How to make mesh?

[dymond Southmoor]

Hello, I am very new to creating mesh from scratch. I wanted to know if anyone could point me in the correct direction with programs I would need and possible videos I could watch to get me started. Thank you!

[HunniHope]

Blender is a popular programme to use for making mesh for SL, and it's free. If you have deep pockets you could look at Maya, but i think that has a cost of about 2k a year, its free for some students but the license for that prohibits commercial use, and its for educational purposes only, which basically rules out using it for SL.

There is a group in SL called Blender Benders, they run courses from designed to take you from complete beginning leading you up to becoming a more advanced user. Courses are free but you might have to wait for the next start date. 

You can google all sorts of videos and search youtube, but always make sure to include "Second Life" or "SL" as part of the search terms, that way you are more likely to find vids made by users who have the intention of using items in SL. There are thousands of videos out there, most are not made with SL in mind and tend to be on the hipoly side  of things. 

Also look through this forum, there are a lot of "how to" and "how do i" threads, some by beginners, some by more advanced users. The more you can read, the more you can learn.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is a quick learn thing. There's a steep learning curve, and lots of caveats and pitfalls to find workarounds for, essentially its a minefield and rarely is one set way to do something and there's never nothing to learn. Oh and also don't forget the non-blender stuff to look into too, from SL Limitations to how LOD's & Physics work and what they do for your mesh in SL.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Additionally, tutorials specifically geared toward making game assets will typically fit the SL restrictions.

I second @HunniHope's point, this is a journey that can span for years.

[dymond Southmoor]

Thank you both!