of my land.
eg. i made a flattened box into dark glass and i would like to have one piece running the full length of my building. However I am limited to the dimesions and so have to put 2 pieces together which greates a black line between the 2 prims.
Is it possible to make 1 big prim?
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Jim Lumiere
Registered User
Join date: 24 May 2004
Posts: 474
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04-25-2006 12:22
The biggest dimension you can set is 10m ... so a single prim can only be 10mx10mx10m. If your building is 30 meters long, you will need 3 10m prims to make a window for the full length. Congrats on teh first land BTW  |
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Wanda Rich
Registered User
Join date: 22 Apr 2006
Posts: 320
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04-25-2006 12:24
thanks for the speedy reply Guess I'll stick a column between them to make them look like one piece  |
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Uyek Margetts
Registered User
Join date: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 12
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Butt Joint Glazing!
04-25-2006 12:43
I am less confident if it works in SL, but in real life construction you can just put the glass panes next to each other without anything in between -- no columns.
A 30m long window sounds great!
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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04-25-2006 13:17
Start with one prim at one end of the wall. Get it just right. Look at it from all sides, to make sure it's what you want.
Right-click, select "Edit".
In the building tool, there's a row of icon tabs at the top. Click on the "create" tab.
You'll get a row and a half of icons for things to create, and then a checkbox for creating a copy of the selected object.
Check that.
Make sure the slightly indented checkbox below that is also checked. I don't recall what it says, but it's important.
Now, click on the *edge* of the prim away from the building's end. Zoom way in if you have to.
You'll get a clone of the original wall section, perfectly lined up with it.
No gaps.
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Cottonteil Muromachi
Abominable
Join date: 2 Mar 2005
Posts: 1,071
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04-25-2006 15:50
From: Wanda Rich pieces together which greates a black line between the 2 prims. Texture the edges of the black glass with an invisible texture. That should hide the black line. |
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Wanda Rich
Registered User
Join date: 22 Apr 2006
Posts: 320
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04-25-2006 16:54
i have to say im a little disappointed by what has happened tonight. My house plans went horribly wrong  so as i had a little money to play with I went a bought a small house. The one i got said it was good for beginner lands. I spent a while fiddling with it and getting it aligned etc and thought it was great. Basic 1 floor box with a small L shape and a door that opened and closed. Excited by this i found a nice set of sofas in a yard sale. I put the first one down but got a message when i tried to put the second down that the land was full  Now i know im new, but really what is the point of putting such a high restriction on the land? I would like to also say that if i could make 1 wall go the full length of my land it would give me more room to play. I have to say that i am not convinced buying bigger land would be much help either. Maybe with 1024 i can add my sofa and a bed with nothing else. Is this normal or have i gone horribly wrong somewhere? |
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Osgeld Barmy
Registered User
Join date: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 3,336
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04-25-2006 17:22
From: Wanda Rich i have to say im a little disappointed by what has happened tonight. My house plans went horribly wrong so as i had a little money to play with I went a bought a small house. The one i got said it was good for beginner lands. I spent a while fiddling with it and getting it aligned etc and thought it was great. Basic 1 floor box with a small L shape and a door that opened and closed. Excited by this i found a nice set of sofas in a yard sale. I put the first one down but got a message when i tried to put the second down that the land was full Now i know im new, but really what is the point of putting such a high restriction on the land? I would like to also say that if i could make 1 wall go the full length of my land it would give me more room to play. I have to say that i am not convinced buying bigger land would be much help either. Maybe with 1024 i can add my sofa and a bed with nothing else. Is this normal or have i gone horribly wrong somewhere? the prim restrictions are fairly ez to reason about, altho i wish they were higher, 117 prims just isnt alot to work with, but anyways a full Sim can handle 16k prims (with some change) devide that up into 512 plots and you end up with 117 for each plot the size of the prim is also partly due to the sim, and partly due to the vastly unused and mostly useless physics engine (bounding boxes, av's ect) again i wish they were bigger and no you havent done anything wrong, but with small land plots those prims vansih quickly, things you could do (if you wanted to) is rebiuld the prefab, alot of prefabs have wastefull elements to them (i once had one that used 2 prims to cover a 7x5 m span of glass) btw im not telling you this so you can sell knockoffs eithers, its like making a copy of a cd you own, but rearanging the tracks to your needs and furniture OMG, that stuff can get really heavy really quick (i once biult a massive house, lots of angles and spaces took like 200 prims, first thing in it by the owners was a 200 prim chair!) if you can see displays of the item, you can edit them and see how many prims they eat up just in plain ol fact, prim limits on 512's is at best a magic trick, but you can have a nice cozy home on them with no problems if you keep an eye out |
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ed44 Gupte
Explorer (Retired)
Join date: 7 Oct 2005
Posts: 638
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low prims
04-25-2006 18:12
Hi Wanda
The key is to search for "low prim" houses and furniture. They rely more on textures rather than prims to make their shapes. Go to find/classifieds and look for "low prim" and you'll find a heap of ppl selling low prim furniture and houses. They generally look better because someone has take the trouble to make these textures photo realistic.
