Property Lines [Level II]

Property Lines [Level II]

Looking at buying or renting and want to know where the parcel starts and ends? Riding a motorcycle and wanting to avoid straying across the sim line?

Drop down the View menu and Select Property Lines. Turn them back off when you're finished.

If you own property, your lines will show in green. So, too, will your sim lines, if you own a simulator. Lines of property owned by others seem to show in red. But there are orange and blue lines, too. For the life of us, we can't figure out their significance?

Anyone?

Workaround For Caspers [Levels I-IV]

Workaround for Caspers [Levels I-IV]

Caspers are avatars who appear to you as clouds of gas. I say TO YOU because they may not be caspered to me. It seems to be largely a client-side problem. This means the problem lies with the software on your computer and not the server at Linden Labs.

Usually caspers resolved into avatars, but not always. Occasionally a cloud of gas will hang around seemingly forever.

There's a workaround when this happens. Go the Edit menu at the top of the screen and select groups. Select a nonactive group and activate it. Then activate the group you just left.

More often than not, casper will be gone.

The above is called a workaround. When the Lindens seem unable or unwilling to fix a problem; some citizen somewhere usually discovers a way to resolve the problem.

A Discussion of Textures [Levels II-III]

Photos: Two textures from the web, texture for upper template of avatar skin.

This article was writtenat the request of WhiteRaven Slade.

A Discussion of Textures [Levels II–III]

 Textures—we all know what they are. They’re images that either wrap around an object in world or appear as particles or make up your skin. Snapshots are really textures and textures are really shapshots. Take a look at that photo you put in your profile. Now think about it wrapping around a sphere. That’s what a texture does.

Without textures, all of Second Life would look like the default plywood. Not bad so far as plywood goes, but plywood can go only so far!

And so Second Life is rich with textures—cloth, wood, metal, terrain, stone, vegetation, building facades, signs, leopard spots, dragon scales and fairy wings—all of which were created by someone.

A few basic textures, like those you can find in the Library in your Inventory—were made by the Lindens. Most, however, were created by people like you and me.

Getting Textures

Second Life is full of free textures, some of which are quite good (and some of which are merely copies of the textures you already have in your Library). You can also find free and almost-free textures on www.XstreetSl.com and www.onrez.com.

There are any number of texture stores where you can buy sets of textures from everything from Egyptian tombs to argyle socks to Victorian doorways, but you can make your own textures as well.

For $10L, you can upload an image from your hard drive—a snapshot you took in Second Life, an image of a buddha you found on the web, or that nice tweed you scanned from last winter’s real life coat. You can paste the texture on a prim, and voila! You have a buddha, or a nice prim tweed skirt.

There’s more to it, of course. Images come in different sizes—and size is important. For that reason it’s handy to set the image size out of world. You can also make the image seamless out of world. Otherwise, you may wind up importing the same image three or four times before you’re satisfied with it. And those 10L charges can add up!

Hint: You can use Google to find free and inexpensive programs to set texture size and make your textures seamless. The free image manipulation program GIMP (www.gimp.org) has a filter which makes textures seamless. The great free image program ifRanview makes it easy to change the density of your images.

Hint: Many designer do preliminary uploading of textures on the beta grid, where importing is free. They import, tweak the original, and re-import until they’re satisfied. The images can’t be moved from beta to the main grid, but it reduces costs when you’re working with multiple textures, since you know the images you’ll be importing will be right the first time.

Texture Size

Images in Second Life come into world with dimensions in powers of two. The minimum size seems to be 32 and the maximum 1024—so the smallest possible texture size is 32 x 32, and the largest is 1024 x 1024. (I hear rumors of 2048 x 2048, but I’ve never seen one).

It’s important to understand that the textures one views take up memory space on video cards, and that the size of an image grows exponentially with a linear increase in size. A 1024x1024 texture takes up as much memory as four 512x512s, and as much memory as 16 256x256 or 64 128x128 or 256 64x64 or 1024 32x32 textures. Sims with small textures, and not too many of them, tend to load quickly. Areas with lots of large textures can take a long time to load. I’m sure you’ve been in shops where the signs were still gray after fifteen minutes!

