EdeMetaverse SLBook

How to Get a Second Life B u i l d a S u c ce s s f u l Business and S o c i a l N e t wo r k I n wo r l d

madddyyy schnook with andrew sullivan

First published in 2007 by Fusion Press, a division of Satin Publications Ltd 101 Southwark Street London SE1 0JF UK info@visionpaperbacks.co.uk www.visionpaperbacks.co.uk Publisher: Sheena Dewan Š Andrew Sullivan 2007 The right of Andrew Sullivan to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-905745-26-6 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Cover and text design by ok?design Printed and bound in the UK by J. H. Haynes & Co Ltd, Sparkford

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Chapter 1: Chapter 2: Chapter 3: Chapter 4: Chapter 5: Chapter 6: Chapter 7: Chapter 8: Chapter 9: Chapter 10: Chapter 11: Chapter 12: Chapter 13: Chapter 14: Chapter 15: Chapter 16: Chapter 17: Chapter 18:

Contents

Introduction The Basics Mouse-clicking Your Way to Success Your Appearance Visiting Places in SL Socialising How to Make Money Owning Land Creating and Editing Prims Objects and Prims Advanced Textures for Beginners Sculpty Prims Scripts Making Your Own Clothes and Accessories Build Your Own Home and Shop Setting Up Shop Business: Getting Started Business: Marketing, Publicity and Advertising Bringing It All Together A Guide to SL Slang Glossary Short Cut Keys Index Acknowledgements About the Authors

1 3 16 31 45 59 75 89 101 109 124 135 141 151 159 169 181 194 205 206 208 210 211 217 218

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Introduction

Second life®(SL) is an amazing virtual world where anything is possible. You can fly, dance in a club, teleport from location to location, talk to and befriend people from all around the world, join like-minded groups, change your look as many times as you want, build homes and create products and businesses. You can even make real money.

There are no specific goals in SL and, unlike video games, there is no end. It is an ever-evolving, ever-widening metaverse. The only limit is your imagination.

For many newcomers (or newbies, as they are affectionately called by more experienced residents), this digital landscape with its huge realm of possibilities and vast array of menus is very daunting. There is a very steep learning curve and many residents go in once and never return because they find it all too difficult to master.

When I, Andrew Sullivan, first joined SL in 2005 as ‘madddyyy Schnook’ there were hardly any resources for newbies. I soon realised that if I could teach myself using the limited information that was available to newbies, I could write my own virtual guidebooks. After a long struggle and many hours I finally wrote a 32-page virtual guide to making clothes, which was a major success and led to almost 60 other books. Since then I have set up my own business in SL providing virtual guidebooks to help other people learn how to master various aspects of SL. I have sold hundreds of thousands of these guides to people who are hungry for information and guidance for their second life. As well as selling books from my shop, I also provide new residents with impromptu lessons. I always get that satisfied feeling when the same resident comes back a few weeks or even months later to thank me for the invaluable advice I have given them. Many of my students have given me clothes, shoes and all sorts of gifts to thank me for my help.

The success of my guides has enabled me to do what many only dream of and give my job up in real life (RL) to work for myself in SL. I always find it amusing to explain to people what I do for a living – friends are usually shocked when I say I spent the morning talking with a dragon and two princesses and drove around my shop in a horse-drawn carriage.

With this book, I am hoping to help out the people who need guidance the most – those who are just starting out in SL – so I can properly introduce them to this virtual world and show them the opportunities that are available. It will also be a valuable resource for more experienced SL residents wanting to learn additional skills and further their knowledge.

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In each chapter I will explain a different aspect of SL and what you can do. I would recommend that everyone reads the first seven chapters to give them an overview of how the world works. These chapters explain the basics that every resident should know. They are also useful reading for more experienced residents as there are plenty of tips and bits of advice that can polish their skills. The later chapters on building, scripting and starting your own business won’t be for everyone, so dip into them as you wish and use them for reference whenever you want to learn more. There are also a list of short cut keys, a useful slang section and a glossary at the back of the book to help you with your journeys.

So for now, read on and let me take you along the many winding roads and paths that make SL so unique. I will be whisking you away to some fantastic virtual backdrops and friendly places to do your learning. You will be making new friends and learning many new skills. I wish you the best of luck and hope you enjoy your second life.

0.1: My avatar

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The Basics

Let us begin with a brief history.

Philip Rosedale (or Philip Linden as he is known in SL) created the concept of a virtual world in the shower in 2002. Partly inspired by the 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, he wanted to create a dreamscape, a land better than the real world, where people could escape their everyday lives and live out their fantasies.

SL was finally released to the public in 2003. It was unique in being a virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents (except for the initial land built by Linden Lab), where residents could trade with each other and own the rights to their SL creations.

Since then SL has developed and progressed and its popularity has soared due to major press interest. RL companies now do business in SL, with around £750,000/US$1.5 million passing hands every day, and other people use it for entertainment and socialising.

As I am writing this, the SL population stands at a mammoth 10 million and is growing at the rate of around 10,000 people per day.

Starting out in SL In order to experience Second Life, you first need to sign up and download the software. Visit www.secondlife.com and click the JOIN NOW button. At the time of writing, the first thing you need to do is decide whether you want to start your Second Life in a community area (mostly corporate sponsored) or whether you want to start in the official orientation island where you will learn techniques through self-taught tasks you need to complete. It doesn’t really make a difference as both options contain similar tutorials to show you how to move, look around, chat, change your outfit and alter your appearance.

Either way, it’s free to join SL, although you can opt to pay to become a premium member later on, which is only US$9.95. For most people it isn’t worth becoming a premium member unless you wish to own mainland land. There are four membership plans and some give you a weekly allowance of Linden dollars (L$, the SL currency) for you to spend inworld (in the virtual world).

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The first thing you need to do is choose a name for your avatar (your virtual person).

You can choose any first name you like. (Be sure to capitalise your first name unless you want it lower case, as it won’t automatically capitalise it.) You then need to choose your last name from a very long list of supplied surnames that Linden Labs rotates and eventually retires when a certain number of people have chosen that surname. Bear in mind that the name you choose will be the name you go by inworld, and you won’t have the opportunity to change it, so pick something you think you can live with long term. You might find it takes a while to get an avatar name that hasn’t been already chosen.

You’ll then need to complete some standard account information and security questions and downloaded the software before you are ready to log in and create your avatar.

You will be given the option of being male or female and then, depending on the location of your orientation, you might be given the option of choosing one of the default shapes for your avatar. This isn’t important as you will soon be customising the look of your avatar, either by doing it yourself or by buying shapes, skin and hair to create a unique look (you can even change your gender), so don’t worry if you don’t like what you’ve been given – no one stays in their original look for long.

Once you’ve chosen an avatar you will find yourself in an orientation area. There are various tasks and tests to teach you how to move around and use your SL viewer.

I am now going to show you all the basic skills you’ll need to start off.

Your SL screen Below is an image of the main viewer in SL. From here you can interact with your new 3D world. I will be covering in more detail how you can interact with the world around you, but for the moment I will give you a quick rundown on the menus buttons you can see in your viewer.

At the top of the screen you will see the following drop-down menus: Q FILE: Here you can upload images, sounds and animations into SL and take snapshots (photos) of your screen.

Q EDIT: You can edit various aspects of the SL world from here, such as your appearance, your clothing, plus any items you are creating.

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1.1: The SL screen (viewer)

Q VIEW: From here you can open up various windows, such as your INVENTORY and CHAT HISTORY, and change your view of the SL world.

Q WORLD: Here you can interact with the world by flying, chatting and starting gestures. You can manage your SL account and the options for your land. In addition, you can change the lighting effects through FORCE SUN and show other people that you are busy or not inworld by SET AWAY or SET BUSY. Q TOOLS: Here are various advanced features such as editing land and linking objects.

Q HELP: This will take you to official help forums.

Now take a look at the bottom of the viewer. There are various blue buttons, which you can activate by clicking. They are:

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Q COMMUNICATE: From here you can view and edit your friends and groups, plus send instant messages (IM) to your contacts.

Q CHAT: You can open a chat bar in which you type text to talk to the people around you.

Q FLY: This puts your avatar in flying mode so you fly around in the air.

Q SNAPSHOT: Clicking this will allow you to save a picture to your hard drive or to your SL inventory.

Q SEARCH: This is probably the most used button here. It enables you to search for places, people, groups, classified adverts, classes or events and places.

Q BUILD: Being able to build in SL is what sets it apart from other virtual games or worlds. You can build anything you wish in SL and sell it or give it away.

Q MINI MAP: This opens a little map that shows you the area around you.

Other nearby avatars are represented by little green dots.

Q MAP: This brings up the main map. You can see the whole of SL here and it shows icons for various different aspects of the world, such as events and land for sale. You can search for places in the SL world here and even teleport to these locations.

Q INVENTORY: This is where anything you receive or build is saved.

There is also the main chat area. To communicate with the people around you, type in a message and hit ENTER on your keyboard. You can also type and click the SAY or SHOUT buttons. SHOUT will broadcast your text further. However, as in RL, you should not shout unless necessary.

Basic walking There are a number of ways of walking in the 3D world. Here is the most basic form:

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The Basics

Q To walk forwards: press the UP arrow on your keyboard.

Q To walk backwards: press the DOWN arrow on your keyboard.

Q To turn right: press the RIGHT arrow on your keyboard.

Q To turn left: press the LEFT arrow on your keyboard.

Looking There are many ways to look at the world around you by moving your camera (your viewer) around and even focusing on various objects. Here are the methods you can use: Q To turn: press the RIGHT and LEFT arrows on your keyboard. Or you can turn by holding down a left-click on your avatar and moving the mouse from left to right.

Q To zoom in and out: use the scroll on your mouse.

Q To focus on an object: hold down ALT and right-click with your mouse on the object.

Q To zoom in and out on an object: hold down ALT and either use the scroll on your mouse or hold down a right-click and move your mouse up and down.

Q To rotate around an object: hold down ALT and hold the right-click and move your mouse left and right.

Q To rotate around your avatar: press CTRL and ALT and hold down a leftclick on your avatar. When you move your mouse the screen will rotate around, over and under your avatar.

Q To get a view of the land as your avatar sees it: press the ‘M’ key. (Make sure you haven’t got the white CHAT bar up or you will just type an ‘M’ into here.

