Plum face

[Blush Bravin]

4 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

I'm much newer than you then, but in my early times, the phrase 'torturing prims' was specifically used for changing their shape in ways that could not be normally done in the edit box.

One thing I've learned in SL over the years. Terms get misused or mean different things to different people. We don't have a glossary to go by. So who knows what the correct usage is? I don't think anyone does. We can only go by our experience. As a creator of prim jewelry I know other jewelers and myself always used the term as I defined it. 

[Phil Deakins]

Fair enough. Whatever the original meaning was, it is certainly used now to mean reshaping prims in the normal way.

Edited September 12, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Gabriele Graves]

This is the earliest guide that I could find for tortured prims, make of it what you will:

Second Life torture guide

[Love Zhaoying]

16 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

This is the earliest guide that I could find for tortured prims, make of it what you will:

Second Life torture guide

Link in that article is to the same guide posted earlier.

[Gabriele Graves]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Link in that article is to the same guide posted earlier.

Yes, I did realise that.  However it was the description that preceded it I felt might add something to the discussion considering it was from 2009.

[Blush Bravin]

Here is a link to a portion of a book published in 2007 using the torture word. Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for ...

[Gabriele Graves]

I also found this forum thread from 2005 which directly discusses prim torture types in the second post:

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/8/47/75901/1.html

[Coby Foden]

17 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

Here is a link to a portion of a book published in 2007 using the torture word. Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for ...

The ball has been handed to @Phil Deakins now. ⚽

[Blush Bravin]

My first piece of Random Calliope jewelry made in 2005. It is what made me want to make jewelry in the first place. I couldn't believe you could make anything so beautiful with just prims. There were many jewelers back then, but the sheer simplicity of such a complicated build was showcased in his work. I sure wish he was still around.

[Dillon Levenque]

Fascinating. Like Phil, I had always thought 'torturing' prims meant using methods not available in the Edit tool. Gabriele's linked 2005 article has changed my mind. The torturers weren't using special tools; they were using the existing tools in special ways, ways that nobody had thought of. That kind of creativity impresses the hell out of me.

What a great derail!

[Phil Deakins]

1 hour ago, Coby Foden said:

The ball has been handed to @Phil Deakins now. ⚽

It certainly looks like the word 'torture' was used to perform perfectly normal edits back in 2005. In 2007, I understood it to mean changing prims in ways that couldn't be done with perfectly normal edits. I wonder if different people back then meant different things when using the word. What was said earlier does ring a very slight bell with me.

I used to sell a sculpture that consisted of 1 prim on a base prim. The sculpture prim was so convoluted that, if any prim was tortured, that one was it. I would have no chance whatsoever of repeating it. I'd done a bit of everything to a prim and thought that it might sell as a sculpture, which it did.

Edited September 12, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Lindal Kidd]

5 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

A region can be one sim or a group of sims. For instance Desmond Shang's sims are a region (I forget the name - oxbridge?), as are mainland continents, those multi-sim regions of Linden Homes, and the connected sims that make up the Eden region. A single, unconnected island is a sim and also a region. That's if I remember the post correctly. It doesn't matter though. I think we all understand what is meant by 'region' when it's used, and I don't think any of us take it to mean a group of sims unless the context is clear that that's what is meant.

I hate to correct a person of your great experience and intelligence, but in this case, I must!

Desmond Shang's regions are a Private Estate, the Independent States of Caledon.  Caledon Oxbridge, the location of the famous school of Second Life, is one of those regions.  A Private Estate can be one or more regions.  You are correct that a region is also a sim.  In fact, the words are used interchangeably by most people to describe those 256 x 256 squares on the Map.  However, there is a subtle difference.  According to the SL Wiki,

"Region: A named 256 m x 256 m (65,536 m²) area hosted by a single simulator process (sim). In common usage, the term "simulator" or "sim" may also refer to a region, but in fact a single server process can host multiple regions.

The Mainland continents are not "regions."  They are made up of regions.

And as for torturing prims...this is the term commonly used to describe ways in which a prim can be manipulated to be smaller than the minimum size of 0.01m.  Anyone who still makes jewelry out of prims rather than mesh is familiar with prim torturing (the term "prim twisting" is also common).  Prim torture can also create many fanciful shapes using only one prim.  See: http://ayumicassini.blogspot.com/2009/07/ultimate-guide-to-prim-twisting.html

People Torturing Prims:

[Phil Deakins]

I hate to correct you, but, regarding sims and regions, I stated what I remember of a statement made by a Linden many years ago, and transposed that onto the examples that you quoted.

Edited September 12, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Blush Bravin]

I one was of those who used the term "sim" erroneously when referring to a region. In the past couple of years I've made myself stop using it this way after being gently reminded a couple of times by Lindens that the correct term is region. 

[Phil Deakins]

A 1-prim sculpture on a base. It definitely looks tortured but I would never have claimed that it was a tortured prim because I only used the features that are readily available in the edit box. Judging by the pages that have been linked to, it seems that people have been using the word to simply mean editing a prim's shape - even as simple a thing as cutting a 90 deg. path to make 2 steps. Tortured seems like the wrong word for that to me.

Still, as I said earlier - I give in

Edited September 12, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Love Zhaoying]

4 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

They still use the torturing technique? From what Myrmidon said, it sounds like they were superceded by changes in the edit box. I never even tried to do it back then, although I was more-or-less a full time builder-seller since early in 2007, but I never had any use for torturing prims. Perhaps it was a thing of the past by then. It rarely got mentioned in the sub-forum I used - RA.

I think you’re missing this point: you can torture / twist prims with either LSL or the edit box. 

[Blush Bravin]

2 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Still, as I said earlier - I give in 

Makes a note in my calendar.  

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Blush Bravin said:

Makes a note in my calendar.  

Doesn’t mean it stops.

[Blush Bravin]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Doesn’t mean it stops.

True, but it's an event worth remembering!!  

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

A 1-prim sculpture on a base.

I never understand art.

[Clover Jinx]

18 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I never understand art.

How can you not see a cat?

[Garnet Psaltery]

25 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I never understand art.

I think most modern art is b*ll*cks but that is quite nice.  It makes me think of a treble clef merged with a harp.

[Phil Deakins]

16 minutes ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

I think most modern art is b*ll*cks but that is quite nice.  It makes me think of a treble clef merged with a harp.

Ty. I called it Tranquility, I think. But I do agree about the treble clef and harp impression, especially the harp.

Edited September 12, 2018 by Phil Deakins

[Phil Deakins]

41 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I think you’re missing this point: you can torture / twist prims with either LSL or the edit box. 

Yes, but as memory creeps back, what I read way back then was that torturing a prim was doing to a prim things that were not normally available for it in the edit box. It was explained something like this:- For each prim shape, there are certain things that the edit box allows, such as path cut, twist, sheer, and so on. But not all the basic shapes have all the shape-changing functions, and some have different functions to others. Torturing a prim is performing an editing function on it that is not available for it in the edit box. That's what I read and understood back then. Whether it was done using a script, or doing a basic shape change at a certain stage, as was written earlier in the thread, I don't know, because I was never interested enough to get into it.

[Blush Bravin]

5 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Whether it was done using a script, or doing a basic shape change at a certain stage, as was written earlier in the thread, I don't know, because I was never interested enough to get into it.

I don't think a script can do more than what is available in the edit box, but most never even imagined that they could change the shape of the prim to torture the prim even further. So people developed scripts to do it for you. I think this is probably why people got the idea that it couldn't be done with the tools available in the edit box.