To be a good citizen—and to improve your OWN Second Life experience—don’t bring textures in world any larger than you have to to keep them sharp. 1024x1024 and 1024x512 textures are necessarily only on the largest builds—huge prims. 256x256 and 512x256 sizes are sufficient for most things, and small objects will work at 32x64 or even 32x32. Particle scripts work best with small textures, which rez quickly. You’re probably familiar with particle scripts with big textures; they’re the ones responsible for that annoying gray fog when someone activates their poofer.

Hint: Whenever possible, reuse the same textures within a setting. Use one single granite texture, for instance, in place of four or six different rock textures.

Texturing a Prim

You can apply a texture to a prim by simply dragging it to the prim from inventory (or from the texture’s image, when it is open) to one side of a prim. Presto, there it is!

Hint: Hold Shift while dragging a texture to a prim, and it will be pasted on all sides of the object.

You can also apply textures by dragging a texture from inventory to the texture window on the Texture tab in edit. Or you can click the texture window and choose a texture from the mini inventory window that will pop up.

For textures to work correctly, you must have full permissions. Otherwise you must drag them to one side of a prim, and the prim will yell in protest. Ouch!

You can put different textures on different sides of a prim (torii have only one side, so of you can get two textures on one, let me know about it!). You can even put a texture on the hollowed-out inside of a prim.

Adjusting Textures

Once applied, you can stretch the x and y dimensions of a texture so only part of it is on a prim face or so it tiles multiple times across the prim face. You can rotate the texture, flip it along the x or y axes, and offset it vertically and horizontally. You can also make it partially or almost totally transparent. And you can do all this on the entire prim, or only on the faces you have selected.

Hint: To make an object completely transparent, you must use a pure alpha texture. You’ll find one in your library. After you’re made it alpha, you’ll then need to use Ctrl-Alt-T (Cmd-Alt-T on the Mac) to see it!

Hint: Here’s how to work on one side of a prim: click the Select Textures box on the General tab in Edit. Then shift click on the prim faces you want to work on. (You can click faces on other prims at the same time. Most handy!)

Hint: Tiling a texture (increasing the texture density to be more than one repeat), will increase its sharpness. Tiling works nicely for stones, fabrics, and wood.

Hint: If you increase texture density too much, your eye will dislike what it sees when there is a grain, as in wood. If you see the repeats and they annoy you, just back down the texture density a bit.

Organizing Your Textures

If you don’t organize the textures in your inventory, you’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed. You can make subfolders for wood, metal, and other categories, and sub-folders within those (Metal > Gold > Patterned).

Textures can soon clutter your inventory, however, and for this reason, most people use inventor organizers. Organizers can be HUD-based (meaning they paste to the inside of your screen) or rezzable (meaning you pull them out on the land). And these are divided into single-frame and multiple-frame organizers.

Single frame organizers are handy for storing textures with limited permissions. Multiple frame organizers can accept only textures will full permissions, but are handy because you can have as many as sixteen categories of objects. (Chey’s Building organizer, for instance, has categories for, among other things, bricks, doors, windows, interior walls, exterior walls, floors, ceiling, and tiles.)

Organizers will not only get thousands of textures out of your inventory; they will help you find the textures you want by letting you view sixteen or so of them at a time. If you do much texturing, an organizer will be worth the price. I use the multi-texture organizer sold by K.R. Engineering. It has worked flawlessly for two years. And it’s copyable, meaning I can have organizers for any number of categories. And I do! I even store my photos in an organizer!

You’ll soon see that textures can transform that plain plywood cube into almost anything you can imagine.

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Notice: Because limited-perm textures are pretty much unusable in Second Life, texture stores sell their wares with full permissions. They are licensed for YOUR USE ONLY. Please support content creators; don’t give their textures to others.

Object Chat Trick! [Level IV]

Object Chat Trick! [Level IV]

Chey discovered a neat little trick when objects chat: they respond to /me pretty much the same way avatars do.