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Click the CHAT button to close the chat bar.) This is called mouselook and it is very useful for moving in confined spaces.

Q To see different views in mouselook: just move your mouse around.

Q To leave mouselook: press ESCAPE. Try these different ways of looking. Experiment with all the different views you can get of both the world around you and of your avatar. Try zooming in or ‘camming’ on some of the objects and signs that you can see.

Walking in mouselook You can also walk in a view in mouselook mode by taking the following steps: í˘ą First make sure your chat bar is not open (click on CHAT so the white text box disappears). í˘˛ Press ‘M’ to enter mouselook. í˘ł Now use the cross hairs (the little box) in the centre of the screen to aim your walking direction, pressing the UP and DOWN keyboard arrows to move forwards and backwards and the LEFT and RIGHT arrows to make a side-step to the left or right.

Flying Yes, you can actually fly in SL! All you need to do is the following: Q To fly: click on the FLY button at the bottom of your screen. You will hover above the ground Q To stop flying: click on the STOP FLYING button at the bottom of your screen (this has changed from FLY). You will drop to the ground.

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The Basics

Q To move around while in the air: use your arrow keys to go forwards, backwards, left and right.

Q To fly up: press and hold down PAGE UP. You can also launch yourself off the ground by simply pressing PAGE UP. Q To fly down: press PAGE DOWN to fly downwards. You can land more gracefully from higher up with this method – if you press STOP FLYING from a great height your avatar will fall to the ground with a thump, waving its arms and legs on the way down.

1.2: My avatar flying

Once you’ve got used to this basic method of flying you can also try the following: Q To fly in mouselook: aim the cross hairs up in the sky, and press the PAGE UP arrow.

Q To hover using your keyboard: press HOME (if you have one on your keyboard) to fly.

Q To drop to the ground using your keyboard: press HOME to stop flying.

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Practise flying around in the air with these different methods. See how high you can get and what’s actually up there.

You can fly up to around 220 metres before gravity becomes too strong and you start to fall. By acquiring gadgets such as flight feathers you will be able to fly further up (to around 700 metres), but don’t worry about this at the moment. Please note that on some of the orientation islands, flying has actually been disabled.

Talking You can communicate in SL via the CHAT button at the bottom of your screen for public speaking and via the COMMUNICATE button for sending IMs (instant messages) for private conversation.

Let’s concentrate on CHAT for now. Click the CHAT button (or, as a short cut, press ENTER) and you will notice a white box or bar appear. This is the chat bar. You will also see some extra buttons appear – a HISTORY button as well as SAY and SHOUT buttons.

1.3: The chat bar

When other people are near, you can chat to them by typing text into the chat bar and clicking SAY or SHOUT. Try this by clicking in the white chat bar and writing something. You will notice that as you type your avatar will mime the action of typing. This is useful in SL as it shows other people around that you are returning their message, rather than just standing there. (Some residents have gadgets that override this animation, however, so this won’t always be the case.)

Once you’ve typed your message select SAY (or, to save time, use the short cut ENTER) and your avatar will say this inworld. You will see a message at the bottom of your screen saying ‘You’ and what you said. Any other avatars nearby (within 20 metres) will also have this message on their screen and can type something back to you.

You will notice that your message gradually fades and disappears. If you want to go back to see what you’ve said and any other conversation click on the HISTORY button.

Here you will be able to view everything that has been said around you in this session inworld. This is very useful if you leave your keyboard or need to backtrack.

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The Basics

You can also select to SHOUT your message inworld (short cut CTRL and ENTER).

If you shout your message your voice will be carried up to 50 metres away. It is generally considered impolite to shout without good reason as it disrupts other people’s activities – as in real life (RL).

Try having a chat with some of the avatars around you. Please remember that behind every avatar is a real person with a real life and real feelings, just like you, so try to be as polite and courteous to them as you would be in RL. You might find that when you’re talking to people in SL they use lots of SL slang and jargon, such as lol (laughing out loud), np (no problem) and L$ (Linden dollars, the inworld currency). Don’t worry if you find it difficult to understand people at first.

There is a list of terms and slang on p 206 of the book to help you out, and you’ll find you soon get used to the language people use. And if you’re still not sure what someone means – ask them. It might have just been a typo!

To get rid of your chat bar again press ESCAPE. (This is useful as any short cuts you type will be entered as chat if it’s open.)

Instant messaging (IM) Now let’s look at the COMMUNICATE button. Click on this and a CONTACTS tab will appear. Click on this and two new tabs will appear at the top left of the window – FRIENDS and GROUPS. Here you can see any friends you have and groups you’ve joined. Don’t worry if you haven’t got any contacts here yet, I’ll be discussing making friends and joining groups more thoroughly in Chapter 5. For now, just take a look at the window.

You will see that there is an IM/CALL button on the right side of the window. If you’ve got any friends or groups you can click on their name and select this button (or just double-click on the name) to open up a tab for an IM chat with this person or group. To go back to your list of contacts simply click back on the CONTACTS tab.

If you’ve got no contacts you can still send an IM. Look around you and if there is someone present, click on their avatar with your right mouse button. You will see a little pie menu pop up. Click on SEND IM and it will open up a window so you can IM this person. Don’t actually IM a stranger unless you have something significant to say. Sending an IM is a bit like telephoning someone in RL and it is considered quite rude by SL residents to IM a stranger just to say ‘Hello’ or to tell them that you like their avatar. This sort of thing should be said in general chat instead. If you

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1.4: The GROUPS tab in my COMMUNICATE window

are going to IM someone you don’t know for a good reason, it’s more polite to put your entire message into one, rather than saying ‘Hello’ and expecting them to respond.

Once you’ve got an IM chat open, you can simply type a message into the white chat bar and press ENTER when you want them to see it. Only this person or group will be able to see the message you send. Once you’ve started a conversation you’ll be able to see the whole of your IM conversation with this person, which is useful if you’re having lots of IM chats at once.

If someone you want to IM isn’t online (it will tell you in the COMMUNICATE window), you can send them a message anyway and they will receive it the next time they go inworld. There is a limit to the amount of IMs people can receive when they aren’t inworld, however, so your IM may not be received if they are extremely popular.

Speech/Voice Another new advance for SL is speech – talking into a microphone to communicate with other members of SL.

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The Basics

When you are on a voice-enabled parcel, you can simply walk up to another avatar and begin speaking in a normal voice (no need to shout!). If your headset is correctly configured, you will see a voice intensity indicator above your avatar. This indicates that your voice can be heard by others on the parcel.

To hear another person’s voice, turn towards the person and move closer to them.

Each speaker’s volume is dependent on their distance from your camera, so the closer you are to another avatar the louder their voice will become. If you walk away from someone who is talking you will notice their voice become quieter.

You can have voice chat with groups of people in SL through the COMMUNICATE window (either through formal SL groups you belong to or a group of friends selected from your friends list). This means you can have real voice chat with groups of avatars, no matter where they are inworld. The volume of this chat isn’t based on your proximity to other avatars.

Speech is a very interesting advance in SL but it has divided the community into two different camps: those who approve and those who do not. There are many different reasons why people do not want speech. Some people regard speech as an intrusion from RL, thus taking away the mystery of their virtual character. There are also some people who roleplay a character of the opposite sex and do not wish their actual identity to be revealed. Ultimately, the decision to enable speech lies with the individual.

I, personally, do not use it.

Interacting with objects To interact with any object in SL you need to click on it.

Q Left-clicking on items allows your avatar to touch them with a ray of light.

For most items it will just appear as if your avatar is looking at the item. However, certain objects have automatic actions set up and react when they are touched. Try left-clicking on some items around you and see what happens.

Q Right-clicking (or APPLE key and mouse-click if using a Mac) on an object brings up a pie menu of interaction options. You can right-click on virtually anything around you, including other avatars. I’ll be covering this more fully in the next chapter. A common interaction option is SIT HERE. Try sitting on something around you.

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Moving on from orientation Now you’ve got the basics, have a go at the tasks laid out for you in orientation. After you have completed them, you will need to TELEPORT to Help Island Public by doing the following: í˘ą Click on the INVENTORY button at the bottom of your screen to open up your items. í˘˛ Click on the folder LIBRARY and click on LANDMARKS. í˘ł You should have a landmark here to ‘Help Island Public’. Double-click on this. í˘´ A new window will open up with options to TELEPORT to the location or to SHOW ON MAP. Select TELEPORT and you will be transported to the new location.

In Help Island you can find further resources and material relating to SL. It is a useful aid but only take a brief look around so you don’t get too overwhelmed with the information. It’s best to get used to the basic features before you overload yourself with details regarding activities such as building.

You will see various little green hands around Help Island, with text saying CLICK HERE at certain points. Try interacting with one of the hands by left-clicking on it. You will get a little note popping up with information on it. These notes are called notecards and they are used quite a lot in SL. Once you’ve read the note you can select to either DISCARD the notecard, to delete it or to KEEP IT and add it to your inventory (the place where all your objects are stored). If you choose to keep it you can open it up again by clicking on the INVENTORY button at the bottom of your viewer and retrieving the notecard from there. If you just close down the notecard by clicking on the ‘X’ in the right-hand corner the notecard will close but will not be deleted from your inventory.

You now possess the basic SL skills to get around inworld. So have a look around Help Island. Take a few minutes to interact with a few objects around you and chat with a few people. Try out your new SL skills and when you feel you are ready to learn more, read on to Chapter 2.

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The Basics

Hints and tips Q Run: You can make your avatar look like it is running by pressing CTRL and ‘R’ to turn to running mode (this won’t actually increase your speed). Press CTRL and ‘R’ again to return to walking mode. Don’t run everywhere; this will not only look quite silly, it will make it very obvious for more experienced members that you’re a newbie who’s just discovered this skill!

Q Move with your keyboard letters: You can also walk and fly using some of the letters in your keyboard: ‘A’ to turn left, ‘D’ to turn right, ‘W’ to walk forwards and ‘S’ to walk backwards.

For flying use ‘E’ to launch upwards and ‘F’ to fall down.

Q For advice: There are many places that newcomers can go to get advice. NCI (New Citizens Incorporated), The Shelter and the Orientation Station are all great places to go.

