Advice for a newbie builder.

Hello, I'm fairly new to SL, having been 'born' on 10/21/06 and have decided to try my hand at building. Since I've learned there are many, many tricks I don't know (yet!) I wanted to ask those more experienced than me if they have any tips/tricks/advice they would like to share? I don't expect to learn all of them this way, but enough to give a start at least.

On a side note the first project I'm attempting is a spaceship, and I have a hull section already done although just the bare shell and internal decking. Though I'm probably going to redo it once I get ahold of Cadroe Murphy's BezierGen Beta given its a bit slab sided atm. I can post a few pics of the test mock-up of a few sections joined togeather if anyones interested.

P.s. I already know about MultiMover, just figured I'd mention that.

It's hard to ask for random tips and tricks with no focus... generally they develop out of necessity.

For example: Let's say I want to make a four-sided pyramid which is elongated across its diagonal. Normally, I'd have to rez a prism, sweep its X shear back by 0.25 and then mirror that in a second prim.

BUT, I can accomplish the same feat in a single prim by rezzing a box, setting both tapers to 1.00 and then twisting the Begin by 45 degrees and the End by -45. Wala.

Experimentation with all the parameters is the best way to discover new methods. Keep practicing

If you haven't been there yet, look up the "Ivory tower of Primitives" in Search. It's a totally awesome tutorial about building with prims - self-guided, full of examples, and lots of notecards to take home and study in-depth.

Rez each and every one of the primitive shape types and mess around and get to know every parameter it has. Once you understand what each shape can do, it'll make it easier to visualize what prims you need to approximate your design.

Simple example. Most of the time. a straight sausage is made up of two half spheres and one cylinder.

If its a curved sausage, then you need two half spheres and a donut thats cut short.

First off thanks for the replies, and your right. I should have been more specific in the focus, so in that light are there any tips and advice you all have to offer in regards to larger vehicle builds? Pretty much stuff that would have saved you trouble in your first projects.

Don't build your vehicles too large. There is a possibility that it might unlink when crossing sims, leaving all the prims scattered everywhere. This only applies to physical objects.

If you're using the multi mover, it should be ok.

Thanks, though I've heard even with multimover it could have issues with sim crossings. I don't think its that large however, at least not after hearing of some of the other ships out there. Then agian I could be wrong... so here's a few pics of the model and of a full scale mockup I made of the neck. Also yes I know the textures on the one side are sized wrong, did'nt notice that when I took the pic.

Tips that I've learned with large builds:

1) Start with a mock up - get your shapes and details right before starting the finishing work

2) Don't link anything until you are ready to start your final alignments

3) Align and link in sections - leave yourself a set of sections for final linking. Oftentimes when doing final alignments, I make changes to the design and need to unlink something. If I've linked things in sections, all I have to do is unlink one section, not the entire build. I also do my final texturing at the same time as I do my final alignments, that way I know that when I link a section, it is completely finished.

4) Decide early on which prim will be your root prim. A lot of scripts need a root prim to function, I tend to like to always make the closest, lowest right hand prim, my root prim - keeping this consistant across your builds means you spend less time trying to remember which prim was your root prim.

5) I only do my final link of the complete sections after lots of looking, from all camera angles. Remember to link the section that has your root prim LAST.

I make it a habit to get rid of all the plywood textures on all sides of prims nowadays. Because its so uncool to pan zoom into the ship and seeing that bits of it is made of wood.

Better to do this early as it will be troublesome when its almost done.

Welcome to building Just some advice ... the one forgotten aspect of building, its your texturing. Texturing and prim alignment go hand and hand. Dont fear texturing. Learn how your textures go on different shapes, play with the numbers. Sadly, no one ever teaches proper texturing or scaling to new builders

Thanks. I'v managed to find a nice in-world tutorial for texturing, but thats about it really. As for scaling, that been hit or miss so far. If you know of any good resources for that I'd appreciate it.

if you dont mind, would you let me know where the tutorial you found is?
i'm intrerested in building also...thanks