You know the /me trick.

type in Chat /me says hi

And others see "Cheyenne Palisades says hi" instead of "Cheyenne Palisades: says hi"

If you make an object say something, /me will make it say its name in the same way-- and if you make the object's name a blank, it will say only what follows /me.

So, you can have an object say something like "Do not enter!" without its name apeparing.

Try it! Make an object, make a script, and add /me after the opening quotes in the lines with llSay. 

Cool, huh?

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default
{
  state_entry()
  {
  llSay(0, "/me Hello, Avatar!");
  }

  touch_start(integer total_number)
  {
  llSay(0, "/me Touched.");
  }
}

Remove Particles [Level III]

Remove Particles! [Level III)

In Second Life, smoke, mist, rain, fireworks, flame, and other things that aren't solid objects are comprised of particles-- think of them as sort of loose, flying textures.

Particles are produced by scripts that reside in prims.It's important sometimes to be able to turn them off.

If the script in your particle-emitting object doesn't give you a way to turn the particles off (for instance, by touching the prim or saying something like bling off or /bling off or /1 bling off, or if you've deleted the script and the object is still emitting particles, here's some code that will remove the residual particles-- for, you see, once a prim begins to emit particles, it will continue to emit them forever, or until the prim is delited-- unless the particles are turned off.

Please note-- some objects-- usually the ones you purchase, but sometimes freebies-- won't allow you to modify them. If that happens, you may be stuck with the particles. So be sure you can modify the prim's contents before you delete any scripts in your valuable items. If you can make a new script in the prim and if it stays there, you're golden.

So if you have a prim that is blinging, smoking, burning, or otherwise being obnoxious, and if you have permissions to modify it, follow these steps:

1. EDIT the prim.

2. If the particle-emitting script is in a prim that's part of a linked set, check the EDIT LINKED PARTS box in the GENERAL tab and touch the individual prim that is your target. Be sure only that prim is highlighted.

3. Delete the offending script if you're sure you won't need it, or open it by double-clicking and uncheck the RUNNING box at bottom left.

4. Click the CONTENT tab.

5. Choose NEW SCRIPT.

6. Double-click the script to open it.

7. Erase the code that is inside the script.

8. Paste in the code at the bottom of this blog entry. Be sure to select everything within the dashed lines (but not the dashed lines themselves).

9. SAVE the script (and be sure the RUNNING box at bottom left is checked).

10. Name the script something like "Particle Eraser" and drag it to your SCRIPTS folder in inventory. That way you'll have it for later.

As soon as the script runs, the prim will stop making particles. It may take a few seconds for them to dissipate. So...

11. Right click your Particle Eraser script and erase it from the prim. (so it won't consume system resources).

That's it!

-----

// particle erase script

default
{
  state_entry()
  {
   
  llParticleSystem( [] );
  }
}

-----

Getting Rid of Objects When Asset Servers are Down (Level II)

Sometimes Second Life's asset servers get into trouble. When that happens, you can't do much. Teleports are limited, you can't open notecards or scripts, you can't import textures or photographs,  you can't rez objects from inventory, and you can't delete objects on the ground. You zap them, and a minute later they're back, along with a "object returned to the simulator" message. Frustrating!

There's a way to get rid of objects, however. Chey discovered it last night. 

Just turn them temporary. After a minute or so they will disappear. Permanently.

To turn an object temporary, just edit it and select the Object tab. On the left side of the edit box, just below the horizontal row of tabs, check the box that reads Temporary. End of problem.

Be careful with this! If you turn your valued living room set temp, it will disappear permanently, with no warning. You won't find that couch and its cushions in your trash, either. It will just be gone.

It's good as a rule to set ONLY copyable objects to temp. But remember, when you just can't seem to get rid of a prim or linked set of prims, Temp will do the job.

A Clean Palette: How to Prepare Objects for PhotoShop [Level IV]

A Clean Palette:

How to Prepare Objects for PhotoShop [Level IV]

One of the most time-consuming chores in photo manipulation, we are finding, is cutting a figure from its background. there are a number of ways to do it, but they are all a lot of work and all less than perfect.