Q The SL time zone: SL follows Pacific Time (eight hours behind GMT). However the light changes throughout the day according to a four-hour day/night cycle, with night lasting only 45 minutes.

Q Change the light: If you don’t like it being darkish you can change the light by going to WORLD in the menu bar and selecting FORCE SUN and then one of the different sun options. You can use the short cut CTRL, SHIFT and ‘Y’ to immediately make a midday light effect.

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Mouse-clicking Your Way to Success

From building to teleporting, nearly all actions in SL involve using the mouse to select various options from windows and toolbars. I’ve already briefly shown you the difference between left- and right-clicking and I’ll now go into it in a bit more depth.

The usual rule of thumb is a left-click will interact with an object. So if your mouse arrow changes into a little hand symbol, dollar sign or chair symbol when you hover your mouse over an object, you know it is going to do something. It might give you information via a notecard, make your avatar sit on the object, produce a menu or do something unique like launch a rocket. The best way to find out is to left-click on the object and see how it reacts.

Right-clicking lets you do hundreds of things in SL and I’m going to show you the array of things that can happen when you click on the avatars and objects around you.

Let’s look at your own avatar first.

Your avatar menu If you right-click on yourself you will see a pie chart come up, as shown in the picture below. The following options will come up: Q GO: If you click on this it brings up a box containing blue direction arrows.

If you click on these arrows they will move you around, just like if you were using the arrows on your keyboard. You can left-click and drag this box to a more convenient location on the screen.

2.1: The pie menu seen when you right-click on your avatar

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Q GROUPS: This brings up a list of any SL groups you’ve joined. Groups are communities within SL. They are often formed for social reasons for people with similar interests or to keep people updated with events and information for favourite inworld venues. They can also be a useful way to market businesses within SL. You can view further information about each group by selecting the group in this menu and clicking INFO. There are also buttons on here that allow you to SEARCH for groups, LEAVE a group and CREATE your own group. Starting your own group currently costs L$100 (about 15 pence/30 US cents).

Joining a group can be free or you might have to pay. You also might need an invite before you can join.

Once you have joined a group you can receive group-only messages, send and receive group IMs (which is akin to a members-only chat room) and receive information through the group sent via pop-up notices.

You will also see that there is an ACTIVATE button in the GROUPS window. When you are a member of a few different groups you can select ACTIVATE to decide which group tag (title) appears over your avatar’s name. If you wander around you will notice that many other people have titles in front of their avatar’s names (located above their heads) such as ‘Member’, ‘Officer’ or ‘Resident’, which indicates the avatar’s position within the group. These names are decided by the group so you might find some rather odd titles out there.

Q PROFILE: This is information about you that is presented to other users. It will show your SL name, the date you first entered, your account status (whether you have a free account or have used payment), your partner if you have one (you can get married in SL), and any groups that you belong to.

This information is all added and updated automatically. There is also a 500character ABOUT text box for you to give information about yourself. Click on this box and put in some information, clicking OK when you’ve finished.

Now anyone looking at your profile can see this information.

Q APPEARANCE: This is where you dress and change your avatar’s appearance. I’ll be going into this in more detail in the next chapter.

Q TAKE OFF>: This allows you to remove any clothes or attachments you are wearing. You can attach various items that you are wearing, from hair and

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shoes to drinks and guns (yes, strangely enough even drinks and guns are selected to be ‘worn’ on your avatar). From this menu you see a further four sub menus: í˘“ HUD: The HUD (heads-up display) consists of eight points on your screen where you can ‘attach’ items (such as inworld books or gadgets) to look at them. You can detach any such items here. í˘” CLOTHES: You can select to remove specific items of clothing. í˘• DETACH ALL: You can completely strip your avatar of all clothes and attachments. í˘– DETACH: Here you can detach any items worn via the body part they are attached to (for example a gun would be attached to your left or right hand so you would need to go to: DETACH, LEFT HAND or RIGHT HAND, GUN).

Q GESTURES: This brings up the ACTIVE GESTURES window, where you can select to PLAY various gestures. Gestures are simply animations you can get your avatar to do, like performing backflips or dancing. Try a few of these gestures out and see what your avatar does.

Gestures can be useful in SL, but it’s advisable not to use them frivolously if you’re in public or busy places as you might look a little odd – just as it would in RL if you were to do backflips or blow kisses in the street for no reason. This kind of behaviour could even get you ejected from the place you are in for disturbing others.

Q FRIENDS: This brings up your COMMUNICATE window and shows your list of friends and groups. I’ve already explained how you can IM your friends through this window. You can also give your friends a TELEPORT link, to send them your location, select to see the PROFILE of any of your friends, PAY your friends some money or REMOVE them from your friends list. You can also select here whether each friend can see your online status and/or modify your objects.

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Mouse-clicking Your Way to Success

Create complex gestures You can also create your own combination of gestures in the ACTIVE GESTURES window by clicking on NEW. This brings up a NEW GESTURE window. You will see four names in the left-hand Library box: ANIMATION, SOUND, CHAT and WAIT. Here you can create a combination or sequence of gestures by adding these options to the STEPS box. Try the following to create your own gestures series: 햲 Remove any text from the STEPS box by selecting each line

of text and clicking REMOVE. 햳 Select ANIMATION from the LIBRARY box and click ADD.

You will see ‘Start Animation: None’ appear in the righthand STEPS. 햴 Go to the drop-down bar under ANIMATION TO PLAY.

Here you can see all the animations you have in your inventory. 햵 Choose an animation from the list. 햶 Select some different combinations with the other options

in the library. Perhaps add a SOUND if you have gathered any in your inventory yet. Or add in some text under CHAT to make your avatar say something. These actions will all occur simultaneously, but if you want them to occur one after the other you can add WAIT in between them. This will allow you to do a series of animations if you wish. 햷 Test out some different gestures by clicking on PREVIEW

to see what occurs.

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How to Get a Second Life

햸 When you’re happy with your action you can give it a

name in the DESCRIPTION line. You can even set a SHORTCUT KEY or a TRIGGER for the gesture (a word that you say in CHAT that sets off the gesture). 햹 Make sure you have ticked the ACTIVE box, then SAVE

your gesture and it will be stored in your inventory. 햺 Have a look in your inventory for the gesture. Right-click

on it and rename the gesture. (If you’ve set a trigger word, I suggest naming it, so you can easily find it later.) 햻 Go back to your ACTIVE GESTURE window and you will

see your new gesture listed. You will be able to select this gesture from the list.

Other avatars’ menus If you now click upon another avatar you will get a completely different menu from the other. Another set of options contained in a pie menu will appear, as shown below.

Q GO TO: This is basically an autopilot mode that makes you fly directly over to the avatar. It is an underused button in SL but is nonetheless very convenient, especially if you are looking at an avatar that is quite far away from you.

Q MUTE: This allows you to mute other avatars so you cannot hear them in chat conversations or IM and they cannot send you objects or notecards. This is helpful for griefers (people who are being annoying or offensive). You can also unmute them in this window.

Q PROFILE: You can view the avatar’s profile here. Notice that there is a NOTES

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2.2: Another avatar’s pie menu via right-click

tab at the end of the profile for you to write your own notes about this person (only you will see this). This is very useful for remembering who people are.

Q SEND IM: Here you can open up a window to send the person an IM. Q MORE >: This gives you further options to choose from. Here you can: send a calling card to the avatar (these are short cuts to profiles); inspect the avatar to find out further information about their clothes or attachments; and, if you own any land, you can choose to eject or freeze griefers from your land.

Q PAY: This opens up a box where you can pay another avatar in Linden dollars.

Q ADD FRIEND: This sends a friend request to the avatar. If they agree to become your friend they will be added to your friends list.

Object menus You can also bring up a menu by right-clicking on an object, even on the floor or a wall. Try this on any object around you. You will see a menu bar with the following options: Q TOUCH: This is the same as left-clicking on the item and it makes your avatar touch the object to start up any automatic action.

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2.3: The pie options on an object

Q CREATE: This opens up a window where you can create an object. I’ll cover this extensively in Chapter 8.

Q OPEN: If the object contains items, you can transfer them to your inventory by selecting OPEN and copying the items to your inventory.

Q EDIT: If you have created an object yourself, or have been given permission by the creator to edit one, this is where you can do it. I’ll be covering editing in more detail in Chapter 8.

Q MORE >: This brings up further options to select, such as wearing the item, taking copies of it, attaching it to your body or a HUD, deleting it, buying it or returning an item that someone else has left on your land. There is also a further MORE > list, where you can select to mute the object, inspect it or report abuse to the SL regulators. It may sound strange that you would want to mute or report abuse from an object, but the owner may have set an item so it sends out automatic notecards, landmarks (links to a location) or messages every time you walk nearby, which can be extremely annoying.

Q PAY: You can pay the owner of the object Linden dollars either as a gift or to buy or rent the object.

Q TAKE: You can take an object or selection of objects using this selection.

Q BUY: This option will appear instead of TAKE with certain objects. It brings up a window for buying the object.

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Poseballs You might have noticed floating coloured balls above objects around the SL world. These are known as poseballs and they animate your avatar in certain ways, enabling you to easily sit on a chair or lie on a bed, etc. They can also allow you to interact with other avatars, letting you dance with a partner on an adjacent poseball or even simulate sex.

Poseballs generally have floating text above them, describing what they do. For example, a poseball above a chair might have ‘sit’ above it, or there might be ‘tango’ above two poseballs that can enable you to dance the tango with another avatar. To interact with the poseball you just need to right-click on it and select SIT HERE (or whatever animation comes up in the place of this). You will then be animated in a certain way.

The rule of thumb for groups of poseballs is that pink is for female and blue is for male.

Q SIT HERE: You can select to sit on the object. This isn’t always possible, but the option is always available for your avatar to attempt to sit there. When you are sitting on the object, this option will be STAND UP. Try right-clicking and left-clicking on the objects and avatars around you. Don’t be scared of testing and clicking.

Now before you move on to the next chapter and start looking at personalising your avatar you should get to know one very important tool in SL – your inventory.

Inventory As I’ve mentioned before, your inventory contains everything you own in SL. Imagine it as the contents of your life. It contains items such as clothes, hair, animations, notecards, weapons, cars, furniture and houses. Everything you ever get given, buy or create in SL is held in your inventory.

