This is the basic idea of building in Second Life:
- Create an object of a given shape, most often a cube.
- Change the dimensions of the object in the X, Y, and Z dimensions (west-east, south-north, down-up).
- Move the object where you want it to be.
- Apply a texture to the object to put a pattern or color on its surface.
- Add a script to add some behavior (such as making a door slide open when you touch it).
- Repeat the above to make more than one object or one object with multiple parts.
Steps 2-5 can be done in any order, though for some objects one order will make more sense than another. For example, some people build everything using the default plywood-like texture, and then add specific textures later on. I tend to add textures as I go.
Second Life uses the metric system, and one meter is approximately 1.094 yards, or 39.384 inches. When I construct houses in Second Life I like the walls to be .25 meters thick and the doors to be .125 meters thick. In inches, that translates to approximately 9.846 inches for the walls and 4.923 inches for the doors. Those are pretty thick! Why do I do this?
The scale of objects in Second Life is different from Real Life. Even if you create your avatar to be similar to your actual height, you would still find that objects done on the same scale would feel too small and buildings too claustrophobic. Therefore, many things are built 1/3 to 1/2 again as big as they would be in reality. For example, I find it hard to maneuver in a Second Life building with walls shorter than 5m. So those walls and doors really aren’t all that thick, but you might try using .2 meters and .1 meters, respectively, if the dimensions I gave are too chunky for you.
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