Here's a way to prep your in-world builds so they will be easy to work with in PhotoShop or GIMP (the free image manipulation program we are learning to use).

Meet Mr. Tiki. Of course, if you have ever ridden our train, you're familiar with him, as our train goes right down his gullet!

In his natural environment, Mr. Tiki is surrounded by sand, water, sky, clouds, palms, and the occasional passing seagull. It's a lot of work to remote all that.

But Chey saved a lot of time by some work in world.

First, she raised him to 300 meters.

Then she used the Advanced (formerly the Client) menu and selected Rendering, and then Types. She clicked on the double bar, which "tore off" the Types menu.

Then she unchecked: Tree, SurfacePatch, Character (so she wouldn't wind up in the picture), Sky, Water, Ground, Grass, Clouds, and Particles. More than she needed, probably, but she figured rather safe than sorry.

Now Mr. Tiki was surrounded by an even black backgound. Chey positioned her camera and got a clean shot. Then she turned the selections back on and closed the Types menu and lowered Mr. Tiki back into position.

In GIMP, it was an easy matter to replace the black with alpha, making a clean image of Mr. Tiki.

So, to summarize, you can put a prim in the air, turn off air, water, trees, particles, avatars, and anything else you need, and get a nice clean photo!

Put Animated GIFs on Your Land [Level IV]

Our new sim, Whimsy (Yes! We have a sim of our own! Dreamland was not big enough for us!), is under construction, and Xubi thought we should have a sign to alert visitors and a hard hat to protect their noggins. So Chey made a Whimsy Hard Hat (free at the empty point), and made an animated sign.

Chey vaguely remembered reading something about bringing animated GIFs into the world, so she did a Google search and found this web site: http://www.peregrinesalon.com/anim/. It converts GIFs into textures that you can import into the world, and gives you the code for a script for animation. Easy to use. See the Whimsy sign and grab a hard hat at the entry point.

-----

Photo: Chey find the hard hat useful when parachuting.

Choose Where You Rez on Startup [Level 1]

Open preferences (CTRL-P) or the bottom selection in the Edit menu at the top of the screen.

In Preferences, be sure the General tab at the left is selected.

Now make sure Show Start Location on Login Screen is checked.

Now from the dropdown menu just above, you can choose to rez. You can select your home or your last location. Or you can type in the name of a region (simulator) and you will rez there. Svarga, for instance, or Tol Eressea.

You can set your home to land you own, or to group land if you are in a group with land holdings. Otherwise you're limited to certain welcome areas.

Now, if you're homeless, you have the power to rez somewhere other than that griefer-infested infohub.

Don't IdleYour Life Away [Level 2]

Tired of going to the fridge for another Sam Adams and coming back to find your avie logged off?

You can buy anti-idlers that will keep you online overnight, but there's a permanent fix. Open the Client menu.

If you don't see a Client menu at the top of the screen, CTRL-ALT-D (PC) or CTRL-OPT-D (Mac) will toggle it on.

Open Client (some the newest viewers have replaced Client with a menu called ADVANCED).

Open the Character sub-menu.

Open the Character Tests sub-sub-menu and be sure Go Away / AFK When Idle is unchecked.

That's all there is to it?

So if it's so simple, why is this a level 2 tip?

Because we used the computer geek word toggle!

Suppress the Typing Animation [Level 2]

Xubi likes the typing animation, she says, becauase it lets you know when another avatar is preparing to say something in Chat.

Chey hates it because the thinks typing in the air makes her avatar look like it is putting quote marks around everything.

You can buy typing animations that replace the default typing anim with laptop animations or particle effects, and some animations suppress the typing anim; if you put the latter in your AO, you will not type, so long as the AO is on. Which it often won't be.

With our special investigative powers, we have figured out how to permanently suppress the typing animation! Woo hoo!

Go to the Client menu and select DEBUG SETTINGS (if you have no CLIENT menu at the top of your screen, CTRL-ALT D on the PC and CMD-ALT-D on the Mac).