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There is a blue INVENTORY button at the bottom right of your viewer. Click on this to open up the inventory window. You will see there are two main folders: MY INVENTORY and LIBRARY. 2.4: The inventory menu box

Take a look inside the LIBRARY folder. You will see that there are further folders of objects like CLOTHING, ACCESSORIES and BODY PARTS. The library contains the items you are given for free when you first enter SL to start you off in the world.

Now click on the MY INVENTORY folder. Here there is the same kind of layout, but this contains the items you have collected or bought. Take a look inside the various folders. You will see the following: Q ANIMATIONS: This is where any animations you have acquired, such as poses or dances, are stored. If you do have some animations you can rightclick on them and select to PLAY INWORLD so everyone around will see it, or PLAY LOCALLY to test out the animation secretly so noone else can see.

Q BODY PARTS: This is for items such as skins, shapes, eyes and hair. You can select to WEAR the different items you acquire, or you can drag the item from your inventory onto your avatar for the same result. You will always need to be wearing a skin, a shape, a set of eyes and some hair. If you don’t like an item you try on you can’t detach them – you’ll need to find another item to wear instead.

Q CALLING CARDS: Calling cards are copies of profiles that you’ve been given.

When you become friends with someone you automatically receive a copy of

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their calling card. You can also be given a calling card by someone. Accepting a calling card doesn’t mean you’ve become friends. To view the cards, just double-click on the icon.

Q CLOTHING: This is for all your items of clothing, from tops and trousers to hats and shoes. You can select to WEAR or TAKE OFF any of the items. The items of clothes will know where to go so don’t worry about accidentally putting them on the wrong body part. Take care that you aren’t in a public place before taking off all your clothes, however, as you might offend people (unless of course you are in a specially designated clothes-optional area).

Q GESTURES: This is where all your actions, from backflips to pointing, are stored. These differ from animations in that they can make use of sound, animation and text all in one.

Q LANDMARKS: These are links to locations around the SL world. They are rather like a favourites section in an internet browser, as they record details of locations so you can instantly travel there without having to search for them.

When you double-click on a landmark it opens up a window giving you details of the location, as well as the option to either teleport there or show the location on the map.

Q LOST AND FOUND: If you leave something behind on someone’s land the owner will send it back to you when they come across it. This is where any such items go. Don’t take this to mean that it’s okay to leave objects lying around everywhere. Littering is very much frowned upon in SL. Q NOTECARDS: This is where any notecards (information cards) you are given are stored. To open these up to view the information, just double-click on the note icon or right-click and select OPEN. Q OBJECTS: Any individual items or boxes that you’ve bought, acquired or created appear here. If you have bought a whole folder of items these won’t appear in your OBJECTS folder, but in new folders in your inventory. You can select to wear these items on your avatar or on your HUD. You can also drag these out of your inventory to the floor to move them into the world (you’ll

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only be able to do this if you are permitted to build in that area – I’ll cover this fully in Chapter 7).

Q PHOTO ALBUM: This is where your snapshots and photos are stored. You can take photos in SL by going to FILE in the menu and selecting TAKE SNAPSHOT. You can select to either SAVE the photo onto the hard drive of your computer, send a postcard (email a friend the snapshot, with a message) or, for L$10, upload the picture into your photo album.

Q SCRIPTS: Scripts are little programs that create activities in objects. For example, you can create a program for a car so it drives around when you climb into it.

Q SOUNDS: You can upload a sound from your computer to use in your builds or gestures. A sound has to be an encoded wav file and they cost L$10 to upload.

Q TEXTURES: These are pictures or patterns used for building objects or making clothes. They are created in programs outside SL and uploaded.

Q TRASH: This is where any items you delete go. To empty it, right-click the bin and select EMPTY TRASH (or you can select this same option from FILE in the menu bar).

If you decide you don’t want to keep any of the items in your inventory you can easily delete them by right-clicking on the icon and selecting DELETE. You’ll also see options to RENAME the item and to look at its PROPERTIES. You can sort the items in your inventory alphabetically or according to the date you added it by clicking on SORT in the INVENTORY menu and selecting BY NAME or BY DATE. If you can’t find an item it can be helpful to sort the items by date as sometimes the item isn’t named as you’d thought.

Organising your inventory You will be surprised how easy it is to accumulate thousands of items in your inventory. Before long, it will become very difficult to find things unless you get organised.

I recommend creating folders in your inventory and filing your items in categories.

You can create folders by right-clicking on one of the main folders and selecting NEW

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FOLDER (or selecting NEW FOLDER from the CREATE menu in the inventory). It is also a good idea to have a favourites folder so you can find your most used items quickly and easily when you need them. This is especially useful for body parts as you will want to go back to your favourite skin after testing others out.

In addition to this, the more items you have in your inventory, the longer it will take to load it up and the more likely you are to have problems with it. I would advise keeping your inventory as tidy as possible, deleting items you don’t need so it is a manageable size.

2.5: A well-organised inventory

Searching and filtering As it can be tricky finding items in your inventory it is useful to be able to narrow it down. There are two ways of doing this.

First, you can use the search bar underneath the menu bar in the INVENTORY window to type in a search time. For example you can type in ‘black’ and only the items that have ‘black’ in their name will be visible.

Second, you can put filters on the display so you can only see certain types of items.

To do this go to FILE and select SHOW FILTERS. This opens up another box with a list of the different types of items in your inventory. You need to untick to remove, or tick to include the kinds of items you wish to search through. For example, if you want to find a notecard on clothing you could untick all options except notecards.

Once you’ve found the item you are looking for don’t forget to turn off the filters by selecting RESET FILTERS and/or delete the word from your search bar so you can see your full inventory again.

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Recent items In the inventory window there is also a tab next to ALL ITEMS called RECENT ITEMS. If you click on this it will show you all items that you have acquired or re-entered into your inventory since the last time you logged off. This is a useful tool as it saves you from searching for any items that have been newly added.

Creating new inventory items Aside from new folders, you can also create various other items in your inventory. If you go to the CREATE menu option at the top of your INVENTORY window you will see that there are options to create the following types of new items: NEW FOLDER, NEW SCRIPT, NEW NOTE, NEW GESTURE, NEW CLOTHES and NEW BODY PARTS. (You can also create these items by right-clicking on any folder in your inventory.)

If you select any of these options a new item will appear in your inventory. You will then need to double-click on the item to open it and you can modify and save your changes. Try creating these different files for yourself through the inventory.

Q NEW FOLDER: As I outlined on pp 26–27, you can create new folders.

Q NEW SCRIPT: You can create mini programs for objects here.

Q NEW NOTE: Here you can make a note to give to other people. Once you have created the note, you just need to open it up and write in your note, save it and rename it. Notes are text-only documents.

Q NEW GESTURE: This is another place to create new gestures.

Q NEW CLOTHES: Here you can create new clothes. I’ll be covering this in the next chapter.

Q NEW BODY PARTS: You can create new body parts here, something I will be showing you in the next chapter.

Once you’ve edited any new item you should always rename it so you can easily find it again. You can then give the item to another person by dragging and dropping the item onto their avatar or their profile. They will only get a copy of this object – the original will stay in your inventory.

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Hints and tips Q Move objects: If the object can be moved (ie it isn’t locked) you should be able to drag it around by holding down CTRL and dragging it with your mouse.

Q Another way to do gestures: You can also select to perform gestures from the bar at the bottom of your screen. When you have the CHAT bar open a GESTURES drop-down menu will come up so you can select to perform them. This is something that is very common in SL – being able to reach the same goal through various different routes and menu options.

Q Stopping animations: You should be able to stop animations easily by selecting STOP or moving off an object that is animating you. However, sometimes your avatar can get stuck in a certain pose or movement (often if you teleport while you are doing the animation). Don’t worry – everyone has been stuck in an animation at some point, and some occasions are more embarrassing than others. If this happens, go to WORLD in the menu bar and select STOP ANIMATIONS. Failing this, try using a stop animations object if you have one (see the box on pp 55–56 for information on these). As a last resort you can always log out and in again.

Q Your inventory: Managing your inventory is an important topic and there are some great classes within SL that can show you how to best organise it. Take a look at Chapter 4 to find out how to search for event listings.

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Q Put links in your notecards: It is possible to drag and drop landmarks and even other notecards from your inventory into a notecard. These items will appear as blue links (rather like hyperlinks to websites) and when you click on them they will open up the inserted landmark or notecard.

Q Inventory capacity: While there is no official limit to your inventory, it has been suggested that when your inventory runs over 4,000 items you are at a greater risk of losing items if something goes wrong with the SL system. There is no proof of this, but it is better to be safe than sorry. You can reduce the number of inventory items by using storage systems such as the excellent Inventory Storage Boxes from Thinc, created by Toneless Tomba.

You can currently find Thinc’s premises at THINC (152, 50, 28).

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Now that you’re more familiar with the SL world around you, let’s look at making your avatar a bit more unique by changing your appearance. This will also show other residents that you know your stuff – looks are a vital part of integration and acceptance in SL. You can make yourself look prim and proper, or wild and wacky – the possibilities are endless. For the moment I’ll keep it simple.

Before you start getting undressed in public, take a look at your location – this is displayed in the centre of the menu bar.

You will see the name of the place, the map coordinates and its rating (either PG or mature). In PG you aren’t allowed to use obscene language, use violence, show any sexual content or display nudity – you could be reported to Linden Lab if you do. As you will be altering your appearance and there may be glimpses of naked flesh, it’s best to go to a mature area for this chapter. It is also best to go somewhere that you won’t be disturbed too much. The best place for this is a sandbox (a public place for building).

Find a mature sandbox by doing the following steps: í˘ą Click on the SEARCH button at the bottom of your screen to open the SEARCH window (I’ll be covering this tool extensively in the next chapter). í˘˛ Select the PLACES tab at the top of the window. í˘ł Type ‘mature sandbox’ into the text box and press ENTER (or click on the SEARCH button). í˘´ Click on the top location in the list of results and look at the right side of the SEARCH menu. í˘ľ Click on the TELEPORT button at the right of the screen to transport your avatar there.

Once you’re safe in a mature sandbox where you won’t be offending anyone, right-click on your avatar and select APPEARANCE. This will bring up a window with a whole array of options to change how you look. Your avatar will stand in a star shape and will

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Sandboxes Many people have their own land in SL that they have bought or rented. However, there are also a number of people who don’t have land and therefore don’t have anywhere to build (as most land has restrictions on people building there).

