KB2/Build Tools

Glow

Glow is a flashy tool for your special effects palette. Increasing this value creates a glowing colored aura around the selected prim; the color is determined by the prim's color. To alter a prim's glow setting while editing it, go to its Texture tab and set a Glow value between 0.0 and 1.0.

Water Glow

You'll also find that the sun and moon can cast dramatic, glowing shimmers on the water!! To see this, you must enable basic shaders in Graphics Preferences.

Video Tutorial

How to build objects

Getting Started

You can create objects only on land that permits building. Land that prohibits object creation is marked Building/Rezzing not allowed: when you are on such a parcel, you will see an icon at the top of your screen, as shown in the figure.

Right-click the ground and choose Create to open the Build window. You can also press Ctrl-4 or select the Build button on your viewer.

In the Build window, choose the type of basic shape (primitive) you wish to create, then click the location inworld where you wish to build it. The shape appears (typically with a resounding "whoosh" sound).

Editing Prims

Use the build window to move, resize, rotate and otherwise manipulate inworld objects.

Moving

When the Position option is selected, click and drag the red/green/blue axes on an object to move it around. Clicking on the red (X), green (Y), and blue (Z) arrows lets you drag the object only along those axes.

Resizing

Hold down Ctrl-Shift to bring up the sizing box or select the Stretch option from the Build window. Click and drag one of the white corner boxes to scale the entire object proportionally. The object's opposite corner will move in the opposite direction if the editor window's Stretch Both Sides option is checked; it will remain in place if the option is unchecked.

Click and drag the red/green/blue box to re-size a prim's length/width/height without changing the other dimensions.

Rotating

Hold down Ctrl to bring up the rotation sphere or select Rotate from the Build window. Click and drag anywhere within the sphere to rotate the object freely along all three axes. Click and drag a specific ring (red/green/blue) to only rotate the object around that axis.

Entering Specific Values

Click on the editor's More button, then select the Object tab. Enter specific X, Y, and Z coordinates to move, re-size, or rotate the object. Changes to these values are always based on the center of the object (the point where the red/green/blue axes meet).

Linking

This makes the linked object act as one coherent piece (though the object prim count is maintained).

With no object selected in the editor, hold down Shift and click on each prim you wish to link together, one at a time. Make the most important prim and/or scripted prim (root) the last one you select (such as the seat of a vehicle).
Then, go to the Tools menu and select Link, or just press Ctrl-L.
You can select Tools->Unlink or press Ctrl-Shift-L to break the object apart.

There are limits to how large a creation you can link together: No single object may have more than 255 prims, and no physics-enabled object may have more than 32 prims.Minimize the Build Window If you would like to keep your build in edit mode, but remove the Build window from view, select the Minimize option at the top of the Build window.

Advanced Edits

The Object tab offers several additional options for editing based on the basic prim shape. Here are some common examples:

Path Cut Begin and End: Takes out a slice of the object along its Z axis. You can specify where the cut starts and finishes.
Hollow: Puts a hollow center in the object starting from the center of the shape and expanding out. You can specify what percentage of the radius is hollow.
Twist Begin and End: Puts twists into the object, warping its shape as well as texture alignment.
Taper: Reduces the size of the top or bottom sides (x or y axes, negative or positive) of the prim.
Top Shear: Shifts (shears/skews) the top surface of the object away from the bottom. You can shift the X and Y axes separately.
Dimple Begin and End: Cuts a hole in a sphere from ring of latitude (you specify the percentage) to the top or bottom of the Z axis. The dimple cuts straight to the origin of the object (leaving a cone-shaped hole).

Linking objects together

Objects in the Second Life virtual world are built out of basic shapes, called primitives. You can link several primitives (prims) together to create one cohesive object. A linked object is, for all intents and purposes, considered one object. It has one name, acts as one object (for example, if physics are enabled on it), and it cannot be broken apart unless you Unlink it yourself. However, a linked object still counts as the sum of its prims when determining your land's object limits. One prim of the object is considered the parent or root link. The name of the parent link is the name of the whole linked object. The inventory of the root prim is, for most purposes, the inventory of the whole object. The center (or origin) of the root prim is the center of the whole object, even if the root prim is not the physical center of the object itself. Vehicle scripts look at the root prim's orientation to determine the "front" of the vehicle. As a result, it is important which prim you select as the root prim.

