10 Essential Building Habits that make your Second Life easier!

Hello Fellow Builders!

I know it's been a while and much has happened - in fact, I had this entry sitting in my drafts for more than a year. Omg! But now I got it done and I can finally share it with you!  💪

 

During all the building I did, I have developed certain habits that helped me in my workflow. Some of them, I learned from other builders, others just came naturally with the process. But what all of them have in common is that they make your life as a builder so much easier. So just in case you might not know them, I list them here for you. 

And without further ado, let's dive into it!

 

1. Name your prims

Do you also just start building when you have an idea?
Ikr, it's so easy: something pops into your mind, you build it, texture it, link it and script it and then you pick it up without a second thought.
Then you want to rezz it, or pass it on to someone, and you look into your objects folder and there it is: "Objects" all over the place! But which one of them now is your carefully crafted build?

You can easily avoid this by naming your prims right from the start. When you rezz your first prim, give it the name of your project. It doesn't really matter which name you pick, as long as you can associate it with your current build.

When your project gets bigger and more complicated, try and name prims similarly which belong together.
For example, if you build a cave with plants and waterfalls, you could name the waterfalls "Waterfall 1 - top layer", Waterfall 1 - bottom layer", the plants "Plant 1 - inside", "Plant 2 - inside", Plant 1 - outside" and the cave prims "Cave - Roof", "Cave - Wall 1" and so on.
These are just examples, of course. Name your prims however you want, but do name them.

This way, you have a much better overview and you will have it a lot easier to find the right prims when scrolling through a linkset.

When you're done with your project and everything is linked and saved, you still can rename your build to the name you want to give your finished project. 

 

2. Always have a spare prim to shift-copy

Those who have attended my classes know that I often start a class with: 

"Rezz a prim and shift-copy it up along the blue arrow.  Name the upper copy 'Next Prim'."

Then I continue with the lower prim and start the build. The "Next Prim" stays above the build and gets shift-copied down until we don't need any more prims.

Now why am I doing this?
The answer is very easy: I keep a spare prim right in the center of the build.
Whenever I need a new prim, I have it right there and it's already adjusted perfectly in case you need a centered prim. I can also already give a property, for example set it to the Physics Shape Type "Convex Hull" in case I build a mixed linkset with mesh pieces.

3. Create an own folder for your project

Especially when it's going to be a bigger project, you want to have all your assets in a special project folder. Create subfolders for textures, sculpts, mesh objects, scripts and so on. Copy the stuff you need into them, so you have everything right at hand and don't have to search your inventory all the time.

When you develop your project, you probably have a certain style or texture scheme for your entire project. Just imagine you'd have to dive into the depth of your inventory 20 times for this special texture whenever you make a new prim...  you will be happy to have all things in one place, it will save you so much time.

After your project is done, you can either delete all the subfolders or pack them up in boxes if you want to keep things together. This way, you keep everything organized and save your inventory from flowing over.

 Oh, and you can of course nest boxes, too. 👍

 

 

 

4. Log your progress

During your building process, you might want to save things before making major changes.The easiest way to do this is to just take a copy of the build (or the script) into your inventory.
The disadvantage is, of course, that in time, several versions of the project will pile up in your inventory and you might soon lose the overview of which one is what.

 To avoid that, you can either name them differently, like "Cave", "Cave with Water", "Cave with water & Plants" - or your give them version numbers, like "Cave 1.0", "Cave 1.1", "Cave 1.3".
If you make a major change, just change your version number to "Cave 2.0" and go from there.

This way, you will always have a full development log in your inventory and can easily go back to a previous step without having to search for ages. When your build is done, you can either delete previous versions and only keep the last one (if you're sure you won't be needing them anymore) or you can box them up to save room in your inventory.

Honestly, for me, as soon as I have deleted that previous version I was so sure of that I'll never need it again, I end up rebuilding it, because I find something I still have to fix or change. So yes, I keep all the versions - no matter how many they are - until I'm done with the build.

5. Restore to Last Position

So when we have to re-rezz to fix stuff, our viewer gives us a great option: Restore to Last Position!

Whenever you pick up a prim, it's last position in the world gets stored and if you are somewhat close to the last position the prim had (same sim, same parcel), this will bring it back to the spot where it was before. 

This works for a single object as well as for linked or soft-linked objects.

 

There is one downside to it though: it only works if the parcel you're in includes the <0,0,0> coordinate of the sim. When you build on a big sandbox, it's usually no problem as they mostly have the entire sim dedicated to the sandbox, so the 0-spot is included.  