Therefore public spaces called sandboxes have been created for people to build in. They are also useful for those who need more space to build than their land allows. Sandboxes are not just a place to build, but also a place where you can work on your appearance.

Some sandboxes are Linden funded and some are privately owned. They vary in their sizes and how busy they are.

There are rules for each sandbox so make sure you look at the signs to find out what is allowed. Sandboxes are automatically wiped throughout the day so that any objects that have been left there are cleared up. Make sure you find out from the signs when these wipes are going on in case you lose any objects you have put down or are working on.

I love sandbox areas because you can learn so much from them. Even I frequent sandboxes every few weeks to refresh my knowledge from talking to new residents and older alike.

They have fantastic communities within who practically live there (although you cannot build a house to live in as it will be wiped!). Be respectful towards others and you will find lots of help if you need it.

The main sandboxes that I recommend would be the PUBLIC SANDBOX and NCI (New Citizens Incorporated). NCI is especially good as it also has many daily classes and lots of freebies and information to get you started inworld. There is also a great community of residents and helpers there.

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3.1: Not that I need to, but here I am editing my appearance

have the words EDITING APPEARANCE over its head. This lets other avatars know that you’re busy. The camera angle will also change so you are facing your avatar, ready for you to view any changes you make.

Changing your appearance in Second Life is quick and easy. A wide variety of controls let you settle on exactly the look you had in mind. Although the huge number of variables can be intimidating at first, most residents quickly get the look they want.

(Most continue to tweak their look for hours or even months afterwards, but that’s another topic entirely.)

An important thing to understand about your avatar is that it isn’t just one simple physical entity. Your avatar is made up of different aspects – the shape, the skin, hair, eyes and clothing. Not only can you alter these aspects in the APPEARANCE window, but you can save different looks and even buy elements such as skins, eyes or pre-made shapes from shops (I’ll come to this later). Take a look at the window in front of you.

You’ll see the following tabs: Q Shape: This tab determines the overall form and shape of your avatar. This is also where you select whether your avatar is male or female.

Q Skin: This determines the colour of your avatar’s skin, as well as skin details such as wrinkles, make-up and any tattoos you may have.

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Q Hair: Here you can control not only the colour and style of your hair, but eyebrows and facial hair as well.

Q Eyes: You can change your eye colour here and load up an image for your eyes.

Q Shirt, Pants, Shoes, Socks, Jacket, Gloves, Undershirt, Underpants and Skirt: These tabs allow you to take off or create new clothing pieces. You can also set the overall dimensions, colour and texture of your clothing. (For non-US readers, you’ll need to remember that US terminology for clothing terms is used, so it’s ‘pants’ rather than trousers and a ‘shirt’ for a general top. You don’t want to take off the wrong pants in public!)

There are also the following blue buttons at the bottom of the window: Q SAVE, SAVE AS: These buttons save the changes you’ve made to the currently selected body part or clothing. Be careful not to save over an item you want to keep. SAVE AS lets you pick a new name.

Q SAVE ALL: Saves all the body parts and clothing you have on.

Q MAKE OUTFIT: Allows you to save any parts of your current appearance (body parts, clothing, even attachments) together in an outfit folder. You can then drag the folder onto your avatar to switch your clothing.

Q REVERT: This button undoes all changes made to the current body part or clothing.

Alter your body parts Have a go at altering different parts of your appearance using the individual slider controls. These sliders give varying degrees of altering your appearance. This is quite a fun part of the appearance mode and you can do quite a lot here, from changing your height or width to changing your hairstyle and eye colour. In fact, with the use of sliding bars, nearly every aspect of the avatar can be changed.

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Try clicking on SHAPE and you will see more sub menus come up. The first one of these is BODY. When BODY is selected you will see options to change your body with sliders. You will be able to see more sub menus come up starting with the BODY. When BODY is selected you can see more options appear in the main box area.

The slider bars for each option start from 0 and end at 100. If you left-click and drag the sliders you can change how your avatar looks. Try this on the HEIGHT option and see how your avatar gets shorter and taller.

3.2: Using the sliders in BODY, I have gone from a muscly 7 feet to this

At the moment have a play around with the controls, but don’t save the changes.

If you can’t edit any aspect of your avatar it is probably because the item you are trying to change doesn’t have permissions set to MODIFY. I’ll be explaining this thoroughly later on. For the moment, if you want to try editing the item, take a look through your inventory to try on another item to see if you can modify it instead.

Alter your clothing Once you’ve had an experiment with your avatar’s shape, skin, hair and eyes, try looking at the options for clothes. Here you can change the shape of what you are wearing. You can turn a pair of trousers into a pair of shorts just by adjusting the length.

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Hair attachments You may find that your avatar seems to have no hair in the appearance menu. This will be because your avatar is wearing a bald base as its actual hair and then has a hair attachment (a bit like a wig) on top. The hair attachment is an object rather than a normal body part so it can’t be edited in the appearance menu. (I’ll be showing you how to edit objects in Chapter 8.)

Most experienced residents have hair attachments because having it as an object gives you much more freedom to edit it, allowing you to create some truly fantastic styles, with flexible flowing locks.

3.3: A hairpiece made from 98 prims, courtesy of Sarabi Spatula

If you wish to remain as you were when you started the exercise then just press CANCEL and you will revert to your normal self. If you wish to save the appearance over your current one, then press SAVE. However, if you want to save the complete outfit for use at a later date you can select MAKE OUTFIT and save the outfit inside a new folder in the inventory. With this method you can make a more flamboyant or showy outfit and call it ‘party outfit’. Then you can drag the complete folder onto your avatar from your inventory for an instant change.

Open up your INVENTORY and take a look at the LIBRARY folder and CLOTHING, where there will be the free clothing you were given when you started. To wear any of the items just double-click the item you want to try and you will wear it. You can also right-click on the item and select WEAR.

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3.4: Editing a jacket

Creating new clothing I’m going to give you a very basic clothes lesson for you to try to make your own clothes. You’ll need to make sure you are somewhere high up or private for this, so I’d advise flying up high in the air.

Shoes in SL As with hair attachments, there are many shoe attachments that are actually objects. You will need to wear particular shoe bases with these that lift your feet up to the right height and position for wearing them.

As in RL, you might find that a pair of shoes you acquire doesn’t fit. However, in SL you can change your body shape so you can easily alter your foot size right down to 0 to get a proper fit.

You can also alter the shoes themselves and I’ll be showing you how to edit objects in Chapter 8.

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í˘ą Right-click on your avatar and select APPEARANCE. í˘˛ So you can easily go back to your current outfit, click on the MAKE OUTFIT button to save the full outfit you have on now. í˘ł Select which items you want to save (remember to click the boxes for shape, skin, hair and eyes as well), then give your outfit a name and save it. í˘´ Now take off your shirt. í˘ľ Select the SHIRT appearance tab and click on CREATE NEW SHIRT. 3.5: A new white shirt

í˘ś Experiment with the slider bars to change the item. You can give yourself different sleeve lengths. The pictures above the sliders show the very extremes you can give yourself. For example, you can see no sleeves and full-length ones. If you move the slider left and right you can see the shirt change on your actual avatar. í˘ˇ Work your way down and move the sliders until you are happy with your top and then take a look at the COLOUR/TINT and FABRIC boxes to the side of the slider bars.

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í˘¸ The FABRIC box refers to what type of material you wish to use for your item of clothing. (It is possible to both buy and create textures and I will be covering them more extensively in Chapter 10). If you click on FABRIC it will bring up a window showing the textures available in your INVENTORY. í˘š Click on any folder and choose a texture. You will be able to see it on your avatar. ě?… Have a play around with the different textures. ě?ˆ When you’re happy with the texture, select COLOUR/TINT. ě?‰ Here you can change the colour of your top by selecting from a whole range of options. You will need to click on one of the little boxes towards the bottom of the window first to select a colour to start off with. The big box to the left of your screen shows you the colour you are selecting. You can also select a colour from something around you by clicking on the little picture of an eyedropper and clicking on that colour. ě”ˆ Experiment with different looks and when you are happy click SAVE AS and enter a name for your shirt. 씉 Go to your inventory and find your item. Because you created this item yourself, you are now able to give it away or sell it.

Buying clothing Clothing is probably the biggest commodity apart from land in SL and there are a limitless amount of clothes to be created or bought. You don’t actually need to spend any money to get yourself some new clothes as there are plenty of freebies out there for newcomers.

There is a freebie place on Help Island to get you started and there are also some other great freebie locations around SL. I can recommend Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise on NineInchNerds island, Freebie warehouse and Yadnis freebies. You can find various freebie locations by opening the SEARCH window, selecting PLACES, typing ‘freebie’ and pressing ENTER. Try finding Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise by doing the following steps:

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í˘ą Open up the SEARCH window and go the PEOPLE tab. Type in ‘sarah nerd’ and press ENTER. You will see Sarah Nerd’s profile come up. í˘˛ Go to the tab PICKS on her profile. These are her favourite places and personal picks. It can be a great way of advertising a business. í˘ł Take a look through her picks for the Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise tab and select to TELEPORT there.

3.6: Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise

Upon arriving you will see lots of items that are free. They become free for many reasons. Some designers in SL give out samples to encourage people to visit their shops.

Other people just give away for the fun of creating, and there are some items that are from people who have left the game, for instance.

Have a good look around. Try buying an item of clothing (yes, you select to buy it even if it’s free) by doing the following: í˘ą Have a look around and zoom in on the pictures using the viewing controls you learnt in Chapter 1. í˘˛ Choose an item you like, right-click on it and select BUY. This will open a window showing the contents you will receive, plus the price. í˘ł Look at the contents and check that the price says L$0 before selecting BUY.

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í˘´ Take a look in your inventory to find the item. It might be in the OBJECTS or CLOTHES folders or in a new folder entirely. Remember that an easy way to find items you’ve just acquired is to view RECENT ITEMS. í˘ľ Now go to a mature area if you aren’t in one already, then double-click the item to wear it. If you end up with a box on your head, don’t worry – you just need to unpack the box before you can try the items on, so detach it (or select to DROP it to the floor).

