Can someone teach me please!

[Nicole Striatus]

Hello there! I want to learn to make something I can sell. I can't decide between furniture or clothing. Which would be the best one to start with since I have never built something before on second life? I would liket olearn both but I figure one at a time is best. SO I need someone willing to teach me. Anyone pretty please with whip cream and a cherry on top? I know there are classes but I can't afford them and they don't always work with my schedule as far as SL work. So I am your clay - Mold me! TY! :) Big smile and huggies for all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Peggy Paperdoll]

That's a tall order......."teach me".  Most of the things people make in SL start with proficiency in some third party software.  There's image editing programs like Photoshop, GIMP, Paintshop Pro, Paint.NET for the textures that make anything in SL what it is..........nothing would look like anything without a texture to make it so.  Then there's the 3D modeling programs such as Maya, Poser, Blender, Wings 3D for meshes.  There are other programs for sculpties.  It's pretty complicated......but, not so complicated that anyone with the desire cannot master.  You need to pick one thing and learn it.........learn it well.  Then once you master that pick another and learn it.  It's not going to happen over night...........and if you have not experience in any of the software programs it won't happen in a month, or several months........maybe even in a year.  I'm not meaning to discourage you at all...............I've been making textures for about 5 years and I'm still learning every single time I make one.  I started out without any experience at all (I mean Microsoft's Paint had me baffled to no end).  I dove in and I had so much fun learning the time flew by until I actually made something that looked good.....the bug was planted and I never looked back.

 

In order of ease I think building is probably the easiest.  You don't need any outside software because all the material for building is in SL.  Prims.........rezz them and start distorting them (torturing).  See how they work, what happens when you twist this way or that, stretch that way or this way, cut, taper...........anything.  You'll get the idea pretty quickly.  You can build for free.  Go to a sandbox and start.  Watch others to see what they are doing then try to duplicate it.  It's fun and time will fly..........you'll also learn quickly.  The next easiest is texturing.  That does require software outside SL.  Photoshop is the most well known of all image editing software...........it's also the most expensive (but with that expense you get some of the best documentation and tons of tutorials to help you along).  GIMP (what I use) is free.......documentation is so geeky due to the open source nature of the software, it's all but useless if you are a novice.  But there are some very good books available that more than make up for GIMP's documentation (or lack there of).  Paintshop Pro is a good image editing program that is cheaper than Photoshop and almost as well documented (though less powerful than both Photoshop and GIMP)............a lot of people go with PSP for that reason.  And then there are the 3D modeling programs.  I've toyed with Blender and go lost so I decided I'll let someone else make those :matte-motes-big-grin:.  Some of the better known 3D modeling programs are Poser, Maya, Blender (free), Wings 3D (I believe it free too).  The problem with 3D modeling programs is that the concept of 3D is inherently complicated.......it's not easy for some people like me to think the way a 3D modeler needs to think.  It's something I think everyone should try but not everyone is going to be able to grasp it.........unless you have a very deep desire to learn it (which, evidently, I don't).

 

You're best bet is to go to some free building classes.  Those will get you started then you can venture to the sandboxes and learn on your own.........attend classes as you progress in your self learning.  Look into image editing software.  Decide what program you want to learn and go for it.  Like I said I use GIMP (because it's free and my texture making in SL is a hobby or past time and I just can't justifly spending money for a hobby).  I can recommend a book that will get you off to a good start with GIMP.  "Beginning GIMP from Novice to Professional" by Akkana Peck.  Amazon.com carries it.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

So you have never built anything, you lack the incentive to try and teach yourself with the help of the abundant tutorials out there, and you don't even know what it is that you want to create yet. But you want to earn money here, and you expect somebody to teach you for free? :matte-motes-bored: 

[Prokofy Neva]

Hi,

I think if you apply the same energy you are putting into scatter-shooting your request to obtaining some focus, you might do better.

Just as you feel you don't have the patience to attend classes and they might not be convenient to your schedule, so other people may not feel it's convenient to adjust to *your* schedule and spend long hours trying to type out to you or voice to you the basics that you might master on your own.

