From the Wyverns nest

Building Tools – Part 1

As a builder, generally I try to make a lot of the different components that I use. I dabble in a lot of different areas, I can script, texture, pose and bash prims and get fairly good results.

But sometimes it is better to buy in the components than to make them. There are any number of excellent texturers, scripters and animators around SL, and many of them sell components at fairly reasonable rates.

Looking for reasonable rates is important. If you are looking to make and sell a Sword for say, L$50, you do not want to be buying in a component that will cost L$5000 unless you know that it can be used in many other items or you can be sure you will sell 100 of them. In the same way, a L$1000 piece of Jewelery needs something better than a plain texture.

I have compiled a short list of places to buy components that offer good value for money and are of a high quality.

In most of these I have given the creators name, this is because, although sims don’t generally disappear overnight, creators do move store locations around.

Laura’s Tiling Textures (Laura Fox)

This is one of the first places I discovered for textures in SL (after raiding all the freebie textures from NCI). There are a wide range of textures available here including jewels, fabrics, food and themed sets. New textures are added regularly. I personally use the Jewelery textures and a number of the food textures.

The textures are usually between L$150 and L$500, and come with Copy/Mod/Trans permissions. Often the pack also includes sample pieces demonstrating how to apply them to an object.

Daryth Kennedy’s Building Kits (Daryth Kennedy)

Seeing as I am involved with Daryth Kennedy’s Isle of Wyrms, it should be no surprise that I have a set of Daryth’s building kits. There are six different types; Greek Pottery, Stone columns, Treasure Set, Jewels (good, but not as good as the Laura Fox ones), Mushrooms and Flowers.

Each kit is priced at L$100, and is set to Copy/Mod/Trans permissions. My only criticism would be that some of the items use more prims then I would like, but as a general set of building components these are useful to have.

Sadly these can no longer be found in-world and have to be brought through SLX.

Phun Stuph (Mr Greggan)

This shop was something recently shown to me whilst I was working on a project to make a bed suitable for a Steam Wyrmling.

Phun Stuph sells steampunk components, dials & gauges (some animated), gears, wheels, boilers, and all sort of weird looking steampunkery! If building steampunk is your style – then this is the place to shop.

The prices of the items I looked at ranged between L$35 and L$200 and where all set with Copy/Mod/Trans permissions. Phun Stuph also offers a free group-only sandbox for putting your creations together.

Pixel Lab (Cel Edman)

Pixel Lab produces a range of different sculpted shapes, including a fairly neat cave pack and stairs. The sculptie textures are of a reasonable resolution, which means that on a loaded sim they do take some time to load (giving that ugly sculptie default-sphere shape for a few seconds). However, this also means they have nice detailing.

The packs contain 30-60 sculptie shapes and range from L$300 to L$600 and all set with Copy/Mod/Trans permissions. Again, Pixel Lab provides details on how you use their shapes.

Rez-Faux (Lex Niva)

Rez-Faux isn’t necessarily something you would consider in the same sense as textures and objects for integrating into builds. However, it is a very useful tool to have around.

Rez-Faux basically allows you to Rez, De-Rez and position multiple unlinked components that are part of a build. Second Life places limits on how close together parts must be in order to link them. Also, setting one prim in a linked set phantom, sets all prims in the linkset phantom (which can be a pain if you are building a house and only want to phantom the doors). Rez-Faux is an essential tool for making larger and more complex builds

Rez-Faux was L$625 and the transfer package is Copy/No-Mod/Transfer permissions.