Boxed items Some items appear in your inventory as boxes that you need to open up before you can see the items. Unfortunately you can’t open them up in your inventory and will need to drag the boxes out to SL. If you have a boxed item, open it up by doing the following: 햲 Left-click on the item and drag it out of the inventory to the

floor. (If you aren’t in a sandbox or on land where you have permission to build, you won’t be able to do this, so make sure you’re somewhere you can build.) 햳 Right-click on the box on the floor and click OPEN. 햴 Select to either COPY TO INVENTORY or COPY AND

WEAR. In both cases the items will be copied into your inventory, but with COPY AND WEAR you can try on all the clothes straight away. í–ľ If you choose COPY TO INVENTORY, try the items on by

going into your inventory and selecting to wear them. If you have a whole outfit you can drag the entire folder onto your avatar to wear it (this will take off all your other clothes and attachments, however, including any hair).

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I now want you to get yourself some free skins, suitable clothes, shoes and hair. Try searching for some other freebie locations if you’d like some more and afterwards teleport to a mature sandbox so you can get changed.

Now take a good look at your purchases in your INVENTORY. You can try on skins, shapes, hair and any tattoos you have bought in the same way as the clothes, so try these on too.

I will cover basic and advanced clothes making later on, but for now you can have good outfits using this method. When you get some Linden dollars you can buy some really great items for yourself. Other ways of altering your appearance come in the form of jewellery, glasses and any other outfit accessories in SL. Hopefully you should now be looking very good and not so much like a newbie. If any of your items needs tweaking, go to APPEARANCE mode and adjust your look using the sliders. Not all items you buy will allow you to alter them – this depends on the permissions the maker has set.

Permissions Every single creation or object in SL has permission options. If you right-click any object and go to EDIT it will open the editing window. From here click on the MORE >> button to view the full details for the object. At the bottom of the window you will see three small boxes: Q MODIFY Q COPY Q RESELL/GIVE AWAY The boxes will probably be greyed out if it isn’t an object of your creation and it will state ‘You cannot modify this object’ – this is so you can’t change the permission options.

When you create an object you specify these permission options. If you put a tick next to MODIFY, when you sell it the next owner can modify it. If you tick COPY, the next owner can copy it as many times as they want. And if RESELL/GIVE AWAY is ticked they can resell your item. You can never have all three boxes unticked; at least one has to be ticked.

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An item with all permissions ticked is known as full permissions or ‘full perms’.

This means it is full copy, full modify and full transfer.

Sellers have to be careful about permissions. If you spend two weeks making a big and complex build, but set the permissions so the next owner can copy and resell the item, someone could buy it and then resell infinite copies of it. This happens a lot in SL. There are many problems with people reselling items in SL. Certain items, such as textures, require full permissions to be enabled so someone building with it can sell on their creation. This, however, means that some people can easily sell on the textures themselves, making a profit out of someone else’s work, even if the items come with notecards forbidding this kind of reselling. Additionally, a lot of items with restricted permissions in SL are now being copied by using external programs, causing further problems.

This kind of illegal reselling is taken very seriously in SL. The best way to defend your business is to report any illegal reselling to Linden Lab, who can then give the reseller what is known as a ‘takedown order’, forcing the reseller to stop selling the offending item or items.

A large part of the appearance you are going to create is dependent upon your role in SL. This is a learning curve but it’s part of the magic of the game. You may stick with one look or change daily or with your mood in RL. I’ll leave that up to you and hope you find something that you like. Remember that in SL you can be whatever you want.

Your avatar doesn’t even have to take a human form. You could be a machine or something not of this world. Many subcultures exist in SL and by altering your appearance you can roleplay any theme/culture in SL you wish. (I’ll be discussing these kinds of subcultures and groups in Chapter 5).

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Hints and tips Q Editing your appearance: You can mess around to your heart’s content with your appearance. As long as you hit the cancel button at the end it will not save any changes.

Q Selling outfits: You can save any good outfits and sell them to make money for some new outfits or other items later on.

Q Give away your clothing: If you want to give any of your clothing to another avatar, drag the item from your inventory onto the avatar (if the person is near) or onto the person’s profile (if they are not). Check the item’s permissions first, however, as many items of bought clothing are ‘non-transferable’ so you can’t give them to others.

Q Inspect another avatar: If you like an object another avatar is wearing or holding (for example, a hat or their hair), you can right-click on the avatar and click MORE> then INSPECT to learn more about their items. The owner and creator of the objects will be listed here. If you want to know more, you can search for the creator in the SEARCH menu and look at their profile. The creator might well have a store where you can buy the item for yourself or you could IM them to get further information.

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Once you’ve got to grips with your appearance and you’re (hopefully) feeling more confident, it’s time for a bit of fun. I’m going to show you around some of the more entertaining areas in SL so you can explore the different activities that are out there. So put on your best clothes and get ready with your SEARCH bar because you’re going out.

Finding locations The best way to travel from location to location is to teleport there. I’ve already briefly shown you the search tool, the map and the landmarks. Now I’m going to show you these in more detail so you can master these tools and learn how to find the locations you want in SL. Q Search window: You open this using the SEARCH button at the bottom of your viewer. This lets you search through the lists of adverts, events, places, people and groups in SL to find what you are looking for. It also lets you search land for sale and shows you the places that are currently the most popular inworld. The search bar is an essential tool for traversing through SL. Q Map: The MAP button at the bottom of your viewer opens up this tool. You can search for particular places in the map if you know the name of the land and/or its coordinates. All you need to do is type in the name of the land next to the SEARCH button and click on SEARCH. The map will then show this location. You can then type in the exact coordinates and select TELEPORT to this spot. You can also move around the map with your mouse and doubleclick on a spot to teleport there.

Q Landmarks: These are location links stored in your inventory. You can store landmarks to places you have visited by selecting CREATE A LANDMARK from the WORLD option in your menu bar. You can also be given landmarks by people or objects you walk past. You will see a landmark

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window, showing you the name of the place and its coordinates, plus the options to TELEPORT there or to SHOW ON MAP. If you close this landmark it will save to your inventory, so don’t worry about losing them.

When you click on a landmark in your inventory it opens up this landmark window.

Land terms in SL Q Sims: The SL grid is made up of thousands of sims. These are areas of land, measuring 65,536 square metres.

Q Parcels: Sims can be subdivided into land lots, which are called parcels. Parcels are available for rental, purchase or other specific purposes.

Q Regions: A region is a collection of sims that fall under one person or one group’s control.

Use the search bar The search window is a bit like a search engine on the internet. You type in for what you’re looking for in the search box and get a list of different results. On the web you transport yourself to further websites by clicking on the links; in SL the search window lets you teleport to various places.

4.1: The search bar

As with many search engines, you can conduct different types of searches to narrow down the results. The various tabs in the search window allow you to specify the following different categories:

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Q All: This simply searches every reference to the name. So if you enter SLguides it would show you anything with SLguides in the name – land names, adverts, events, place names, groups, etc.

Q Classifieds: This looks at all the classified ads people have listed. This is very similar to the internet and you will find that certain ‘hit words’ get used frequently and you can sometimes get very strange results. When you are a more experienced resident you might want to place your own classified ad for an event or location.

Q Events: This gives details of parties, workshops, contests and more. Anyone can plan and throw an event, so don’t be shy. Whether you’re looking for something social, educational, competitive or just a dance, check out the events listings, or you can make your own event by going to Secondlife.com (I’ll cover this in Chapter 5).

Q Popular places: This shows you a list of the 20 places that are currently the most popular. It is usually frequented by adult or money islands with the odd dance sims. At the time of writing, the popularity of a place is measured by something called traffic. This is a combination of figures pertaining to visits to your land combined with how long people have stayed or even walked about on it. If you look at the top of your SL window and left-click on WORLD, then select ABOUT LAND, you will see the traffic figure towards the bottom of the first tab, GENERAL. The higher the traffic is the busier you are. There are rumours that traffic might be abolished, but this hasn’t happened yet.

Q Land sales: This shows all the land that is currently for sale. I will show you how you can buy your own land in Chapter 7.

Q Places: This allows you to find land, sims or parcels of land by typing in their names, just like a search engine. You can only search for places that have chosen to list their land here (which currently costs L$30 a week).

Q People: You can search through all the members of SL to find people. You can then look at the person’s profile here. A people search can actually be very useful for finding new places to visit, as you can look at people’s PICKS

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to see their favourite inworld spots. If someone is associated with an inworld business or location you can find it very easily here.

Q Groups: You can find details of groups and select to join them.

Try finding a fun location to explore with your search tool by following these steps: í˘ą Open up the SEARCH window. í˘˛ Select the PLACES tab and click in the SEARCH box. í˘ł Type in ‘newbie’ and press ENTER. A list of search results will be displayed. í˘´ Click through the results and look at the details of each location in the right-hand side of the window. You will see a picture (if there is one), some key words about the place, details of the traffic and the land area, and the exact place name and its coordinates. You will also see the options to TELEPORT there or SHOW ON MAP. í˘ľ Choose one of the locations from the list that you are interested in visiting.

Teleporting problems You should be able to teleport straight over to the location you’ve selected. However, sometimes this isn’t possible if the location has too many people there already or there are technical problems. If you don’t succeed at first, try again later or choose another location.

í˘ś Select SHOW ON MAP and your map will open up, showing you the location.

Use your map to see the areas around your location by clicking and dragging the image of the land. You can also zoom in and out on the land using the slider at the bottom of the map window or using the scroll bar on your mouse. í˘ˇ Now go back to your search window and select to TELEPORT to the location.

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When you arrive at your new location have a wander round. You might find that your surroundings take a long time to load up, but this is quite normal so just wait for everything to appear. Don’t stay standing on your landing spot for too long, as someone else might teleport there, and you could find yourself being kicked or landed on by another avatar.

Once you have had a proper look around, take the time to look at the top of the screen. You’ll be able to see your new location and the PG/mature rating of the land.

You will probably also see some other symbols to the side of your screen telling you what you can and can’t do in the land. Hover your mouse over these symbols to see what they mean for your avatar. Alternatively, refer to the list of meanings below: Flying is not enabled. (People can fly into the land or over it, but they cannot start to fly while here.)

Building is not enabled for visitors.

Visitors may not run scripts.

Pushing (using weapons that push other avatars) is not allowed.

The area is voice enabled.

