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Look What I Built!
I finally gave building a try a few days ago. I went to Ivory Tower Primitives, but reading all those notecards frazzled my brain. I kept skipping whatever it was telling me to do and going to the next station. I got bored, aggravated, and teleported upstairs.
I hit a station that told me to rotate a cube in the exhibit, so its corners were... I don't know exactly... pointing at the ground was the impression I got. I tried. Honestly, I tried. It wouldn't budge. I could get the lines to light-up for editing, but nothing I did would move it.
I gave up and was ready to leave. My whole reason for going into Second Life is to build a science fiction game complex - how can I do that, if I can't even get a cube to turn on end??
Wait, I thought... if I can't move their cube, what about a cube of my own?
I clicked the ground, then 'create'. I picked a cube, clicked edit, and spun it around! This way, that way, I had it rocking and rolling! I changed the texture to stone, then made it flat, like a slab. I made a slab of stone!!
Then, for good measure, I made a ball. It doesn't bounce. It doesn't do much of anything, but it's kinda pretty and the colours spin. Bayleh saw it later and asked if I was making my own planet... not just yet...
Me, with my stuff, using a pose script
Again, I wanted to do a Happy Dance (see post #2). I looked through all the stuff I'd picked up and found a gesture called 'getdown'. It was great! The song 'Hey Ya!' played and my avatar boogied around in glee... but, she boogied too long.
The rules of Happy Dance are simple: it's a short dance you do when you're happy. Okay, maybe it's just rule , because that's really the only one. I decided to modify the gesture.
This wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. For the longest time, I had the song play the perfect, tiny clip, but my avatar would continue dancing till I stopped her.
I thought I could just look at the animation script and cut some of the time out, but I could not find any way to view the script. If you know how, please go to the Slog index and email me - my full SL name, without a space, at this domain - something about coffee... :)
I think building and editing would be a lot easier if you could break down known things and see how they work!
I had to go to the Second Life help pages to figure out how to make her stop in time with the music:
You have to put a stop animation at the end of the gesture for the same animation you've started (getdown start, getdown stop). And, you have to put some wait time in, so it doesn't just start, then stop. I had to put two, 4 second waits, to time it right.
I sent myself a postcard of me dancing. My postcard photos leave a lot to be desired, so I saved an image to disk as well. The difference between the two images is clear. I see why advice pages say to use saved images, rather than postcard images.
 
Can you tell which is the postcard?
Both, had to be lightened. I don't know why my images are always dark, maybe it's my screen settings, maybe it's the nature of the beast, but even with 'forced noon' they come out way too dark.
If you see some crazy girl dancing to Hey Ya! around a stone slap and a ball, that will be me. Stop and say, 'hello'!
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