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CONTENTS PRIM TORTURE ..........................44 WORKING WITH TINY PRIMS ............50 BUILDING BY THE NUMBERS .............52 TUTORIAL: BUILDING A STAIRCASE ......54 042-057 Chapter 03.
CHAPTER 3 PRIM TORTURE PRIM TORTURE WORKING WITH TINY PRIMS BUILDING BY THE Prim torture is the phrase Second Life builders use to describe the sick, sadistic process of morphing prims into exotic new shapes that even Linden Lab may not have anticipated. The results can be useful, bizarre, artistic, and sometimes utterly paradoxical. This section will expand your understanding of how prims really work and arm you with some tips and tricks to get the most bang from your prim buck.
■ HOLLOW Remember that the Hollow feature works along the path of an extruded 2D shape. This means that for linearly extruded objects a hollow will appear along the z-axis (much like with path cuts), but for radially extruded objects Hollow will hollow out a rounded shape. While most hollow shapes match the extruded 2D shape, you can also hollow out a circle, a square, or a triangle. Figure 3.
CHAPTER 3 Impossible? Not if we torture the prims enough! Create a 10-meter tube and set the Y Hole Size (the hole size on the y-axis) to 0.05, which is the smallest possible value. Now enter a begin (B) twist of 90 and an end (E) twist of 90. I recommend starting at smaller Twist values and working up gradually to 90 so you can see how the prim becomes distorted and begins to spread out.
■ TAPER Figure 3.6: Tapering turns the prism into a mysterious shape with a two-dimensional side. Taper is fairly straightforward with linearly extruded prims. It lets you transform a cylinder into a cone, and a box into pointy box. This is handy, especially when you want to create an obelisk or a monument. But tapering a prism is far more interesting. Let’s try it. Rez a prism and set the begin (B) and end (E) taper values to 0.00. Now slowly increase the B taper value to 1.
CHAPTER 3 Sheared tubes behave much like other radially extruded prims, but you may notice that the tube looks a little odd when Top Shear is applied to it. The top and the bottom seem to have a little distortion in the form of a bump. But when you look inside the prim by doing a path cut of B = 0.250 and E = 0.750 you can plainly see that the distortion is caused by the inside corners of the base 2D rectangle, which do not tilt when shear is applied (Figure 3.8).
The torus is even more interesting with Profile Cut. Doing a profile cut of E = 0.65 will give you a shape with a round base. I like to stretch this shape along the z-axis and use it as a low-prim streetlamp. Now set Hollow to 95 and set Profile Cut to E = 0.55. You’ll start to see an hourglass shape (Figure 3.10), which you can adjust using the Hole Size Y value. Figure 3.
CHAPTER 3 PRIM TORTURE WORKING WITH TINY PRIMS BUILDING BY THE NUMBERS TUTORIAL: BUILDING A STAIRCASE Figure 3.12: Aimee making cute banana curls using revolved, tapered tori. Plywood-colored hair is in fashion this season! Using Revolutions values on a torus is the foundation of an entire Second Life industry known affectionately as Hoochie Hair. To make a single curl of hair, rez a torus, set Revolutions to 4.00, set the X and Y taper to 1.00, and set the skew to about 0.90.
Technically this prim is still 1 centimeter in size, but by using Path Cut and Dimple we got the actual size to half a centimeter for any given side. Figure 3.13 should give you a feel for how much smaller things can get from the 0.01m minimum. Figure 3.13: Three boxes of size 0.5m, 0.010m, and 0.
CHAPTER 3 ■ CONSTRUCTING A DELICATE CHAIN Let’s create the links of a very delicate chain (Figure 3.15). 1. Rez a torus and size it down to 0.010 on all sides. PRIM TORTURE 2. Set Hollow to 95 and set Profile Cut values to B = 0.28 and E = 0.30. We now have a very tiny chain link that is about half a centimeter in diameter, but let’s not stop there. WORKING WITH TINY PRIMS BUILDING BY THE NUMBERS TUTORIAL: BUILDING A STAIRCASE 3. Set the hole size to value X = 0.25 and Y = 0.45.
disrupting the smooth surface. When prims overlap improperly, the textures on the overlapping prims may “flicker” as they fight to decide which texture is on top. When you build by the numbers you use some simple math to position and size your prims perfectly. CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 ■ THE M WORD (MATH) For our first example, we’ll build a 20-meter-long wall. As you know, the prim size limit is 10 meters, so we will have to use two prims. 1. Rez two prims and enter the following size values: X = 10.
CHAPTER 3 PRIM TORTURE WORKING WITH TINY PRIMS BUILDING snap one or more prims to the grid along the x- and y-axis using Tools ▶ Snap Object XY to Grid, or by pressing Shift+X. This can be handy because it works on multiple selected prims, saving you the trouble of having to snap each one individually to the grid. For finer grid control, you can bring up the Grid Options window (Figure 3.16) by pressing the Options button in the Edit window, going to Tools ▶ Grid Options, or pressing Ctrl+Shift+B.
■ BUILDING A SPIRAL STAIRCASE Now let’s make something a little more impressive—a spiral staircase (Figure 3.18). This time we’re going to use a combination of grid-snapping and rotation. 1. Rez a step with the same dimensions as the last step (X = 1.500, Y = 0.400, and Z = 0.050) and again, set Grid Units to 0.300. Figure 3.18: Perfect spiral stairs 2. We now want to link a pivot point into the step.
CHAPTER 3 10. Leave the first step alone (z-axis rotation of zero) and set the Z rotation for the second step to 10.00 degrees. (The next one will be 20.00 degrees, then 30.00, then 40.00, so on and so on.) You should now see an attractive spiral staircase. The next step will be to remove the pivot points. PRIM TORTURE WORKING WITH TINY PRIMS 11. Select all the steps and press Shift+Ctrl+L to unlink them all. 12. Delete all but the first little pivot steps; the rest are no longer needed.
