Friendly greetings! Torley, enthusiastic teacher of Second Life skills here. For your ease-of-use, I’ve reorganized the big page o’ Video Tutorials so you can faster find what you want to learn. One of the new features is that when you view the lists for “Tip of the Week” (30+ of ‘em) and “Quicktips” (75+!), columns can be sorted by category! Also, I’ll be updating the main page regularly to show highlights from my most recent videos. Experience for yourself.
In addition, I’m continually working on longer-term plans for easier searching of vidtuts, including getting more of them in our Knowledge Base and plugging them in other places as-needed; it’s good to have lots of knowledge, but even better to be able to find it.
With that being said, it’s only fair I share 20 more quick tips with you! Filmed in Second Life 1.20 Release Candidate, most of these have been suggested by some of you (thank-you!), and they’re a delicious assortment of hints ‘n’ tricks that you’ll learn something new & useful from! As I like to advertise,
“Short on time? Quicktips deliver your knowledge in 2 minutes or less, guaranteed.”
Another HOT topic I’ve been asked to do! Sculpted prims are enjoyed by the masses, but making them is a mystery to many because they’re mostly modeled with external tools. Fear not, for with Sculptypaint by Cel Edman, I show you in a little over 10 minutes JUST HOW EASY it can be to make sculpties. Even if you’ve never built anything before.
With your newfound sculptie skills, you’ll be able to astound, amuse, and amaze avatars of the opposite and/or same gender. Watch the video, follow along, and feel good about yourself:
You can download the same sculpt & surface textures I used in the video for examination.
You can also watch another video showing that sculpties + shiny + atmospheric rendering (WindLight) rocks! (All those shapes were made in Sculptypaint in a few minutes.)
LAND is GRAND and here we STAND… in a continuing quest to amplify your awesome, Torley of Linden presents almost a dozen new Second Life® Video Tutorials having anything and everything to dowith LAND! What is it? How to buy & sell? How is it managed? What about shaping the ground? Need to eject troublemakers and set your parcel to deter them?! Oh my gosh… have you ever wanted to know what all those options in About Land do? Here are your answers and more, in almost 2 hours of FREE vidtuts!
Here’s the whole list. They’re loosely arranged in an order you should watch them for maximum benefit and I weave a story through several — but feel free to skip around:
00:07 - What is land in Second Life? 01:43 - Regions, parcels, & prim limits 04:23 - Premium accounts & land ownership 04:56 - Searching for land 05:14 - Different kinds of land for sale 05:34 - Differences between Mainland & Estates 10:00 - Increasing your knowledge of what land to buy 10:33 - Teleporting to land you’re interested in 11:09 - About Land basics 12:33 - A few words of advice…
Land use introduction
00:36 - What are allowed land holdings? 00:54 - Managing land use on SECONDLIFE.COM
Region & parcel prim limits
00:13 - What are prim limits? 01:18 - A note about “primfficiency” 02:06 - Shared parcel prim limits within a region 03:13 - Abandon Land demo
Friendly greetings! I’ll start with a thank-you, and this is important because of you: Second Life Video Tutorials have been viewed a total of 2 million times on YouTube. To respond to your rising requests and flood of feedback, I made 77 in the first quarter of 2008 — not counting the few-dozen that are in varying states of completion — and more will come, I promise.
My goals (who I am and what I do) continue to focus on making Second Life learning fun, fast, & friendly, and of chief importance in Q208 is getting the word out to Residents new, old, and yet-to-be who could benefit from the vidtuts but aren’t finding them (yet).
Ever want to learn how to make animations for use with Second Life? You’re just in luck! It’s been a popular request, and in spending some of my time to save a lot of yours, here’s the video tutorial… ENJOY!
This video tutorial was filmed in Second Life 1.20 RC1, hence the light blue “Dazzle” colors. If you’re on the main 1.19.1 viewer, everything key still works the same, just looks different.