Click on the little down arrow and scroll down to PlayTypingAnim and set it to FALSE.

Done.

No more typing animation, even after relog.

If you want to turn it back on, just reset it to True.

Does Your Sim Have Class? [Level 2]

Our home sim of Forsaken is laggy these days. We’re been suspecting Linden Lab swapped servers on us, and, indeed, they did! We’re running on a crappy Class IV box, which smokes and throws sparks on its rack at the server farm in San Francisco.

Server farm! Doesn’t it just fill you with images of crops in long rows, ripening in the California sun?

If that were the case, Forsaken’s little Class IV, with proper fertilizing, weeding, and watering, would one day grow up to be a fast Class V, and Kitto Flora’s little steam train would run happily around Pele all day long instead of requiring us to update the “Accident-Free Since…” sign hourly. Sigh.

Chey called Kitto out last weekend to look at another of his creations, a way-cool monorail. It had been behaving badly. Kitto fixed the problem, but told Chey Forsaken was running way slow.

“Prove it!” she said. No, she didn’t. She knew it in her heart.

Kitto told Chey one problem was that Forsaken was running on a Class IV server.

“How can you tell?” she asked, and he told her.

And she told Xubi, and now we are telling you.

You must promise not to ever ever ever tell anyone else.

Just kidding. It’s no big secret, it was just unknown to us.

Go to the HELP menu at the top of the screen and select About Second Life.

The fourth line (counting the blank third line) reads, on our screens, something like this:


sim330.ani.lindenlab(64.154.221.15:13006)


Sim330 is the number of the server on which Forsaken lives. It was the 330th box placed by Linden Lab.

Kitto told Chey that numbers over 1000 are most likely Class Vs servers, and numbers below 1000 Class IV. (Class III servers have all been retired).

So if your sim is laggy, it may be because it’s on an older, slower server.

Kitto told Chey sim owners can upgrade from Class IV to Class V servers for a fee. But mean old Anshe Chung hasn’t done that yet. She’s too busy counting her Lindens. Reminds us of a virtual Scrooge McDuck. But then again, old Scrooge was virtual in the first place, wasn’t he?

OMG. Xubi! I’m so sorry! You didn’t know?

Chey's Posts on Graphics and Audio

Cheyenne has posted two articles, one on the difference a good video card can make, and one (after a rant by a guest author) that talks about sounds and how they can can increase the level of your immersion in Second Life. She will soon add a post about local lights.

You can view the posts in question by clicking on the links.

Fly in No Fly Zones [Level 4]

We JUST discovered a way to fly in zones designated no-fly!

We love the Paris 1900 sims, but let's face it, they're huge and despite the fact that you materialize in a Metro station there's no public transportation. It takes forever to walk anywhere, and running is so undignified.

So go to the Client menu and make sure View Admin Options has an X by it (or toggle View Admin Options on and off with CTRL-ALT-V).

That's all there is to it!

Oh-oh! Maybe not! Don't have a CLIENT menu at the top of your screen? CTRL-ALT-D switches (toggles) it on and off.

View Admin Options does other neat things, the nature of which we are working on fiendisly in our supersecret Tweaktocracy laboratories.

It seems you can offer teleport to people with whom you are not friends. Woo-hoo!

And when you look at an avie's profile, you'll see four options you haven't seen before: Freeze, Unfreeze, and CSR.

You have to have land perms to freeze or unfreeze an avatar. We're not sure about kicking (although there are a LOT of avie's we'd like to kick!) But CSR plugs us into a web-based databse which requires a password we don't have.

Enjoy, and if you figure out something more about View Admin Options, IM Exuberance Lafleur or Cheyenne Palisades, please, and tell us.

And be careful flying in no fly zones. Sim owners might not like it. If you get caught, you didn't learn how here. No, no, no, no no.

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Photo: Chey and Xubi circumventing high-tech security device (a huge prim) and breaking into the Moulin Rouge at Paris 1900.

