SL Cert - Basic Building
Overview
This page contains the criteria required for a candidate to become certified in building for Second Life.
Audience
Pre-requisites
Basic familiarity with the Second Life platoform and the viewer, including avatar and camera positioning.
Testing Criteria
The building certification levels are as follows:
- Basic - building competently and accurately with simpler primitives;
- Intermediate - building competently and accurately with more complex primitives;
- Advanced - building the best possible quality content at one or more chosen scales.
At all levels the builder is expected to create builds which are free of usability defects and whose documentation, if needed, is clear and comprehensible.
SL Certification Basic Building
Preparing to build
- Know your position coordinates and orientation in the grid;
- Determine the coordinates of the boundaries of the parcel;
- Determine whether you have permission to build in the parcel;
- Determine how many prims you can rez in the parcel.
Prim basics:
- Position, rotate and size a prim precisely by numbers;
- Position, rotate and size a prim precisely using the grid;
- Demonstrate how to place prims within the parcel and precisely on the edge of the parcel;
- Demonstrate complete understanding of prim parameters for box, cylinder, sphere and triangular prism;
- Position and size a prim to exact multiples of its current size;
- Align prims precisely
Texturing basics
- Apply a texture to a prim, and to an individual face of a prim;
- Set textures differently on different faces of a prim;
Building basics
- Link and unlink prims;
- Copy a prim;
SL Certification Intermediate Building
Linked prims: Unlink a single prim from a link set, leaving the others linked; What is the root prim of a link set, how do you define it and how do you see it?; Rotate a link set around the root prim's center; Rotate a link set around the geometric center. Build a hexagon out of 10x10x0.5 triangular prisms without using a calculator.
Texturing: Explain the differences between default and planar; demonstrate how to match textures seamlessly on adjacent prims; set textures to a defined repeat per meter on all faces of a 10mx5mx0.25m box; set textures to a defined repeat per meter on a cylinder; set textures to a defined repeat per meter on the inside of a hollowed box and a hollowed cylinder. Demonstrate how to eliminate texture vibration on precisely overlapping prims.
Prims: Demonstrate complete understanding of all parameters of a tube, torus and ring. Demonstrate flexi prims; Demonstrate and discuss full bright and glow; Demonstrate light.
Alpha sorting: describe how alpha sorting problems manifest and how to minimise their effect.
Permissions: demonstrate how to debug permissions; set a build so that the next owner can mod and copy but not transfer; set a build so the next owner can transfer but not mod or copy; discuss how a build can get to be no transfer; identify no transfer prim in a build that is otherwise transferable; state how to avoid ending up with reduced permission versions of your own builds.
SL Certification Advanced Building
The Advanced Building certification recognizes that an advanced builder has discovered one or more preferred building scales and specialized in certain types of building task. The intent is to reflect competence in the candidate's specialization.
Avatars
Avatar attachments
Including jewelry, huds, gadgets and prim clothing.
Jewelry
Scale: define ideal sizes based on the average size of a female and male avatar. Including the size based on style of jewelry, and position it will be placed on an avatar's body;
Build: Demonstrate the ability to create various shapes of a microprim with the visual dimensions being less than the limits of x 0.010, y 0.010, z 0.010;
Zoom: Discuss the various techniques for zooming in an out of microprims, and what techniques are best untilized during the building process;
Texturing: demonstrate the ability to apply textures that can be viewed clearly, and with reasonable detail from the default camera distance of an avatar;
Style Variations: demonstrate the ability to create diverse styles of jewelry utilizing various prim (or sculpty) shapes, sizes, pathcuts, hollowing, and twist features; Including the ability to incoporate complex geometric designs;
Scripted and Animated Jewelry: Discuss the various tools you can use to add flare, and style to jewelry designs;
Permissions: Discuss the various permissions you can set to your jewelry, and why you would want to choose one set of permissions over another;
HUDs
Scale: define ideal sizes based on various screen resolutions, and the ability to not obstruct a users line of sight while attached;
Build: demonstrate the ability to build an object, attach it as a HUD to a user's viewer screen, and serves a practical purpose;
Practical Purpose: discuss the various types of HUDs used in SL, and the purpose of using a HUD as opposed to an object that is attached to an avatar or set on land;
Scripted HUDs: Discuss the various tools you can use to give a HUD a functional or interactive use, and that makes it practical for attaching to a user's screen;
Gadgets
Scale: Define ideal sizes based on the average size of a female and male avatar. Including the position it will be placed on an avatar's body (if applicable to an avatar). If a standalone gadget placed anywhere other than on an avatar, scale to a practical size that serves its function;
Build: Demonstrate the ability to build a gadget that visually identifies what it is (if applicable to the gadget's use), is realistically scaled to the size of what the gadget is suppose to represent, and attached correctly to an avatar according to the gadget's purpose.