I have a double story danami (i think) house (less than 20 prims) on my 512 block at 50 M with plenty of low prim furniture. This way I don't have to look at the sex shop on one side of me and the club on the other side. I put a little fence in front of the door on the edge of the door entrance slab to stop me from falling off. Of course, when the door opens, it just replaces that part of the wall with a different texture showing an open door and the whole texture becomes walk thru before reverting back to the solid texture showing the closed door.
I use a 3 prim elevator to move between my house and the ground. It's fun and even my rl wife loves this house.
It's best to find a house that gives you copy/mod perms but not transfer perms. That way you can modify to your heart's content and just replace it from your inventory if you muck it up. Don't forget to note its coordinates (i put mine in my notes area in my profile) so you can re-rez it without needing to re-do you furniture.
Now working on terraforming the ground and maybe planting some trees . . . .
Ed
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Ilianexsi Sojourner
Chick with Horns
Join date: 11 Jul 2004
Posts: 1,707
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04-25-2006 18:24
From: ed44 Gupte
I have a double story danami (i think) house (less than 20 prims) on my 512 block...
Ed
I think the brand you're thinking of is probably Damani, by Damanios Thetan... he does a lot of great looking low prim prefabs. He has a sim where he sells them all, they're out on display so you can walk through them and see the layouts.
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Pratyeka Muromachi
Meditating Avatar
Join date: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 642
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04-26-2006 06:24
Noobs should learn about the SL interface, land size/prim count relation and how to build and manipulate prims before going into construction a house. Go to any sandbox for a day or two, and spend a few hours at the Tower of Primitives. Use the Find button.
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gone to Openlife Grid and OpenSim standalone, your very own sim on your PC, 45,000 prims, huge prims at will up to 100m, yes, run your own grid on your PC, FOR FREE!
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Niko Xingjian
Registered User
Join date: 16 Oct 2005
Posts: 34
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04-26-2006 08:25
From: Pratyeka Muromachi Noobs should learn about the SL interface, land size/prim count relation and how to build and manipulate prims before going into construction a house. Go to any sandbox for a day or two, and spend a few hours at the Tower of Primitives. Use the Find button. I found the opposite to be true for me! building a decent home on first land taught me alot of building techniques and about what works best. By having tight restrictions on what I can do I was forced to learn clever ways of getting the most out of each prim, as well as the value of good texturing! for instance, ive seen alot of people who use 5 or 6 prims to build a flat section of wall just to get a nice looking window in it. by adding a window frame to your texture you can do it with 2 prims (or one if you dont care about glass!). I recently upgraded from first land to a nice 1024 plot with a 417 prim limit (im not sure why I get 4x the prims on 2x the land, but I am not gonna complain), and found that the house I built for it, even with some fairly complex furniture (hot tubs are real prim eaters) I still only top out around 200, thanks to the fact that I spent my learning time having to be frugal! If you start out learning to build in sandboxes, its easy to very quickly get the hang of building wild, complex, and very cool looking objects... that use hundreds of prims and simply would never fit on a reasonable size plot of land. Now, I think sandboxes are wonderfull... I do most of my test building there now, so that I dont have limits, can have six copies of something on the ground at once (dont ask), and so on. they are especially good for vehicle work, where you can have hundreds of prims in an object 3x2x2m in size.- |
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Porky Gorky
Temperamentalalistical
Join date: 25 May 2004
Posts: 1,414
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04-26-2006 09:33
I agree, the best way to learn how to be prim conscious is build a house suitable for a 512sqm plot that doesn’t resemble a box. Due to the shape of most plots and the prim restrictions it’s tricky to create interesting builds and takes practice and this is a good way to learn. Texturing is all important when building in order to keep the prim count down but I do think there is a compromise to be had. The earlier reference to the Damani prefabs is a prime example. No disrespect to their creator they are well designed, built and expertly textured but ultimately I think they look too 2d. Using textures to save prims is all well and good but I want a window frame to look 3d and not like a 2d texture. I am guilty of using textured window frames my self so I probably can’t talk, but the best houses I have seen and built balance textures with 3d objects and compromise slightly on prim saving. There are enough good low prim furniture makers out there to help keep the balance.
