SL is for learning!!

So aside from my current shopping quest (which I will get to!) I've also been considering what I would like to learn about SL. Particularly, about building in SL. I've never done any building. I've thrown a few prims around and played with them, but I have never MADE anything more than funny shapes. One thing I really wanted to do once upon a time was make sculpties. More specifically, I thought it would be fun to make sculpted furniture and jewelry. So, the other day I went on the SL wiki, looked up "sculpty prims" and found a list of programs to learn about. So far I've tried out two with mixed results.

Now. I have never used any 3D-modelling anything before. At all. I didn't even take anything in school that used one, so Blender and it's bretheren are complete strangers to me. And I knew that, and told myself over and over not to expect myself to catch on immediately. However, I've learned in my years of trying to teach myself things that there's only so much you can prepare for not knowing what the hell you're doing.

I'd heard good and bad things about Blender, but mostly that it isn't very beginner friendly, except in that there's a boatload of information on it to be found. I ignored that though (for now) and went to see what else what out there that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. Especially since I probably wouldn't be able to make even those for a while. What I ended up with was Caligari TrueSpace 7.6. The good news is, it has a set of video tutorials, beginning with the very basics and moving up. The bad news is that isn't enough to save me from myself.

Now, the tutorials use version 7.51, and either there's some little differences between that and the version I have, or I've managed to mess up my settings already. There one little, tiny step in the video that does not happen the same in my program, and it's enough to throw me off. I'm sure most users would be able to fix it fairly easy, but remember these programs and I are complete strangers. How do you do sir, we've never met. So I don't have the slightest idea how to fix this little difference in the "setting up the workspace" process, so I've yet to actually make anything.

During a bout of frustration with that program, I decided to give something different a try. I found one called AC3D and it is quite a bit simpler. There's a menu with some shapes on it. You grab a sphere, you drag it into your window and drop it into your screen, and voila, you have a sphere, which you can then morph and reshape to your hearts content. Or you can select the pen thingie and draw in a profile, then flesh it out. So far I've made more funny shapes and a squashed, lumpy thing that may or may not have been my attempt to make a shoe. However, I only have the trial for two weeks and then I have to fork over $75 to keep it, so my time with AC3D may be limited.

A friend in world said I should try Wings 3D, a beginner-friendly program that is (yay!) free. So once my AC3D fling is finished I'll give it a whirl. :)

I'll go into a little more detail with the programs and post some pictures once I play with them a bit more. :) If anyone has any tips feel free to send them my way! And also if anyone knows of good Photoshop tutorials, I'd love to know about them!! That's the next thing I want to try.