This represents your health for damage-enabled areas, where you can be harmed and may actually die. If you die, you are teleported back to your home location in SL. (You can set your home location on land you own by going to WORLD and SET HOME. The default home location is your first location in SL.)

Music in SL Many venues have radios links or live DJs playing music, so turn on your music button at the bottom of your viewer to listen. If you give your DJ a tip they will often play your favourite song.

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It’s a good idea to pick up a notecard about the area and have a chat with some of the people around. If you like the location and want to be able to find it again, create a LANDMARK. Once you’ve explored, try searching for a few more things through the SEARCH window. Try looking for me, madddyyy Schnook, under the PEOPLE search tab, or even the creator of SL, Philip Linden.

If you take a look in the groups tab you will probably find groups for your favourite hobbies or interests and I’ll be showing you in the next chapter how you can join groups and what this entails. It’s also worth searching through PLACES and even CLASSIFIEDS to find locations and venues linked to your personal interests.

Red ban lines You may come across ban lines in your travels – red lines of text saying ‘sfdsfsdsdfs’, BANNED or NO ENTRY – that stop you from entering the land. This is because the owner of the land has selected to make the land private, only allowing access to certain avatars.

The types of activities and locations available Now that you’ve familiarised yourself with the methods for finding locations, it’s time to explore the virtual world around you.

The activities and locations in SL are ever-expanding and changing so I am going to show you a small selection of some places you can visit. (Some of these places may have moved premises or disappeared altogether, so if you can’t find any of these locations, try looking for something similar instead.)

Live music events Yes, real live bands and acts can play in SL via a stream. Look under EVENTS and select the category LIVE MUSIC to see a list of upcoming live music events and venues. You can find virtually every genre you could wish for and many great artists and bands

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playing live. If you click on one you find interesting, you can teleport right to it.

There are many venues that stage live music events and I can’t list them all, but I can recommend the Dublin sim, which has many true live events a few times a week.

Clubs and dance halls There are literally thousand upon thousand of SL clubs and dance halls, and they cater for all tastes – from 80s music through to more adult themes. The best place to search for these is either in EVENTS or CLASSIFIEDS. Here are some of some of my favourites: Q Cloud Nine Romantic Dance Venue at Mullein (175, 216, 219): This is a good club for couples to go and dance in a formal and romantic atmosphere. I especially like it because there aren’t vendors and malls everywhere you look. The venue is up in the sky and it’s a great place to go with a loved one.

Q Phat Cat’s Jazzy Blue Lounge at PhatLand (65, 216, 34): Another fantastic dance hall with lovely surroundings. It does have a large mall connected to it, but this is separated from the dance area. This is a very popular hang-out and I sometimes have trouble getting in the sim as it is always very busy.

4.2: The Cloud Nine Ballroom

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Q Dance Island at Dance Island (106, 164, 22): This is more of a party place that’s great for meeting people. It has a great selection of people, good hosts and some excellent upbeat music. It’s also not too busy so there isn’t generally much lag.

Lag Lag is when the result of an action – such as chatting or walking – appears later than expected. For instance, you could be chatting on SL but your text may have a 20-second delay, which can be very frustrating. There are many reasons for lag, such as high traffic or large groups of people and animations in the same place. You can help reduce lag by reducing prim heavy hair and jewellery and reducing your draw distance (how far you can see objects and images clearly). To reduce your draw distance go to EDIT, PREFERENCES, GRAPHICS and put a lower number in the DRAW DISTANCE box.

Places of virtual beauty These are some truly beautiful virtual places where you can wander around and view the sites. These are some of my favourite sims where you can chill out and think: Q Svarga at Svarga (128, 128, 0): This is a fantasy castle with some stunning grounds and you can take a guided tour around it from the teleport spot. This 4.3: A snapshot of Svarga

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is my favourite place in the whole of SL. It has been very well thought out – you really need to see it yourself to understand how amazing it is.

Q Midnight Reflections at Midnight Reflections (128, 128, 0): This is another stunner of a sim, with huge waterfalls and trails running through detailed forests – the attention to detail is phenomenal. I really do urge you to go and see this unique sim and lose yourself in its absolute beauty. It isn’t currently advertised in places, but you can find it by searching for Midnight in the map.

4.4: The stunning waterfalls at Midnight Reflections

Q The Forest of Kahruvel at Rodeo (28, 38, 50): This is a huge forest that you can explore to find some very tranquil surroundings and a few surprises.

Q The Lost Gardens of Apollo at Apollo (194, 105, 58): This is an ultra romantic spot because of its lovely scenery. It is well known as one of the best places in SL.

Shopping I’ve already shown you some freebie locations in the last chapter, but freebies are the very tip of the iceberg with shopping. Once you’ve got some Linden dollars (see Chapter 6 to find out how) you can spend hours buying clothing, buildings, furniture, textures, scripts and a whole host of other items. There are thousands of shops to choose from so just type the item you are looking for in your search bar in PLACES or CLASSIFIEDS for listings.

Q Made Men at Made (83, 141, 52): This is a fantastic shop for men’s clothes.

It fills an entire sim and suits most budgets.

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Q caLLie cLine at caLLiefornia (227, 196, 22): This women’s clothing and beauty shop comes highly recommended from my female friends.

Q GuRL 6 HAIR at GuRLyWood (110, 111, 22): This is a great hair shop that sells hair for male and female avatars.

Education There are lots of education events for all sorts of activities – from building or scripting to psychology or religion. There are many good educational islands devoted to classes and teaching. There are also many discussion events about thousands of subjects. Take a look at EVENTS and EDUCATION to see the upcoming classes and discussions. For those who don’t like classes there are virtual books that you can learn from or just sit back and read. Try searching for books in the CLASSIFIEDS or looking for a library in PLACES. Here are some examples of some great educational places inworld: Q Ivory Tower Library of Primitives at Natoma (210, 164, 27): A huge tower where you can learn about all aspects of prims and building. This is a fantastic resource for everyone.

Q NCI (New Citizens Incorporated): There are various NCI places to help newbies. Once such place is Kuula, which has daily classes, fantastic teachers, a sandbox and lots of freebies.

Q TUi NEO Head Quarters at Technical User interfacing (103, 204, 23): This is a school that gives various classes on the tools in SL, from building and scripting to furniture and art.

Q Academy of Second Learning at Eson (32, 162, 351): This university setting holds workshops, free classes and help sessions.

Q Slguides at Publishing Island (208, 147, 43): You can buy my step-by-step virtual books from my store on a huge array of topics including clothesmaking, building, jewellery-making and how to be a DJ. Q Book Island at Book Island (171, 198, 36): A community of 70 publishers, authors, editors and all things SL/RL book- and publishing-related.

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Business There’s been a huge influx of RL businesses coming into SL now that the community has grown. They all have different reasons for coming in. One huge drawcard of SL is the fact that they can advertise a product to a potential market for a fraction of what it costs in RL. At the moment, most of the business presence is a sim or island with a specific theme. For instance, films are being given fantastic 3D representations, such as Die Hard at Silverscreen (130, 94, 33), which lets you walk through scenes in the film.

Here is a list of other businesses in SL: Q IBM: There are too many sims to list so just do a search. It’s used mainly for business-related training of staff.

Q BMW at BMW New World1 or BMW New World2: Fantastic cars and other treats related to BMW.

Useful gadgets There are many gadgets out there in SL to enable you to do interesting things, from hug attachments and chin highlighters to weapons and parachutes.

Here is a list of some extremely useful attachments that it is worth getting your hands on to enhance your second life: Q Flight feather: This lets you fly as high as you want with no limit.

Q Animation overriders: You can change the way you walk and move with an animation overrider. This is a gadget you can wear that, for example, alters your usual walk to suit certain moods. Animation overriders can even make you yawn or do other activities while you are standing, or can stop the typing action your avatar makes when you are chatting. They can be picked up for free in many places, so try looking for them if you are interested.

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Q Stop animations objects: Sometimes you can get stuck doing an animation in SL and can’t stop. A stop animations object is a very useful thing to have in your inventory. You can either wear these or drag them onto the floor (if you are able to) and touch them to stop your animation.

Q Multi time-zone clock: It can be very useful to get a clock that shows global time zones so you can see what time it is for the other SL residents from all over the world.

Q Radar: This lists the names and locations of other avatars within a 96-metre radius.

Q Chat bug scanner: This searches for chat bugs – devices that eavesdrop on any text in chat, sending this text to the owner.

Q Shield: This protects you from other avatars shooting you with weapons.

Q Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at Ben and Jerrys (109, 60, 27): An orientation island where you can learn all the basics to get you going. It looks like a cartoon world with ice cream galore!

The sex scene In RL, sex sells, and SL is no different. The sex scene is huge and comes in many varieties, from private members clubs to islands where everyone is having simulated sex. The escorting scene is massive, with actual live webcams being streamed into clubs for your pleasure. Escorts can charge from $L3,000 upwards per hour and cater to any situation you could wish for. Just type ESCORT into SEARCH and you will get hundreds of results.

Some of the more popular locations are listed for your pleasure here: Q Orgy Island at Isle of Passion (124, 128, 34): A themed sex sim with plenty to keep every fetish fed.

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Q The Galaxy Dance and Strip Club at AMTS (173, 61, 25): Escorts, sex, free money and more, all inside the one club.

Q Club XTC Elite at XTC Island (128, 128, 36): Escorts, porn, adult shops and more.

Themed sims You can visit great themed locations in SL from mock-ups of real-life cities to scenes from famous movies. You can fight in a recreated war, go to a rodeo, be a catwalk model or become a Star Wars fighter. It really is a case of ‘your world, your imagination’. I personally enjoy visiting my own city, Liverpool in Mathew Street. Here are some other places worth visiting: Q Paris 1900 (8, 171, 16): This is a beautiful representation of Paris, where you can visit the virtual Arc de Triomphe on a virtual Champs Elysees and even parachute off a virtual Eiffel Tower.

4.5: The Eiffel Tower in Paris 1900

Q Gotham City (197, 179, 47): This is an elaborate and careful rebuild of Batman’s Gotham City, where you can live out your fantasies of being a superhero.

Q Racers Island (155, 153, 115): Here you can race cars around on big tracks and compete in competitions for prizes.