Texturing: demonstrate the ability to apply textures that can be viewed clearly, and with reasonable detail from the default camera distance of an avatar (if worn as an attachment, and applicable to its use);
Practical Purpose: discuss the various types of gadgets used in SL, and the purpose of using a gadget as opposed to a HUD that attaches to your viewer screen;
Scripted Gadgets: Discuss the various tools you can use to give a gadget a functional or interactive use, and that makes it practical for either attaching to an avatar or being used in an alternate fashion.;
Prim Clothing
Scale: Define ideal sizes based on the average size of a female and male avatar. Including the size based on clothing style/purpose, and position it will be placed on an avatar's body;
Build: Demonstrate the ability to create prim clothing attachments that appropriately match with any texturing of clothing worn with attachment. Demonstrate both flexi,and static attachment types, show a full understanding how to attach a prim clothing object that minimizes floating into an avatar's body, or evasively projects from an avatar (unless intentionally designed to do so). Demonstrate knowledge of where to appropriately attach a prim clothing object that moves in correspondence with the body part it is meant to coincide with. (Would you attach an earring to an eye? Why or why not?);
Zoom: Discuss the various techniques for zooming in an out of an attached prim, what is the best practice for modifying an attached prim, and what techniques are best untilized during the building process;
Texturing: demonstrate the ability to apply textures that can be viewed clearly, and with reasonable detail from the default camera distance of an avatar. Including showing precise alignment of textured clothing that the prim object is intended to match with.;
Style Variations: demonstrate the ability to create diverse styles - utilizing various prim (or sculpty) shapes, sizes, pathcuts, hollowing, and twist features; Including the ability to incoporate complex geometric designs;
Scripted and Animated Prim Clothing: Discuss the various tools you can use to add flare, and style to prim clothing designs;
Buildings
Scale: define ideal size ranges for ceiling height, height and width of doors, height of steps and height of safety rails.
Build to texture: discuss building techniques to minimize the time taken to texture a building;
Joins and seams: discuss methods of eliminating visible seams; demonstrate joining walls
Roofs: demonstrate methods of building pitched roofs
Walk-throughs: demonstrate the ability to walk-through a structural build smoothly without losing camera visibility (e.g. narrow passages may cause a camera to jump to another room, etc.)
Furniture
Scale: define ideal sizes for furniture based on the average height and width of a male or female avatar;
Texturing: demonstrate the ability to apply textures to furniture that are seamless, and realistic for the style of furniture being created;
Style Variations: demonstrate the ability to build furniture that requires both seamless (contemporary style) linking, and the use of prims that give the illusion of cushions (or padded) upholstery.
Animating Avatars for Furniture: Discuss the various tools you can use to animate an avatar that interacts with furniture.
Microprims (tiny prims)
Scale: Discuss the various sizes of a microprim, and what function they may serve within Second Life; Discuss why you would not use a microprim for a project - what are some of the problems you may run across when using microprims;
Build: Demonstrate the ability to create various shapes of a microprim with the visual dimensions being less than the limits of x 0.010, y 0.010, z 0.010;
Zoom: Discuss the various techniques for zooming in and out of microprims, and what techniques are best untilized during the building process;
Megaprims
Acceptable use: define the conditions for acceptable use of megaprims.
Megaprim editing: demonstrate which edit operations are and are not possible on megaprims.
Prim transformations: demonstrate how to change the apparent Z dimension of a box megaprim without changing the value of its Z dimension.