ModelingSkills

This is a summary, with minor edits, of the topics listed on the Modeling Certification page. Please use the discussion page if you disagree with this list.

The next step is to define the activity or activities to test each of these topics/skills. There are two ways to approach this: one is to create an object that demonstrates the requisite knowledge (or to assemble it from existing components); the other is to take something that is broken (i.e., something with alpha flicker) and ask them to fix it.

Modeling Certification Topics

Prim Basics

Edit Control and basic prim creation and manipulation. Proof that a person can use the edit controls in basic ways. Create, select, move, rotate, copy, delete. Hollow, cut, resize, dimple. Convert one prim type into another. Resize using the edit window, resize by grabbing the 'handles'.

Texture Basics

Choosing colors and textures, aligning textures, transparent/opaque, fullbright. Understanding shiny, bumpmapped, and how alpha affects them. Grid modes.

Linking and unlinking

Manipulating linked groups of prims (individually and as a group) - moving, texturing, coloring, resizing. Deleting a prim in a linkset. Knows that a stable linkset can't be a mix of phantom and real, etc. Understanding parent (root) vs child prims, and how that affects position, rotation, etc. Number and distance issues with linking. The existance of script tools that let you work around those limitations. The prim limit for physics-enabled objects.

(needs topic)

Alpha flicker and techniques to prevent it. Positioning, "blacksiding", Z-fighting, etc. Rendering priority issues.

Attachments

How to make a prim into an attachment. Setting it to an attachment point. Using the edit window's grid mode for attachments. Making a basic one-prim HUD.

Lighting

How to make them, what you can edit, limitations( 6 sources, no shadows ).

Flexi prims

Knowledge of flexi. How to make them, what you can edit, limitations (only some shapes can be flexi, always phantom)

Mini Prims

Making "mini" prims with different techniques - cutting, dimpling, hollowing with a transparent texture on the outside.

Oversized prims

How to do the ones that are technique (like flattening a 10M box to create a 15M plane) and best practices with the huge or mega prims that were introduced thru the Havoc hack (phantom is best, don't make them physical, bounding box and hollowing issues, beware of parcel boundaries).

Texturing techniques

Techniques that influence building. Shadowing, lighting, details, alpha games... texture maps. Textures and lag. Size, tiling, alpha channel issues, formats for upload. Common uses of alpha textures.

Minimizing Prim Count

Techniques to minimize your prim count

Balancing and minimizing lag

Textures, shapes, levels of detail, etc...

Basic script usage

More of a "drop it in and let it run" sort of thing. Animating textures, basic sound use, setting sit targets and assembling pose balls, removing hoverscript and particles, basic doors...

Permissions

Implications of different combinations. Behavior of mixed permission objects & contents. Groups and permissions.