Linking an object

If you are not in the object Editor already, right-click any object and choose Edit, or open the Editor with Ctrl-3.
Click on any empty area to make sure you do not have any objects selected.
Hold down the Shift key, and click on each prim you want to link together. The last prim you select will be the root prim.
Once you have all the prims selected, open the Tools menu and select Link, or press Ctrl-L.

Linking limitations

A linked object cannot exceed 54 meters in any dimension. Normally a linkset can have up to 256 prims, sitting avatars count as one prim each. Vehicles, or any physics-enabled object, cannot have more than 32 prims (sitting avatars don't count toward the physical prim limit). There is no nesting of linked groups. In other words, if you link a third object to two objects already linked and then unlink them it will not yield two groups. Instead it will yield three.

Linkability Rules

Additional information is available on the Linkability Rules wiki page.

How to use the undo feature

Second Life's Undo is used to revert certain changes to an earlier state. While selecting an object, use Edit menu > Undo, or the much quicker keyboard shortcut of Ctrl-Z.

Watch this video to learn more:

Limitations

Undo doesn't work if you have:

Changed any of the texture settings on an object. (It won't switch back to the previous setting.)
Deleted an object. (It won't bring it back inworld.)
Added contents to an object. (If you drag a no-copy object from Inventory into another object's Contents, selecting Undo won't take it out.)

This isn't all-inclusive; Undo generally doesn't work for most of an object's parameters. Nor does it work if you change outfits, like if you switched shirts and want to swap back to the previous one.

What does Undo work on?

Undo primarily reverts changes made to the position, size, and rotation of an object. For example, if you accidentally move a sofa inside a wall, undo "snaps" it back to where it was last.

If you change the position, size, or rotation of an object using the numerical entry fields in the build tools' Object tab, you must click the object again to give it "focus" and make undo work.

Also:

Undo should work on attachments.

Important: As of 1.13.3, there's a bug which only undoes changes to the root prim on attachments, so this may not work as intended.

Each object has its own independent "chain" of undos which remembers multiple steps.
A nice thing about Second Life's Undo is, since this data is stored on our servers, you should be able revert changes to objects inworld even after relogging. Try it! (But don't depend on this, as it can be unreliable.)
Sometimes Residents get confused about why Undo is grayed out. Remember that you must select an object to undo changes to that object. (You'll see the positioning arrows and a yellow silhouette glow.)

Undo for text You can also use Undo when writing notecards or editing scripts; in this context, it functions similarly to a word processor's, and untypes what you last entered.

Creative uses for Undo As shown in the above video, Undo can help you retrieve objects lost in walls and help you when building too.

Does Linden Lab have plans to add more Undo functionality in the future? Yes, it's on the so-called "Big List of Things to Do", but we do not currently have an estimated time of completion.

Object inventory

Objects inworld have Contents folders accessible by editing the object and selecting the Content tab from the Edit Tool. If you have permission to modify the object, you can:

Drag any objects from your Inventory into the Contents folder.
Copy or move the contents of an object to your Inventory.
Permanently delete objects from the Contents folder.

To add inventory to the object Contents folder:

Right-click the object inworld and choose Edit from the pie menu (or press Ctrl-3 and click on the object).
Open the Editor's Content tab (click More if you can't see it).
Drag the desired item from your Inventory into the Contents folder.

To remove objects from the Contents folder:

Right-click on the object inworld and choose Open from the pie menu. Use one of the following options:

Open your Inventory and drag the contents to your Inventory window.
Click Copy to Inventory.
Click Copy and Wear.

Note: If the contents have copy permissions, a copy is placed in your Inventory. If an object is (no copy), the object will leave the Contents folder and move to your Inventory.

Select one or more objects (Ctrl-select more than one object), right-click and select Delete (or press the Delete key on your keyboard) to remove objects without placing them in your Inventory.

Important: Objects that are not rezzed, but are instead deleted from a Contents folder do not go to your Inventory Trash folder! They are permanently deleted. If the object is (no copy), be aware it will be gone if you select it and press the Delete key!

Note: Unlike your own inventory, an object's inventory cannot have two items with the same name. If you copy an item with the same name as an existing item into the object's inventory, the new object will be renamed; e.g. object, object 1, object 2 etc.

I removed a particle script from an object and the particles are still coming from the object.

