Tuesday, March 31, 2009

A blogging fo Jo.. building in SL

Jo hasn't been in SL, though she reads this blog apparently. She was a little impatient today as she said there was nothing new. She also wanted me to explain how the water works in Steelhead.
Well I don't think I have a satisfactory answer for the waters of Steelhead but I thought I would just offer a glimpse of the way SL is assembled.
(Waves at Jo... Hi Jo!)
Right!
Everything in SL is made by the people in it. There is no great god of SL that plonks the buildings, trees and shapes the earth in it. The Lindens keep the power turned on, but we decorate the landscape.
Everything in sl is made from a prim
Behold! The humble prim!
A prim can be manipulated. It can be three basic shapes as shown next or the intriguing ring shape called a torus or the baffling sculptured prim. These basic shapes can be manipulated with twists and tapers and dimples. Making these distortions then reflect what it is you are wanting to reproduce is the challenge and fun of it!

Every prim rezzed begins as plain wood coloured. A pattern can then be placed on them with a texture and the texture can be tinted with a colour.
Different faces of the object can be textured with different textures.

At the moment I am building a castle. I have a brown castle texture that I used for Castle Shapinsay but it wasn't fun building two so much the same so I went to TRU and bought a new castle set.
I have tried a few wall papers inside and I am not happy so it looks like I am off to TRU to find something extra.
Jo... in sl.. you can make your own textures and upload them for a couple of cents or you can go to a business in sl and buy them. Soemtimes you can even find them set out as freebies.
First photo is from outside.

Next shows with the draw bridge shut.
And then through the front door with a little Audrey within.
Jo, the doors open and shut by placing a command (script/program) inside the appropriate prim. That's how the actions in sl are achieved.
A simple rotation script looks like...
default
{
state_entry()
{
llTargetOmega(<0,0,1>,PI,1.0);
}

}
But the door script had about 200 lines in it.
There's so much fun to be had tinkering with colour shape and movement in SL building...
or...
you can just play dress ups...
Definitely girl next door, Jo....see? freckles.. piggy tails...

Jo also has a notion that I am some kind of femme fatale.....but I swear not!




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