Overcoming building frustration

Do you still get frustrated building? What do you do to overcome your frustration and finish a project?

I've been working on a skybox (or it could be a ground home if I added a porch) for a couple of weeks now. I drew a simple sketch and it's pretty much turned out just like I planned, but I'm getting VERY bogged down in minutiae. What to do about a door that wants to be so big the doorknob is level with my head? A zillion textures to line up. Prims that somehow rotate themselves to 180.01 degrees when I know I've set them at 180. A copy of Prim Docker that works exactly half the time - the other half it seems stuck in its Misc tab regardless of what it shows on screen. Window darkening scripts that won't link to their controllers. Textures mysteriously setting themselves to shiny. It never seems to end. But I am soooo close! I would have bought a prefab but couldn't find one that appealed to me.

So you folks do this for fun? I would like to get on with the real reason I wanted a skybox - decorating! It doesn't help that an 8192 sq. m. beautiful gargantumansion sprang up overnight right next door to dwarf my little sculptie Stonehenge garden into Spinal Tap territory. Is it time to take a break or work my way through it?

Thanks. -- KC

i would take a break
if building gets so frustrating its not fun anymore take a break

what sort of skyhome are you looking for?
size?
style?
what do you want with it?

im a great shopper and good at finding things people want

Don’t give up, you obviously enjoy building so it sounds as if buying a prefab would not satisfy the urge I build for fun and I too have suffered what seemed like endless frustrations and I’ve found that having two (or more) projects on the go helps no end, so when I reach an apparent impasse I can go away and do something else for a while.
I will happily share my small store of knowledge so feel free to IM me in-world with specific problems.

If you've got the building bug, giving up is probably not going to work
Soooooo.... i'd say: Take a break.... go to a beach, listen to some music, chat with friends, whatever you do for relaxation really.
If it's giving you a headache, give it and yourself a rest, then go back to it later with fresh energy ) This was advice given to me by a friend, and it's proven wery good advice, well for me anyways. Oh and don't forget to have fun )))

Also don't be a perfectionist, the small inconsistencies you are focused on are probably not even noticeable to your visitors. Although a door knob at eye level is something a little out of whack lol!

Go ahead move in even if it's not 'finished' it's not going anywhere so you can always mod and change things as you move in and decorate. You can use your decorating to hide parts of the build that might not be perfect.

Go see a live show or a poetry reading - socialize, buy some crazy spell casting system for kicks. Remember that there are lots of people who have fun in SL who don't build at all!

I don't use any builders tools, the SL tools are fine for my needs. prims do move and rotate sometimes too.

And here's a biggie for building in general - look at the number of residents logged on at the time you are building 45k+ = bad building experience 30k and lower you will have a much better time of it. I assume you are building your 'skybox' in the sky, The lower lag at 300m + really helps too.

-whyroc

The prim rotation 180.0x problem can usually be solved by reducing the x,y,z rotation to that which is only necessary.

All good answers. Thank you. I believe I'll take a break -- and also tell myself the thing looks at least as cool or cooler than the skyboxes I didn't want to buy.

Also most of the prefabs have doorknobs at my eye level -- I am only 5'8" or so, not one of the 7' giants most other avs are.

Think I'll buy myself a new outfit, then start a new project.

--KC

I have about four small projects, along with one big one going on. As any given one of them gets too frustrating, or needs a step back and putting on hold for ideas, I work on the others. Or I go do something fun in SL, like shopping or visiting friends.

Don't forget that all the little imperfections that we see in our builds are invisible to pretty much everyone except other (better) builders, that if you persist you'll get better and, hey, this is SL, we don't need doorknobs!
Good luck and happy building.

Every one is right on with the take a break. When SL acts up and I start to get frustrated, I usually go do something else. Sometimes I move into Photo Shop, and make the textures for my build, or I go and try to make a sculpt that will reduce the prims in my build.

Having a couple projects is good, if you have the prims available.

ive found that the prim rotation bug occurs when the prims are rotated past thier prime.. try an move the prims to another rotation.. that always works with me. (a zero rotation prims is optimal

The one that annoys me the most is when you resize an individual prim in a linkset and it springs back to its previous size, until you unlink and relink it.

Broccoli

Me too, I wind up setting the value manually, even linked it sticks...

It takes a while to figure out some tricks, like snapping the first rezzed object on all 3 planes, and then you can use snap to line up other prims exactly (at least some of the time). It does sound like burnout though... taking a break helps alot, so does sleeping on a problem. I find alot of times when I have an issue I can't seem to deal with for whatever reason, I sleep on it, and the next time I tackle it, I magically come up with the solution. This works for scripting as well

Or when you know that a set of prims should link, but they won't. Then you realize that it has one bad prim in it, make a copy of the set, and the new copied set links just fine...

Well, you folks were right. Thank you! A couple days break did the trick. The actual building is done, and the problems solved. It was the little problems that forced some creative solutions out of me, I think. Who knows? If I can design a couple more of these things and really take my time and do it well, maybe I can offer them for sale.

I am now well into decorating, room by room. Of course I'm running into the same problem with furniture that I did with the prefab houses -- I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for. So I'm building some of that too. I see an insidious trend here.
--KC

I'm having the exact same problems. Had the shell of a house near perfect many times, only to find just one prim at .650 rotation. *growls* Then prim docker, changes shades of textures on me..... Finally after a week, get almost near done. Spend a few days hunting out the EXACT textures I want for my window prims. Find a glorious script that goes into a controller for 3 views, Open, Shade, closed. But then have to wait days because search isnt working to go texture hunting..... find the texture I want on SlX instead. (its okay, it'll do, but not great) Get it all set up and then I'm standing in front of my build and all of a sudden see the windows changing on me. First to shade, then closed then open, then into reset with the scripters default texture. Next comes the freak out.... after 20 mins of changing them all back... (its a window house, 14 windows!) and realize theres a newbie about 20 meters behind me clicking the windows on me. And pulling up the config menu. *sighs*. Eject... ban... set window controllers to privacy.. done right?

No.. door. door script goes cafloowie on me and rotates into the ground. Fine. Break time... work on new window textures with shutters... New textures just purchased... LOST.. not in inventory!

I need a drink.