Particles are saved as a state with the prim and will continue to emerge from the object even after the particle script is removed from the object's Contents folder. If the particle script was in an object that you want to keep, watch Torley's Particle Editing - Video Tutorial and learn how to create a script to set the particle state to blank. This will stop the particles from exiting the object.

Why are the options in the Edit Tool gray?

The object permissions are set to (no modify) and you are not the creator of the object.
Select Only My Objects is selected in Tools from your Viewer menu and you are not the owner of the object.
Select Only Movable Objects is selected in Tools from your Viewer menu and it is not a movable object.

Tip: You can place objects in a box and sell the box's contents, or place objects to be rezzed (placed inworld) by a script. You can add sounds that will be played, or notecards to distribute to people.

Bump Mapping

Bump mapping is a graphical rendering technique in which a "bump map" texture is applied to the surface of a 3D object in order to give it a richer visual appearance closer to that of the real world. You can apply bump maps to some of your objects in Second Life to create a very stimulating visual experience!

To apply a bump map to an object:

Right-click the object and select Edit.
If the tools window is not already expanded, press the More >> button.
Click the Texture tab.
In the Bumpiness dropdown menu, select a bump map from the list provided. The bump map will be applied over the existing texture on the object, giving the object's surface a more tactile look.

Trivia: The Brightness and Darkness bump maps enhance the bumpiness of the existing texture on the object; if you apply them to an object with no texture, nothing will happen! Try applying the different bump maps to a standard cube and see what happens. The faces on the cubes below have been colored to add perspective:

Additional notes about bump mapping

Bump mapping is a client-side effect; this means that other Residents can turn it on and off under Edit > Preferences >Graphics > Bump Mapping & Shiny. If a Resident has this option turned off, they cannot see bump mapping effects on any objects, so you should not use bump mapping for vital effects on any object.

The nature of Second Life's bump mapping effect means it can be hidden if an invisiprim is placed in front of it, just like regular textures with an alpha channel.

Using the building grid

This video tutorial discusses working with the building grid, which is useful for precision in building. Topics include:

Turning on the grid
Adjusting grid increments
Adjusting grid snap-to increments
Altering grid length
Snapping objects to the grid
Toggling between ruler modes

Temporary objects

Temporary objects are automatically deleted after a short time. This is great for any short-term object you don't intend to keep. Examples include bullets from guns, physics experiments, or test scripts that involve motion or might otherwise get away from you. To make an object Temporary:

Right-click the object and choose Edit. Or press Ctrl-3 and click on the object.
Open the Object tab. Click More if you don't see it.
Click on Temporary.

Note: While temp objects are deleted after a few minutes, they don't count toward your land object or prim limits.

Copy selected

Copy selected allows you to duplicate selected prims and align them adjacent to each other. For example, if you're copying sections of a wall and Shift ⇧-dragging to copy is proving tricky to fine-tune, you may want to take advantage of this alternative.

To understand how this works, let's use a simple example:

Right-click the ground and choose Create on the pie menu.
Click the ground again to rez a generic cube.
From the build tools, select Create (also found in Tools > Select Tool > Create).
Check Keep Selected so we can do the following steps repeatedly.
Click the Copy selected checkbox. For now, check Center and uncheck Rotate.
Now, click on the faces of the cube. Each time you do so, the cube is duplicated, aligned edge-to-edge with a previous cube.

With that explained, here's what the options do:

Center - Copies are centered on the target object, which is useful for neat building in-a-line where you want objects to be aligned along an axis. Otherwise, objects will be placed edge-to-edge, but may be staggered or askew. Note that with curved prims like spheres, this means one of the copy's edges is touching the source, but isn't interpenetrating (overlapping).
Rotate - Copies rotate to match the target object, instead of the original values the source object has. This can make it easier to line up something that's already at an angle, such as a house's slanted roof.

Warning: Copy selected has unfortunate bugs. Rotate doesn't always work correctly and can leave gaps between objects, as described in longtime issue VWR-4471. Also, SVC-4225 describes other alignment issues.

Since this build tool relies on Second Life's 3D space, watch this video to understand more. Note that it dates from an older version of Second Life where the tool was labeled "Copy Selection" instead of "Copy selected", but works the same:

Object owner

To find out who owns a particular object:

Right-click the object and select Edit. The Edit window opens.
Click the General tab.
Locate the listing for Owner.
If a Resident is listed as the owner, click Profile to view the Resident's profile
If (Group Owned) is listed as the owner, the object belongs to a group.

Object creator