Hi all. Second tutorial coming up, just in time for Christmas. In it you’ll learn to link objects, and explore some more properties. Tutorial One (Vase) gives you more basic building guidance.
1. Rez a cube, and call it ‘Lantern’ in the General tab.
2. Go to the Objects tab, and hollow it by 95%, then taper each coordinate (x and y) to -0.60
3. Go to the Texture tab and choose a texture (we did this in Tutorial 1) If you are inworld you can IM me for the texture I created, or you can make one in a Paint programme.
4. Still in the Texture tab, change the Transparency to something like 12, and play around with the Glow. I found .1 was enough.
Now we’re going to duplicate the shape. Make sure the shape is selected, and holding down the shift key drag your shape upwards on the z (blue) coordinate. You now have identical shapes.
Keeping the top one selected, find the rotation menu on the bottom left side, and change the y coordinate to 180. This should turn it upside down.
We now need to take a slice out of the top of this shape. Find Slice at the bottom right, and slice off about .400 from the B (beginning) The E (end) should stay at 1.00
It will need tapering in, so go back to Taper and change both coordinates to -1.00.
Now to link them. Keeping the top one selected, pull it down until it is just touching the bottom shape. Hold down the shift key again and select the bottom shape. You’ll find both shapes are selected. Now go to the toolbar at the very top of your screen, and click on Tools. Scroll about half way down and select ‘Link’ Your objects are now linked. Well done. You have a lamp.
It’s very big at the moment. A quick way to resize it is to go back to the Object tab, and find the radio buttons at the top. Select ‘Stretch’ and make sure ‘stretch both sides’ is selected on the left hand side. Get hold of one of the white handles and pull in until you are happy with the size.
Another way to resize is to go back to the Object tab and type in precise measurements. This is very accurate for intricate building, but you have to do each bit separately, and it’s not worth it for this simple lantern.
You might find that re-sizing objects messes up the pattern. Go to the Texture tab and make sure that the repeats per face are set to 1. I also had to ‘flip’ the pattern on the top bit of the lantern to make the diamonds match up.
Lastly, you need a handle. Well, you could also put in a wick with a script, but we’ll leave that for now. Let’s just make a handle.
Rez a torus, and make it a bit smaller. Something like x = .02 y = .02 z = .1
Find a metal texture in your library and texture and colour it.
Position it over the lantern. The best way to do this is to enter the same x and y coordinates as the lamp. I make it easy to remember by positioning the lamp on whole numbers e.g. x = 190 y = 44.
Then lower the handle until it just touches the top of the lantern and link them all like you did above.
This is important. The last shape you touch will be the main prim, so make sure it’s one called ‘Lantern’ or your shape will just be called ‘Object’ and you will have difficulty finding it again. Whenever you want to add anything to a ‘build’ you have to make sure that the last object touched has the definitive name for your object.
I hope to add more to this tutorial soon, but in the meantime, have fun decorating for Christmas.