Here, Primmy, Primmy: Finding Lost Objects [Levels 1-4]

Some things in Second Life are invisible—but there are tools you can use to see them!

HIGHLIGHT TRANSPARENT

Level 1

Hit the CTRL-ALT-T keys (CMD-ALT-T on the Mac) simultaneously and invisible things will become visible. You will see transparent (alpha) textures, particles, and other things that are ordinarily hidden from view. Like ghosts (just kidding). They will show in red; if there are a lot of invisibles, you may be looking at the world through a red haze.

Hitting CTRL-ALT-T again will turn off HIGHLIGHT TRANSPARENT. (This is called a toggle because it works like a light switch: toggle on, toggle off, toggle on, toggle off.)

HIGHLIGHT TRANSPARENT is handy for finding lost objects (ever rez something and lose it from inventory, hear that rez sound but couldn’t find it? Chances are it’s there, just out of sight and reducing your prim count. Click on items hidden in the red fog and look at their names until you find the one you are looking for.

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Sidebar

Chey’s Funny Highlight Transparent Story

Just about a year ago, when Cheyenne was still new to Second Life, a particularly obnoxious neighbor agreed to sell her his 5k plot. She found herself standing on the property with the neighbor and a Dreamland agent, negotiating the deal.

Somehow, Chey had accidentally hit the key combination that turned on Highlight Transparent. As she was standing there conducting business, her neighbor’s certain Xcite! body part was clearly erect and visible, and she could not, despite frantic IMs to Exuberance, manage to turn it off. She was laughing so hard she was barely able to hit the Pay button to complete the deal.

You can read about it here.

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A Word to the Wise

When created, very object is named, uh, Object. It’s wise to change that to a distinct name, and the sooner the better! That will make it easier to identity when you relocate it—and if worse comes to worst and you go on a serious prim hunt with one of Second Life’s many prim finder gadgets, the prim finder will be looking for Xubi’s Mechanical Robotic Extensible Steam-Powered Replacement Right Arm and not one object named Object in a field of hundreds with the same name.

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Objects Hiding In Contents of Other Objects

Level 2

Golly gee, Chey and Xubi, I used Highlight Transparent, but my object didn’t turn up. Whatever can I do?

Glad you asked, grasshopper. And that’s Xubi and Chey. Read on.

Occasionally (and we’re not quite sure how), an object will, instead of rezzing, be placed in the contents of another object. Floors are especially bad about this. So when we lose an object and it doesn’t show with Highlight Transparent, we take a quick look in the contents of the prim or prims on which the lost object was rezzed.

To do that, open the EDIT menu on the objects nearby the place of rezzing. Click the tab that reads CONTENTS, and see if your object is there. With luck, it may be!

It has happened to us!

If you find your object, drag it back into your inventory. You can then re-rez it.

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Objects Hiding Inside the Physical Space of Another Object

Level 3

Every move a picture close to a wall, only to have it disappear inside? Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

If your lost object is still selected in Edit, you may be able to rescue it by dragging it to a new location. But what if you’ve lost focus on the object? It’s stuck inside that stupid wall, and you just can’t get to it to move it!

In most cases your object will not be inside the wall’s contents; it will merely be inside the physical space of the wall.

One way to retrieve your lost object is to simply move the wall—even if it’s the wall of an entire house! With the wall out of your way you can grab your lost prim and move it into the clear. Then you can put the wall back in place.

Second Life’s Undo function makes this easy. When you want the wall back in place, simply select it by right clicking and choosding Edit, and then choosing Undo. It should snap back in position.

Hint: if Undo doesn’t work, be sure the focus is on the object. We usually just close and reopen Edit.

Chey distrusts Undo, so she moves objects a specified number of meters in one direction or another—usually 10 meters higher; she simply adds 10 meters to the Z position. When she has retrieved her lost prims, she lowers the object back into place by subtracting 10 meters. Be careful, though; if you mistype the position, your object may wind up anywhere between 0 and 770 meters! For this reason, Chey has learned not to hit Enter after changing the Z position. Instead, she just clicks somewhere else in the Edit menu. If she has made a mistake, she may be able to get the object back by typing its original position in the Z field.

