Preparing to build. What to do?

[TayJones Hirons]

Hey guys!

I've decided to try my hand once again at building, but it's been quite some time and I hear all sorts of things about mesh and sculpting, as opposed to simple prim builds which is what I was once familiar with.

I'm looking for tips, help, reccomendations.

I am preparing to start my adventure with a sword. I am going to create a sword and a set of animations with it.

The sword will be worn and I don't want it to actually move people.

 

What should be my course of action? stick to the in world builder? 

Scuplt a sword using a program such as Blender or Lightwave?

Or should I give a go at this new mesh thing everyone is talking about?

For my sword it will have a sheath, I will script/animate it to be drawn out and be made visible or invisible whenever I click the sheath. What course of build should I take to create this? If it works out I'd like to continue creating objects of this nature and eventually move onto something new.

What build tool should I use, and if there is more than one please list where to get started for each and the advantages to using them.

Thanks!

[Conora]

you pretymuch seem to know what you want to do and how to do it

i would recomend starting with prims but if you start with mesh you probeply have higher sales

[Lukeh Ghost]

That sounds awesome !

 

Quick run down of the different approaches:

Mesh: It's new exciting and allows for creater creation freedom as well as detail when using programs like Blender or Autodesk. If you know how to make objects in mesh using 3D modelling tools then that's obviously a plus, sadly mesh is still a bit limiting. First limit being not everyone has converted to mesh yet. I'd imagine most have but there maybe the odd 7 year old resident still refusing because he don't like change.
Also when sticking scripts in mesh objects it can become quite effective on the land impact.

Oh yeah with mesh it doesn't have the normal prim count, instead it goes by "land impact" and the price for upload can vary on size amount of vertices the LOD set for different zoom states. So mesh although more freedom and detail requires more knowledge, time and precision to make a detailed object with little land impact, but as you are attatched to an avatar shouldn't worry but I believe the limit or suggested limit for what to attach in mesh is 6k land impact. I think.

 

Sculpt: These are becoming quite outdated and you can't control the LOD so if your running to someone with a sword from their view it will appear a weird triangle until you get closer to them. Sculpts are like the cousin to mesh, built the same way just imported different and less freedom when it comes to detail.

 

Prim: Still the funnest and easiest way to build... just detail can take up prims!

 

I think it really depends on your sword.. If building a fancy duel blade kind of thing I'd recommend mesh.
If building a single blade straight up sword then prim will be good enough for the blade but perhaps sculpt or mesh for the sheath and the handle.

I reccommend you look at the mesh wiki page for more insight to it. I love building objects in mesh you can even use google Sketchup 8 as a means of building easy simple objects. But complex moulding and sculpting will require better more advanced software.

Anyway best of luck!