When you're on private land, like your own parcel, and you don't have rezz rights on that spot, this trick might not help you. In that case, I recommend to put things into a rezzer as soon as possible, especially when you know it's going to be a bigger project. 

You can still easily exchange the linksets in the rezzer, just pick them up and replace them in the box. If you don't change the root prim during the building process, you don't even have to record the position again.

6. Log your Rezzer's Channel Numbers 

Talking about rezzers... whenever you make a new project using a rezzer, you want to create a new channel number for each of your projects.  After having done that a few times - at least if you are as disorganized as I am - you'll soon hit the point where you stand there and wonder if you have used this channel number already or not. 

 

 

So, the easiest thing you can do is to keep a notecard where you log all the channel numbers that you used and what builds you used them for. I keep this notecard in the folder with my rezzer system and update it as soon as I use it for a new build. Easy-peasy.

 

 

 

 

 

7. Seat your avatar

Does this happen to you too? You move your camera around your build and try to come close to a certain point and - wham! Your avatar makes a movement - possibly with the AO still on - and runs right into your view. Or you select another prim in edit mode and the avi turns into it's direction, waving it's fancy flexi hair all over your screen. Well, in one or another way, we all know this problem, right?

So yes, we want to restrain our avatars when we're building. Tie them down! No more dancing around in our sandbox, no more walking into our screens, no more avatar footprints in our fresh concrete! NO SIR!

And guess what? All we need is a simple wooden box. No scripts, no animations, no fancy textures, no mesh. Nothing is required other than a simple SL default prim. Rezz the prim, right click on it and sit. Problem solved. And the best thing of it? If your avi then still is in the way, you don't even need to go out of edit mode. You just select the box and move it out of the way, with avi and everything. 

Of course, as builders, we might feel that a simple box isn't enough. Yes, go for it. Create that fancy building seat you always wanted to have. Make a throne. A great villain chair. Or a hammock. A carpet with a waterpipe. Whatever suits you. As long as your avatar can sit on it, it's perfect! 

 

 

8. Use your camera

Now as we have our avatar seated: Learn to use your camera. We can't walk around our build to see it from all sides (and we don't want to either!). Instead, we want to use our camera independently to see our build from all sides, quickly zoom in and out, orbit around it and so on. 

Nothing does that easier for us than our keyboard camera controls. Essentially, this is the ALT-key and the left mouse button. Hold them both down and move the mouse... you'll soon get the hang of it. 😎 

What, you think there's more to it than just that? Ok, well, yes, there is - a little, maybe.  I'm going to make a tutorial for this soon. In the meantime, here you find the official description of the SL camera controls. 

9. Use your keyboard shortcuts

We all know CTRL+Z to undo the last step. It's one of the mightiest spells in the book and it works almost everywhere. How often do we wish we would have this in RL!

But beyond this, there are so many other shortcuts you probably didn't know. For example, did you know that CTRL+Y would re-do the last step you just undid? I didn't. I actually only very recently learned this.

I admit, when you're very used to working with your mouse, you might feel a bit uncomfortable using keyboard shortcuts. But I promise, you'll get used to them very quickly and they will really enhance your workflow.

I personally tend to move, rotate and scale things into place freely, using the move, scale and rotate tool. I used to go with the mouse all over to the edit window to select the tool I want. It took time, I had to refocus from the build to the edit window and I had to move the mouse away from the pivoting point of my camera. Now, I keep staying in "move" mode and just press CTRL for the rotate tool and CTRL+SHIFT for the scale tool. No need to move the mouse, no need to refocus, no need to break my workflow. It really saves me so much time!

Here's the official list of keyboard shortcuts for the SL viewer.  They also should be seen as hovertips or directly incorporated in your edit window, so you can take them from there, too.

 

10. Remove your scripts

 

Oh how beautiful is the virtual world with scripts. They enhance almost everything. As soon as things move, squeak or bling, they become so much more vivid. That's why we love scripting our stuff. 

 

But did you know that many scripts which cause steady effects on prims can be totally removed without losing the effect? 

Yes, it's true. Many effects, such as sound loops, particles, prim rotations with llTargetOmega, texture animations and several others become prim property when they start and will stick with the object. 

 

Removing such scripts can reduce the script load of a sim significantly. Even if there are only a few removable scripts in your build, every little bit helps. So when you're done with your build, take your time to go over it and remove all unnecessary scripts out of your prims before you pack it up for sale.