Oh, but great sages, what if the object my prim is trapped inside doesn’t belong to me? What can I do about THAT?

If you know the object’s owner personally, he or she will come and move it for you. If you don’t, you can IM the owner and ask. Most people in Second Life try to be helpful. You will find the owner’s name in Edit, General tab.

Many landowners have their parcels set to autoreturn the objects of others. If so, you will sooner or later get a message that your object has been returned to your Lost and Found folder in inventory..

There IS another option. It’s a Level 3 technique, maybe even Level 4, but we will reveal it now. You may thank us with everlasting reverence and loyalty.

You can use Camera Control to manipulate your view so your camera is inside the physical space of object that has trapped yours. If you can manage that, you will see and can select your object. Once selected, you can drag it to safety.

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Select by Surround

Level 3

If your object is still lost, there yet hope. Go to the Tools menu and turn on Select by Surround. Also turn on Select Only My Objects. Click on an object and then hold Shift down and draw a box around it. This will show all your objects inside the box’s boundaries. If you see your lost prim, right click and select it and you can rescue it.

Be careful, though, and make sure only the desired prims are selected; otherwise you’ll move everything that is selected.

We’ve done that!

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Playing with Rendering

Level 4

If you’re a god or goddess of Second Life, accomplished with camera control and the interface, this may be the technique for you!

Think your object may be underground? Go to the Client Menu, Rendering Submenu, Types SubSubmenu, and turn off Ground. The terrain will disappear and you can see what, if anything, is under it.

If Highlight Transparent isn’t working because you’re near a waterfall, fountain, or smokestack, turn off Particles (same submenu). Most of the red haze will disappear and you can more easily see your object.

You can also turn on Wireframe, which will reduce the entire world to a colorful set of outlines. Perhaps you can spot your object that way.

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So adieu for now, and good luck with that lost prim!

Curing Cubitis: A Basic Building TIp [Level 2]

The ubiquitous prim... A .5 x .5 x .5 meter plywood box.

Don’t you get tired of cubes?

Well, we at Tweaktocracy have declared independence form the cube. We have said NO to cubitis!

Xubi in particular was afflicted with cubitis. She rezzed cubes she didn’t need and, not yet knowing how to rename or delete them, she took them into inventory. To this day, she still pulls the occasional .5 x .5 x .5 cube named Object from her inventory.

So what should you do when you rez a cube when you were trying for a sphere or a cylinder or a torus? What if you aren’t even sure which shape you DO want?

Just go to the Object tab in the Edit menu and open the dropdown Building Block Type. There, you can change that ugly cube into a saucy cylinder, scrumptious sphere, or tantalizing torus—or to a ring, tube, or prism. You can even make it into a sculpted prim. In fact, this is the ONLY way to make a sculpty. Once you’ve selected the sculpted type, all you need do is drag a texture into the box that will appear in the space below the heading Building Block type.

So remember, to change the basic shape of a prim, select EDIT > OBJECT TAB > BUILDING BLOCK> TYPE > THE SHAPE YOU WANT.

And you need never be afflicted with cubitis again.

Turning off the Typing Animation [Level 3]

Photo: Chey and Pam Havercamp. Chey has the typing animation suppressed.

(Our Thanks to Peter Stindberg for his link to Torley Linden's Blog)

Some people like the typing animation. Some don't.

Xubi likes it because it lets her know when others are about to say something. It helps the social pacing, she says.

Chey doesn't like it because it makes her look slightly less fabulous.

You will of course make up your own mind. But here's how to do it if you so choose.

Press CTRL-ALT-D (OPT-CTRL-D on Mac). This will open the Options menu.

Go to Debug submenu and type in PlayTypingAnim. Set it to FALSE. You're done.

BUT See Torley Linden's tip on this here. There's a great Torley video associated with it. Just click on the video and it will play for you.

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p.s. Some gestures override the typing menu. You can stuff your animation overrider with them and you won't type.