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Niko Xingjian
Registered User
Join date: 16 Oct 2005
Posts: 34
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04-26-2006 09:45
From: Porky Gorky Using textures to save prims is all well and good but I want a window frame to look 3d and not like a 2d texture. I am guilty of using textured window frames my self so I probably can’t talk, but the best houses I have seen and built balance textures with 3d objects and compromise slightly on prim saving. that really all depends on what type architecture you are going for. if I was building a georgian or gambrel colonial I would certainly do up fully prim'ed window casements with propper rondels and all that. however, my current home is a post-modern design with deliberately minimalist hardware going for a clean line look. I found it wastefull to use 3 extra prims for black "glass brackets" when I could simply add a black outline to the middle of my texture to frame the hole I put in it, then filled the hole with a 51% transparent glass object (after several rounds of tinkering, I have found 51% to be the ideal window glass). but that also leads to another point. The best way to save on prims and still have a really good looking build is to select the right style. it is true you can build a colonial on first land by useing extensive texturing, but it looks textured and 2D. but, if you build cubist (Frank lloyd Wright and all that) you can get a very nice looking structure using large prims with simple angles and simple textures. You can achieve a very nice 3D/realistic look this way. anyone can build, the real trick is design. |
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Phoenix Psaltery
Ninja Wizard
Join date: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 2,599
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04-26-2006 10:24
From: Osgeld Barmy a full Sim can handle 16k prims (with some change) 15,000 prims per sim, actually, IIRC. P2 |
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Pratyeka Muromachi
Meditating Avatar
Join date: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 642
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04-26-2006 11:35
From: Niko Xingjian I found the opposite to be true for me! building a decent home on first land taught me alot of building techniques and about what works best. By having tight restrictions on what I can do I was forced to learn clever ways of getting the most out of each prim, as well as the value of good texturing! for instance, ive seen alot of people who use 5 or 6 prims to build a flat section of wall just to get a nice looking window in it. by adding a window frame to your texture you can do it with 2 prims (or one if you dont care about glass!).
I recently upgraded from first land to a nice 1024 plot with a 417 prim limit (im not sure why I get 4x the prims on 2x the land, but I am not gonna complain), and found that the house I built for it, even with some fairly complex furniture (hot tubs are real prim eaters) I still only top out around 200, thanks to the fact that I spent my learning time having to be frugal!
If you start out learning to build in sandboxes, its easy to very quickly get the hang of building wild, complex, and very cool looking objects... that use hundreds of prims and simply would never fit on a reasonable size plot of land.
Now, I think sandboxes are wonderfull... I do most of my test building there now, so that I dont have limits, can have six copies of something on the ground at once (dont ask), and so on. they are especially good for vehicle work, where you can have hundreds of prims in an object 3x2x2m in size.- You misunderstood me. I'm pointing to the fact that some want to go direct into building houses or whatever before learning the interface and how to manipulate prims. Before nailing two piece of wood, learn what a hammer is, that's what I'm trying to say.
_____________________
gone to Openlife Grid and OpenSim standalone, your very own sim on your PC, 45,000 prims, huge prims at will up to 100m, yes, run your own grid on your PC, FOR FREE!
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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04-26-2006 15:41
From: Niko Xingjian but, if you build cubist (Frank lloyd Wright and all that) you can get a very nice looking structure using large prims with simple angles and simple textures. You can achieve a very nice 3D/realistic look this way.
anyone can build, the real trick is design. Indeed. And Frank Lloyd Wright's designes are not near so simple that you can really duplicate them without a lot of fiddly prims... the genius in them is how they look simple, not how simple they are. |
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Osgeld Barmy
Registered User
Join date: 22 Mar 2005
Posts: 3,336
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04-26-2006 17:48
From: Phoenix Psaltery 15,000 prims per sim, actually, IIRC.
P2 my bad |
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Niko Xingjian
Registered User
Join date: 16 Oct 2005
Posts: 34
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04-26-2006 21:34
From: Pratyeka Muromachi You misunderstood me. I'm pointing to the fact that some want to go direct into building houses or whatever before learning the interface and how to manipulate prims. Before nailing two piece of wood, learn what a hammer is, that's what I'm trying to say. ah...yes...I did misunderstand you! I did not realize you were directing that comment at people who had litterally never built before! as first land owning and first house building can come fairly far into your "career" depending on what else you are doing, so it is certainly possible (as was my case) to have experience building/modding without having ever done anything large scale.. but yes, you are right a total noob should be wildly building random junk in sandboxes and taking tutorials so they can figure out how the bloody thing works  |