 

 

 Well, that's it for today. I hope this list is somewhat helpful and you feel inspired to try some things out. As usual, let me know what you think in the comments and I always love to hear about your current building projects. Have a wonderful time and see you again soon!

Wolf Song

 

Linking prims to mesh? No Problem! - A Guide to mixed Linksets

One of the most notorious myths in Second Life is that you can't link prims and sculpties to mesh objects. It will shoot your Land Impact through the roof and might even crash the sim you're on. 

Well, I do this all the time. 

 

Um, NO, I'm NOT crashing any sims (or at least not so far...)! But I do mixed linksets a lot. In fact, there is hardly any build I make that doesn't contain mesh parts and I still love sculpties, they simply do have their purpose, even in times of mesh.  And I tend to always link as much as I can - it's so much nicer if you have only 1 object to handle instead of several. Even if you put them in a rezzer, the less elements you have in there, the more likely it is to rezz properly. 

 

Of course, like in every myth, there is some truth in it: 

When you link prims and sculpts to mesh objects, there is always the chance to have one or another prim or sculpty that doesn't behave well in the linkset and makes the LI go up higher than expected. But in most cases, this can be avoided by following a few simple rules when linking your mixed build.

 

Example:

This beautiful antique bookstand that we make in the Spell Book Class consists of  5 single elements: the table, the bookstand, the book, the candle and the wick. 

 

So in this build, we have 2 sculpted prims, 2 regular prims and 1 mesh object. 

All 5 objects are linked and together, they add up to an LI of 4. 

So yes, it's perfectly possible. And I would like to encourage you to experiment with it. It is often a big benefit to pick your building tools like a surgeon would pick their instruments. Every tool serves their purpose, none is "better" than the other one. Mesh is great but sometimes, a prim is better, depending on what you 're building. Sometimes a sculpty is the best choice you can make. I promise, we will look at these differences in an extra article soon. 😁

 

By the way, these rules also apply whenever you want to use ALM materials in your prim or sculpty builds. ALM materials (normal and specular textures) can significantly higher your LI when used on prims or sculpts. Like, a simple prim sphere with ALM material textures can end up with 800 LI or more (YES, I know how it sounds but it's TRUE! Check it out here!). 

Now, let's jump right into it and see what we need to know when we want to mix our prims.

Rule #1: Set your prims to Convex Hull

This is the first and foremost rule when you make a mixed linkset: ALWAYS set all prims to Physics Shape Type "Convex Hull" when you plan to link them to mesh.

To do this, select your prim, go to Features Tab and pick "Convex Hull" from the Physics Shape Type menu. 

 

This is absolutely necessary as mixed linksets can really mess up your LI when fortune does not favor you. 

By doing that, you can also already see if your LI is turning out to be a problem. It will show as soon as you have set the Physics Shape Type, so you will already get a clue if it works out or not. 

 

Caveats:

There is one downside of the "Convex Hull" trick though: 

As it will cause SL to use simplified physics, it also will ignore  all holes and hollowed shapes. You probably know this from sculpties: Even if they look as if you could walk through, their physics are one big block, so you have to set them to phantom to be able to use holes that are in it. 

This problem only affects regular prims though. Sculpties ignore all holes anyway, and mesh objects usually ignore holes, too - unless the creator cared to make custom physics for them. The good mesh creators do that when it makes sense - but the vast majority doesn't. 

 

Rule #2: Pick a very simple object as your root prim

Always try and pick either a mesh part or a very simple prim (like a box) as the root prim.

If the mesh part is not made by you, you want to take one of your prims, so it shows your name as the creator of the build. Boxes and cylinders are the simplest prims you can add (boxes are still better than cylinders though).

 

If you have the permission to upload mesh to Second Life (you need to go through an approval process on the  Second Life website), you can also create a simple mesh object for yourself with your name as the creator. In another article, I show you how to make a mesh cube for Second Life with nothing more than your viewer. 

First Troubleshooting:

If you have a very complicated prim, like a heavily tortured torus or a very detailed or big sculpt, it might shoot up your LI even though it's set to "Convex Hull". You usually see that right away on the LI of the object in the edit window - but sometimes, the actual LI needs a bit to update. Peek at the free LI on the land when you change it, this often updates much faster and will give you a direct clue if your LI goes up, down or stays the same.