You don't have to go to a class and sit, there are self-paced tutorials in places like Builder's Brewery and Ivory Tower of Prims where you can start clicking and trying things on your own -- you learn by doing. Like a lot of technical things in life, learning on your own by trial and error can work better than reading a manual or sitting listening to someone.

You can also narrow your focus and avoid frustration by first deciding what you want to do in SL. Do you want to socialize and dance? Do you want to shop? Do you want to make friends? And then start adjusting your business idea to the activities you really like doing yourself.

The whole furniture industry is in transition now from prim and sculpty to possibly mesh, but at least from prim to sculpty. So it means simultaneously struggling with three types of tools or learning difficult outside programs like Blender, which even the most patient artists say is really finicky.

Clothing is possibly easier to make, but requires Photoshop as well. Try making your own appearance, finding freebies, and shopping a little and seeing how you make up looks to see if you want to try to learn more and break into this competitive area.

 

[Tamara Artis]

Heya Nicole!

There are free classes, check under events - education on your SL Dashboard. I was attending them, its like you're in school again lol

But if you really can't organize your time to attend them, my advice would be to start like most of people do: ask Google and Youtube:) tons and tons of amazing tutorials, you just need to search what you're interested in:)

I just typed "building in second life" and here's one:



[Tari Landar]

If I were you (and I once was) I would forgo classes.

Sit down with yourself, Find a few full perm freebies, and take them apart.(to unlink press ctrl shift and L on your keyboard). Take a look at how they made it, look at the textures, if it has any, look at the sizes, the shapes. Now rez yourself some boxes and see if you can mimic this. I suggest starting with freebies made of plain prims, first and foremost. Then move on to creating your own objects with prims. Practice using the textures in your library to start. You won't be selling any of these items, you just want to get familiar with the edit box, how it works, how to line things up, how to change prims. Make sure you try it out with all the prim shapes available to you in your edit box(the build button will open that edit box for you, sorry I don't know what it looks like in viewers that are V2 or above, I don't use them lol). Explore your edit box though. That is before you move on to working with sculpts, prims are a very good first step. You CAN skip it entirely too, but, I don't recommend at least exploring them a little bit, personally.

Then, either go in world or into the marketplace and find yourself some cheap builder packs under building components.  There are LOTS of really cheap ones. These packs can be invaluable for a new builder. You can learn how to perfect texture tiling, simply looking at the texture in some sort of external program(GIMP is free) can help teach you how to create dimension, and shadows, baked right into the textures). Most also include a sample object, so you can look at it to see how they really put it together, got the sizes right, and everything. Sometimes it helps to make things much bigger, and scale down after you're done, too.  That may just apply to me, I'm legally blind so my vision is, not all that great. I need to start out bigger to make sure things look right. I have no depth perception too, so this is the only way I can really learn how to adapt some textures to look as though they have depth... Gosh I love the free temp uploads, lol. I will forever be learning, growing, adapting, etc..To me, that's key, in being any sort of creator in sl...always be willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and then learn even more

Sorry I know it all sounds overwhelming but I promise you that it's really not. You will find that you can be your best teacher. The classes are wonderful and can be very helpful too, but you're running into the same problem many have/do, and that is time. They simply aren't always convenient. Exploration is as valuable as sitting there in a class. Not to mention you'd be learning at your own pace, learning the things you want to learn.

For me, I started with learning how to build objects. Making clothes wasn't too terribly difficult, but that's because I've already got experience working with graphic programs. I just don't like making clothes, and it's really, really hard on my eye these days to even try, so I gave up trying. You can't really start out big and scale back down with non-prim clothing, lol.

[Spider Mycron]

Hello,

  You very welcome to join my community group (Life Heartbeat) i offer free classes from time to time, you can let me know what SL time you prefer so i can schedule my self

just joijn the group and IM me inworld

Regards

[Morgaine Christensen]

Oh, by the way....if you plan to sell your items once you learn how to create them,  I suggest you become familar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).