| NOW - AVAILABLE AS A KIT THAT
CAN MAKE LARGE OR SMALL MANSIONS. Visit the lower level at
the Suzie Larsen store. $L 100 for a set of walls, roofs,
foundation, doorway, and teleporting to second floor or even for
usage at the doorway.
My Low Prim Mansion
First
of all, I must ask you to forgive me before I even start.
I just know that I am so excited about my low prim house that I
am going to exaggerate. But the honest truth is that I am
so so tickled that things have worked out so well, I just know I
am going to exaggerate in order to catch up to my feelings,
which are ecstatic.
What is a Prim?
I suppose before I talk about a low prim mansion I should
talk about what a prim is and why any of us should care.
Perhaps the rich people in Second Life need not care at all.
But for those of us just getting started, some knowledge of
prims is very important. A "prim" is an abbreviation for a
primitive. Most of us would just think of a prim as an object.
Each separate item in Second Life other than avatars is a prim
-or an object made up of many prims. Prims become
important since the Second Life servers have to work hard to
construct each and every one. Therefore Second Life puts
limits on how many prims can exist in a specific size area.
For example, in an area of 256 square meters, only 58 total
prims are allowed. How does this affect us? Let us
say that you are a new person like me and you have just acquired
256 square meters. Then you try to put a house on it and then
furniture and then woops! You find that you are not
allowed much furniture! And then you realize your house is
small, and maybe your neighbor is so disturbed by the poor look
of your house that she is planting trees to hide the view!
What a problem!
Building your own House
I guess I knew very early in Second Life that you could build
your own house. My first vision of it was maybe we put
together 10,000 small bricks until we are done. For a
number of reasons that would be a bad idea. It would take
too long, and it would be far too many prims - since each small
brick would be a prim. What to do? Well, we live
with some illusions all of the time in Second Life. What about
the other option - making pieces as large as possible?
That works! and works well! The largest piece that
Second Life allows is a piece 10 meters by 10 meters. So
then, what if you were to make a two story house, using a base
of concrete 10 meters by 10 meters and only 0.5 meters high.
What if you then had four walls roughly 10 meters long by 10
meters high and only 0.1 meters high? You could then use a
10 x 10 by 0.1 floor in the middle to divide the two floors.
Then you could use a single prim for the roof - either a flat
prim 10 x 10 by 0.1 meters high, or you could get clever and use
a four sided pyramid prim that looks like a roof.
It is of course not exactly that simple. One must
create an illusion of bricks on the walls and perhaps shingles
on the walls. Second Life will allow you to add those
textures. For added beauty and complexity, you can simply
substitute a picture of brisk and windows in a .jpg and use that
as a texture on your external wall (that is what I did).
As for the floor between first and second floor, you would
likely make it shorter in one dimension such that you could at
least float up to the second floor. Or you can use a ramp
to walk up as I used. The door takes some thought.
One of the walls likely must be less long. Then you need a
piece of all above where the door goes. Then you might
need to buy your door at a shop in order to get a locking door.
Adding Complexity
You can do even more than this. You can also get low
prim furniture at our store and save on prims. You can also get exotic as I
have and use something similar to a one sided mirror. By
this I mean that the outside of my house looks like bricks.
However, I use a different set of pictures on the inside that
either lead to large windows I can see through, or make an area
wholly transparent. Now then, I can see out, but no one
can see in, except for areas that I made the windows partially
transparent.
Ending Impact
At this time, I have used only 27 prims of 58 allowed!
And I have more space and much more furniture and more of a
luxury house than ever before! I love it!
Note additional hyperlinks on the left showing more about the
insides of my house, my low-prim-mansion!
best wishes to you!
Suzie Larsen
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