If you have this troublemaker as a child prim, you can try and set it's physics shape type to "NONE" - that often fixes the problem. 

BUT...
Physics shape type NONE only works on child prims. You can not set the root prim to have no shape. If you try, you will get an error message. It's no big deal though, the rest of the build will still change to Physics Shape Type "None". Just the root prim will stay what is was before. And yes, it will stay whatever it was before, so if it was Physics Shape Type "Prim", it will still be "Prim" and this can potentially cause trouble. 

 

So this is why we want to have a prim with simple physics as the root prim: it won't cause any problems when set to "Convex Hull" and it most likely doesn't affect the linkset too much, even if we don't pay attention and have it set to "Prim". 

Note:

Physics Shape Type "None" also sets the prim to "Phantom".
This is a nice and easy way to set single objects to Phantom in a non-Phantom linkset but it only works if it doesn't mess up your LI.

Sometimes, we want to have "holes" in our builds, e.g. for doors, hallways, etc. 

Holes in prims or mesh are ignored with the simplified physics of "Convex Hull". If we want the object's physics to behave like the object looks, we have to set it to Physics Shape Type "Prim". This can cause serious trouble though, especially if we use complicated prims or ALM materials, so we'll have to be really careful with it.

Sculpted prims will always ignore holes, no matter what. If we have hollow sculpties in our linkset, we will have to make them "Phantom" in one or another way to be able to walk through them.  

In former times, there used to be scripts with a phantom hack, that allowed us to make single prims phantom within a linkset. There still are some that work, but it's often wonky and it requires a script in every prim (though the can be removed without changing the effect - but when you change the linkset, this might break.). 

Physics Shape Type "None" does exactly this thing for us. Of course, we will need objects that defines the physics then or we could just walk through the walls or fall through the floor.

Now... what if our LI is still too high?

 

1.) Search your linkset for another troublemaker - probably there is another prim that you didn't expect to cause high LI.
If in doubt, just set the whole linkset (except for the root prim) to Physics Shape Type NONE and see what happens to your LI.

2.) Check the mesh you use. Some mesh is really badly created or is uploaded with too high LoD settings, so it has a very high LI by itself. Unfortunately, there is no way to fix bad mesh inworld.

3.) Check the scale of your build. The bigger the mesh, the higher the LI and sometimes, it just needs to be a little bit smaller to lower the LI significantly (especially if the LoD of the mesh is very high!).

4.) If the LI is just a little bit higher as you would like it, you can always try to add a few more simple prims or mesh parts, like a few decorations more or something simple that enhances your build. Sometimes, the LI just rounds up and you can add quite a few more prims and still keep the LI.
Just experiment... ;)

5.) If everything fails....
Well, there are cases where there is no further option than to leave things unlinked. In this case, make 1 linkset for all mesh objects and another linkset for prims and sculpties. If you need things to be partially phantom, make a 3rd linkset for all phantom objects. You can then use a rezzer system (like Builders Buddy, for example) to make it easy to rezz your build or keep the linksets soft-linked.

 

 

 

Ok, that was it for today. I hope this helped a bit to demystify mixed linksets. 

I really want to encourage you to experiment with mixed linksets as all SL objects have their purpose and there's no reason to drop helpful tools form your toolbox only because they appear outdated or complicated. 

Please tell me about your experiences in the comments  and also let me know if you have further questions or have some more additional information about it. I would really like to know what you think. 

Have a wonderful day and I'm looking forward to hear from you,

Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: Djembe Drum

 

 

I've been playing the African Djembe drum for many years and when I first saw this prim in one of the classes I attended way back when I was starting to learn building, I was instantly fascinated. Even though it was just an experimental "press this button and see what happens" - moment, this was the very prim I saved because I was sure, someday, I will make a Djembe drum from it. 

 

Well, I gave it a try rather early in my building career, of course, but it never really turned out as "the thing" - mainly because I was lacking adequate textures for it. Now, with all the knowledge I gained about Gimp and much, much time and dedication, I now am able to create good textures and finally could finish my Djembe project. 

 

But hey, even before I made those fancy textures, I still made my Djembe drum and kept it dear, so if you like playing the Djembe as much as I do, here's the settings for the Djembe prim: 

Djembe Prim Settings:

 

Rezz a Tube. 

Object Tab:

Size: x = 0.5, y = 0.4, z = 0.4

Hole Size: x = 1.0, y = 0.5

Profile Cut: B = 0.225, E = 0.93 (Caution: It's PROFILE Cut, not Path Cut!)