This is gonna sound like an infomercial, but within minutes of opening up the box, I had the drivers installed and was using the SpaceNavigator with Second Life. What you see “on tape” are my very first reactions — it was very easy to get started and have fun! Also note that I filmed this in an internal version before 1.20, so the interface colors are different but the functionality is the same! So here goes:
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to use the Graphics Preferences and what all those options do!Related, some compatibility issues are alleviated by clicking the “Custom” checkbox and disabling specific options. As witnessed in Pastrami’s 1.19.1 viewer post and the subsequent comments, it’d be most helpful to have more explanation. So today’s tip is ALL ABOUT THAT!
Here’s an index of this very special ~half-hour programme:
00:23 - Opening the Graphics Preferences
01:11 - Exploring Custom options
02:05 - What are shaders, shiny, & bump mapping?
05:11 - Water Reflections
08:04 - Draw Distance
08:47 - Max. Particle Count
09:11 - Post Process Quality (Glow)
10:00 - Mesh Detail sliders
15:58 - Using local lights
17:37 - Hardware Skinning & Avatar Cloth
19:21 - Customization tips ‘n’ tricks
19:56 - Hardware Options featuring antialiasing!
23:44 - Avatar Impostors boost performance
26:34 - YOU HAVE THE POWER!
Show notes:
This video tutorial was filmed in 1.20 RC, hence the different “Dazzle” colors — if you’re on 1.19.1, most of the stuff works the same with the notable exceptions of Antialiasing and Statistics Bar’s appearance. And yeah, I know how crashy the Release Candidate is for some of you… that’s why I crashed in the middle of making it! We hope to have those kinks fixed soon; I don’t just feel your pain, I live it — and the same is true for the joys you experience.
Re: Anisotropic Filtering, since it was hard to get a pristine image due to video compression, click to enlarge this and pay attention to the crispness of textures at angles (big image, give it some time to load):
Trivia: About 2 years ago before we had a fine Documentation Team (Jon, Jeremy, & Kate who do the Knowledge Base Article of the Week), I wrote & edited the early Graphics Preferences article. And here I am doing a video… I love a good followup.
Amidst the storms, we carry on — and the watermelon guru has returned to bring you… yes, that’s right, more video tutorials (AKA screencasts) to help you learn Second Life! And if there’s a particular theme for this one, it’s things that make you go:
“I wish I knew that when I started my Second Life!”
Wishes do come true.
QUICKTIPS “Volume 4″ Video Tutorials!Your knowledge in 2 min. or less, guaranteed! Click a title to watch:
I’m always one to share knowledge + resources that’ve helped me in hopes they’ll help you, and the Second Life Wiki is an info-site you can add to. If you’d rather just read it, that’s fine too, but should you feel more adventuresome…
Today’s tip includes the wiki basics, which is LWA (Loaded With Awesome) if you’ve never used/heard of the wiki before. Be brave, Torley’s here to help! I also go through some practical stuff off the beaten path, like an accessible list of Linden Lab employees you can meet inworld, and did you know you can embed videos in the wiki too?
Friendly greetings! After last week’s Tip on “Making transparent textures“, it’s sensible this week’s is sort of a followup, and one I’ve wanted to do for a long time: HOW TO EDIT PARTICLES!
Even if this is your first day in Second Life — welcome! — you’ve prolly already experienced particles: from loud bling on jewelry, to environmental effects like fire and snow, to C-beams glittering in the dark…
there’s no shortage of special effects, and you can be more than a spectator and make your own particle awesomeness! In less than half an hour, I cover:
Opening a sample particle script
Copying contents from one script to another
Editing particle parameters
Adjusting particle visibility for time of day
Giving particles a texture (MY FAVE!)
Normalizing particle settings for a texture
Disabling particles in your objects
Backing up your particles
A few words of encouragement — I inspire the artist in you!
This video tutorial wouldn’t have been possible without the ultrahelpful Jopsy Pendragon’s Particle Laboratory in Teal, which is featured prominently, and righteously so. Just look for the colorful balloon + red arrow and ride it on up!
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We hope to have those kinks fixed soon; I don’t just feel your pain, I live it — and the same is true for the joys you experience.
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