 

And ... tadaa.... here's your Djembe prim! 

It has quite some faces to texture and not all of them are easy.  

The top and bottom face, for example, will project the texture in a circle, so it might be a bit tricky to texture them.  There is an easy fix for this though: 

Set the texture mapping of the top and bottom face to "Planar" in texture tab. This will cause the texture to lay flat on the top and bottom face and thus be displayed correctly.

Please do this ONLY for the top an bottom face. The planar setting really only works on totally flat faces. All rounded faces will look horrible with it.

 

If you care to make a cool Djembe texture for it, it's a pretty demanding project but well worth the effort. 

Here is an example how it looks with the textures I made for it: 

Isn't it beautiful? 

Well, as I can't keep my stuff to myself and always have to share the things I'm proud of, you can pick up these texture sets in my Djembe Drum class. I admit, it's not running very often but I keep repeating it. Just keep an eye on the class schedule. I'm looking forward to see you there for a nice drum session, yay!

 

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'm looking forward to hear about your thoughts and projects.

Save the prim! 👍

Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: Horn of a Unicorn

 

Ok, I admit, I'm a girl. A girlish girl. Glitter and unicorns, pixies and fairy tales, crystals and .... well, you get the picture, right? *giggles*

So yeah, there have to be unicorns. Even before animesh times, there had to be unicorns. Even if they consisted of 30 single prims and sculpties and looked rather rough - but there HAD to be unicorns. 

Thankfully, you can make a super beautiful unicorn horn from a simple box in just a few easy steps.

And here is how it's done:

Rezz a Box and name it "Horn". 

Object tab:

Size:  x = 0.1, y = 0.1, z = 1.2

Twist: B = -180, E = 180 (please note the MINUS on B. NO minus on E!)

Taper: x = 1.0, y = 1.0

 

The twist settings can be inverted. This means, you can have the positive value on B and the negative value on E which would make the horn wind in the other direction. 

To get the maximum out of the twist, both ends should twist in different directions (positive & negative values).  

As the horn is basically a pyramid, it has 5 faces to texture which gives a great variety of possibilities.

 

Let me know in the comments how you liked today's project. What are you going to do with it? I would love to hear about your plans and projects. 

Save the prim! 👍

Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: The Leaf

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 4:
Create a leaf from an SL default sphere.
It's easy, just rez a sphere and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

A few years back, I had the idea to create a leaf boat for a fairy theme I was working on.
I searched the entire grid and the marketplace for a sculpted leaf that would fit my purposes - but everything I found either didn't have the right shape for a boat or simply was unaffordable.

After many hours of searching, thinking and discarding, I was almost ready to give up the idea of a leaf boat until I stumbled over this beautiful leaf shape, made from a simple - and even free - sphere. It was absolutely perfect for my boat project, and after that, I used it in different builds many, many times. Now I hope, you will find it just as useful.

And here is how it's done:

Rezz a sphere and name it "Leaf".

Object Tab:  
Size: x = 0.75, y = 0.25, z = 0.5
Path Cut: B = 0.0, E = 0.5
Hollow = 95.0

Twist: B = 180, E = -180 (Please note the MINUS!)

Isn't it beautiful? 😍

Due to the bad torture we did to our poor sphere - especially because of the twist we gave it - the texture faces are a bit tricky though.
The 2 main faces are partially on the inside and partially on the outside of the leaf, while the other faces partially overlap in some spots.

But if you use a seamless texture on all sides, it still looks wonderful.
In this example, I have used a seamless leaf texture I made myself - but you can use any seamless texture you like, just let your imagination run freely.

I hope you liked today's leaf project, please let me know what you think of it in the comments below.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: 4-sided Panel

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 3:
Create a 4-sided panel from an SL default box.
It's easy, just rez a box and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

Sorry guys, I have been a bit busy, so I had this little break in my daily series - but hey, there's life out there and somtimes it gets so catching that you get infected instantly. ;)

But now I'm back and here is our next tortured prim:

The 4-sided Panel

We all know those fancy mesh panels that have several faces for different textures on a flat front.
They are very handy for multi-item-vendors, for example.
But did you know you can make this out of a simple SL default box, too?

Here is how it goes:

Rezz a Box and name it "4-sided Panel".

In the last episode, where I showed you the Nail, I already pointed out how important it is to name your prims, even if it might be a bit effort.

Object Tab:
Size: x = 2.0, y = 0.03, z = 0.5
Path Cut: B = 0.2, E = 0.71
Hollow = 33.0

There is our 4-sided Panel. That was easy, wasn't it?

Texture Tab:
Texturing these 4 faces is a bit more tricky though, that's why I give you an example here.

The faces 6 and 7 are easy, they display the full texture at default setting, so you don't really have to change anything on them.

The faces 1 and 4 are a bit more tricky, so I'll provide some working numbers here:

Face 1 (the green face):
Horizontal Scale = 5.0
Vertical Scale = 1.0

Ok, this one was easy, but the next one is a little bit harder: 

Face 4 (the blue face):
Horizontal Scale = -19.0 (Please note the MINUS!)
Instead of entering the minus, you can also just enter 19.0 and then hit the Mirror button (the little arrow beside the Horizontal Scale), it will have the same effect.
Vertical Scale = 1.0

Horizontal Offset = 0.55
Vertical offset = 0.0

Now there you have your 4-sided panel.
It will be very handy in case you want to make a 1-prim vendor for 4 items for example or just display 4 different textures in your home, shop or club.

Please leave me a line about how you used the 4-sided panel in your projects. Also, if you have suggestions on what you would like me to show you, please leave a comment, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Have a great day and see you all tomorrow for the next tortured prim.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: The Nail

 

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 2:
Create a nail from an SL default tube.
It's easy, just rez a tube and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

Yesterday, when I showed you how to create a basic necklace, I already mentioned the advantages of SL default prims, so we can just go ahead and make our nail.

Instructions:  

Rezz a Tube and name it "Nail".

Note:
It's always helpful to name your prims.
In more complicated builds, you have a better overview and you avoid filling up your inventory with "Objects".
Also, in case you lose a prim, you can define your area search better and find the prim a lot easier.


Object Tab:
Size: x = 0.1, y = 0.1, z = 0.1 (you can adjust the size later to make the nail fit to your project)
Hollow = 75.0

Hole Size: x = 1.0, y = 0.5
Profile Cut: B = 0.5, E = 0.88

And there is your nail, easily made from just one happy prim and ready to be incorporated into your building projects.
Below, you find the parameters of the nail again, shown in the Firestorm edit window:

Thank you for watching and stay tuned, tomorrow there will be the next tortured prim.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song

The Daily Tortured Prim: Basic Necklace

This is a series of beautiful and helpful things you can make out of a simple prim - Volume 1:
Create a basic necklace from an SL default sphere.
It's easy, just rez a sphere and change some parameters - and the best thing of all:
It's free and full perm, so you can do with it whatever you want!

In times of the mesh hype, we often forget about the good old prim.
Of course mesh is powerful, beautiful, detailed and often a smart solution - but sometimes, prims give us a great alternative.

Though they seem obsolete, they do have advantages:
1.) As Second Life's basic building blocks, they are stable and fast to rezz.
2.) They are free!
3.) Everything you make out of prims, is your creation (with your name as the creator!) and you're not bound to any TOS of the original creator. You can sell them, share them and give them away for free and full perm if you wish.

Plus, you can create surprisingly many different shapes from them, simply by changing their parameters. That's what we so lovingly call "prim torturing". 😁
But as there are no real instructions on how to get all the different shapes out of a prim, how do we start? Try and error, of course, always is a solution - but it takes so much time...

So I decided to make a little guide for the most useful shapes you can make out of a simple prim.
There will be a new prim every day, so stay tuned and keep checking in.

Today, we're making a basic necklace. Yes, you can make that out of a prim!

Let's start on it!
Rezz a sphere and name it "Necklace" (or any other name you find suitable - just name it somehow that you know what it is when you have it in your inventory).

Object tab:
Size: x = 0.175, y = 0.175, z = 0.23
Rotation: x = 0.0, y = 270.0, z = 40.0 (the rotation is not really needed but this way, it sits right for us to go on and decorate it with some sort of pendant - or whatever we want to do with it)

Path Cut: B = 0.0, E = 0.5
Hollow = 95.0

Twist: B = -144 (please note the MINUS!), E = 360 (NO minus!)
Dimple: B = 0.088, E = 0.108

And voila: you have a nice necklace that just waits to get attached to your avi. :)

Now have fun decorating the necklace and creating a beautiful piece of jewelry.

Tomorrow, we will make a nail from a tube, so make sure to drop in again and check it out.

Save the prim! 👍
Wolf Song