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4.6: A scene from Die Hard 4 at Silverscreen

Q Silverscreen (131, 95, 33): You can see filmsets for the latest movies, such as Die Hard 4. You might find that the actors will even make guest appearances, as Bruce Willis did.

Combat sims These are areas for combat gaming and roleplaying (something I’ll be looking at in the next chapter) and are usually set to be damage-enabled so combat can take place. You will have a health icon appear at the top of the screen in these areas and if you get harmed you will see your percentage of health fall from 100%. You can even die here (and will be teleported to your home location).

If you wish to roleplay with weapons, there are plenty of themed roleplay combat sims in SL, ranging from gothic sims to urban sims, to out-and-out pure shoot-outs.

Q Toxian City at Toxia (251, 138, 23 ): A city themed for full, immersive shooting pleasure, with vampires, roleplay with weapons, sex and much more.

Q Norsim at Remembrance (114, 212, 42): A very popular sim, which offers combat, shopping and many other delights.

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Hints and tips Q Secondlife.com via Google: Another way to find places or events is to go to http://secondlife.com/community/search.php, which will even bring up results that aren’t listed.

Q Search rankings: Look at the way places are ranked in the search tool. Classified ads are ranked in order of how much the owner has paid to list their ad. Place listings are ranked in order of their popularity, which is expressed in terms of traffic.

Q After teleporting: It is good practice to move on quickly when you teleport to a location so you don’t get in the way of other avatars who are teleporting.

Q Private houses: You should think of private houses in SL as much like people’s homes in RL. It isn’t considered acceptable to enter private houses without being invited or to stand directly outside them, looking in (especially if there are avatars inside). People can get very annoyed if you don’t respect the privacy of their houses.

Q Sky buildings: People often build very high up into the sky for privacy so that other avatars won’t be likely to chance upon them. If locations are over 220 metres in the air, the only way you can get to them is to teleport or use a flight assister, such as a flight feather (see the section on gadgets on pp 55–56).

Q Behaviour: Remember to take note of the rules of the area you are in and the PG/mature rating of the sim. Breaking the rules of a location can get you thrown out of the area and even reported to Linden Lab, which might result in a temporary or permanent ban.

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Q Creating picks: You can set up picks for your favourite inworld places that will appear on your profile page so others can see the places you frequent. All you need to do to create a pick is go to the land, then select NEW on the PICKS page of your profile. A pick will be automatically created. You can then rename the pick, giving it a brief title, which will appear on the tabs at the side of your picks, and add some descriptive text.

The default text in any pick is the description of the land parcel you are standing on, but you can change this to anything you want. You can also load a picture for the pick. The teleport site will be the coordinates that are set for the land parcel you are standing on.

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Now that you know how to move around, find places and have hopefully created an appearance you are happy with for your avatar, you’re ready to make some friends. For most people, this is the main reason for being in SL. With millions of people from all over the world, being able to interact in an environment where you can actually see and do things together, it’s much more interesting than your standard chat room.

People meet, make connections, friendships and even fall in love in SL and sometimes the friendships you make will translate into RL connections.

How to meet people It is relatively easy to make friends and other contacts in SL as it is a very sociable virtual world and people are generally very friendly. From the moment your avatar is born, people are bound to be saying hello to you. Have a wander around and talk to some of the people you encounter along the way. You can also do the following to find like-minded people: Q Wander around and talk to people you encounter along your way.

Q Use the search tool to seek out places where people who share your interests might gather. For example, if you like reading, you might search for ‘books’ in the PLACES tab.

Q Use the SEARCH tool to look for events where you might meet people with similar interests to your own. For example, if you’re interested in fashion you could look for fashion shows and clothing sales for a good way to connect with other fashionistas.

Q Join groups that reflect your interests. Use your imagination with the search bar – there’s a group for almost anything in SL, and, if there isn’t, you can create your own.

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Friendships If you find yourself chatting to someone and you’re getting on well, you might want to keep in touch. There are two main ways to do this: Q Send them a calling card: Do this by right-clicking on the avatar and selecting SEND IM. As I’ve said before, a calling card is a copy of your profile that is stored in the person’s inventory. It means someone can easily look at your details later on and contact you if they wish. This is the most appropriate thing to do when you meet people in a business setting but don’t necessarily want the person to be able to see you when you are inworld.

Q Offering a friendship request: You do this by right-clicking on another avatar and selecting ADD FRIEND or searching for them using the search tool and selecting ADD FRIEND from here. You can also go to the FRIENDS tab in your COMMUNICATE menu and select ADD to search through your calling cards to add a person as a friend from here. Your request has to be accepted before you can become friends.

Being friends with a person means that you both appear on each other’s CONTACTS list in the COMMUNICATE window. This means you can easily IM each other, plus send each other teleports and money. They can also see you on the map and see when you are online, unless you choose to unselect these options in the CONTACTS list.

You can even grant them permission here to modify your objects inworld, although this is something you would only give to very good friends.

If you no longer wish to be friends with someone, or you find that your list is full of people that you can’t remember who they are any more (it does happen), it is very easy to remove people from your friends list by selecting the name and clicking REMOVE.

Sending IMs to multiple friends If you want to talk to more than one friend at once, you can start a friends conference.

To do this, take the following steps: í˘ą Go to your list of friends in the COMMUNICATE window.

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í˘˛ Hold down CTRL (to allow a multiple selection) and click on all the friends you want to include. í˘ł You can then select IM and start a discussion with all these people.

This can be a great way to stay in touch with people who all know each other. It is also an invaluable business tool as you are able to have a group meeting with people who are all in different locations without anyone else overhearing.

Groups Groups are a good way to meet people, hear about events and keep up with the latest news in an area of your interest.

To see the different groups in SL, use the search function and look under the GROUPS tab. Try typing in some different areas of interest to see the groups that come up. Your results will show the first page of the GROUP INFORMATION (basically a profile for a group) on the right side of the profile.

Joining a group has the following benefits: Q You can see the details of other members if the owner has enabled this option.

Q You can receive group notices as they are sent by the owners and officers of the group.

Q You can browse past notices of the group.

Q You can view and take part in group IMs. If you want to join a group, click on the JOIN button on the information page in the search window. Most groups are free to join, but some levy a fee for joining – this will be clear in the joining process, should it be the case. If there isn’t an option to join it means the creator of the group has elected to make membership by invitation only.

When you become a member of the group you will be able to see the whole of the GROUP INFORMATION. You can view this by selecting INFO in your COMMUNICATE page or by selecting DETAILED VIEW in the search result.

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Group IMs All members can send messages to the entire group via group IMs. To start a group IM, click on the COMMUNICATE button and select the GROUPS tab. Then click on the group and select IM. Be aware that most people find group IMs annoying and irritating as it is essentially like chatter in the background. Don’t use the group IM button simply to say hello. It is best used to ask a specific and pertinent question of the group that needs answering.

You should then take your conversation into private IM at the earliest possible time to avoid annoying other members.

Creating your own groups If you can’t find a group that fits your interests, why not create one yourself? If you go into business in SL you would be well advised to create a group relating to your activities.

It currently costs L$100 to set up a group and all you need to do is take the following steps: í˘ą Go to the GROUPS tab in the COMMUNICATE window. í˘˛ Select the CREATE button. í˘ł Name your group and write the group charter. í˘´ Ensure that the SHOW IN GROUP LIST box is ticked if you want other people to be able to search for your group by the SEARCH window. í˘ľ Tick PUBLISH ON THE WEB if you want the group to be searchable on the internet. í˘ś Tick OPEN ENROLMENT if you want people to be able to enrol themselves to your group. í˘ˇ Add in a price next to ENROLMENT FEE if you want to charge people to join the group. í˘¸ You should also tick MATURE GROUP if your group has sexual or adult content.

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í˘š After you have checked all your details, click on the APPLY button and pay your L$100 to start up the group. ě?… Once you have created the group you should go to the MEMBERS tab of the group information page and specify the various ROLES (titles) you want people to be able to have and the rights each member should be entitled to. There are various rights and duties you can assign – from being able to manipulate group-owned objects to being able to eject members from the group. There are full explanations of each of the duties you can assign under the ABILITIES tab.

When you’ve set up your group you will be able to invite people to join. You can do this by doing the following: í˘ą Right-click on your avatar and select GROUPS to bring up the GROUPS tab in the COMMUNICATE window. í˘˛ Click on your group and select INFO. í˘ł Go to the MEMBERS & ROLES tab and select INVITE NEW PERSON. í˘´ Select the button OPEN PERSON CHOOSER. í˘ľ Now either type the person’s name in the box and click FIND, or, if you have the person’s calling card in your inventory, look through the calling card list shown at the bottom of this window. í˘ś When you have found the right person to invite click on SELECT. í˘ˇ Then you just need to select to send an invitation via the SEND INVITATION blue button.

There are various ways you can make the most of your group for business purposes and this will be covered in Chapter 5.

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Events A great way to stay in touch with friends or make new ones is to attend or create events.

Events can take many forms – a party, a product launch, a speaking event, a discussion group or simply a showcase of something made in SL or RL. Events can be a wonderful networking tool and, if they are promoted properly, you can make some wonderful contacts. How to hold events and what you can do with them will be covered fully in Chapter 5.

Roleplaying Many people enter SL for the opportunity to roleplay (RP) – to pursue lifestyles or play roles that do not reflect RL. There are many subcultures, and this is only a small sample of the many roleplaying communities active in SL, which range from the ordinary to the extreme.

Q Period play: Ever fancied living in another period of time? Well now is your chance. Two of my favourite times are Victorian and Wild West. A fantastic roleplay sim where you can dress up and be transported to the Wild West is located in Deadwood 1876 at Phoenix Pass (132, 208, 28).

Q Furries: These are people who choose not to inhabit a human avatar form, but choose an animal form. Many furries congregate in an area called Luskwood at Lusk (194, 104, 52), where human-form avatars are welcome to come and explore, so you can have a chance to decide whether or not this is for you.

5.1: The treetops of Luskwood

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Q Combat: There is an active combat gaming and roleplay scene in SL, where you fight with other avatars to harm or kill them. Remember to take a landmark as soon as you arrive at a combat sim if you wish to return and die another day!

Q Gor: This is a complex master and slave society based on a work of sciencefiction series Chronicles of Gor by John Norman. There are many complex rules and many gorean sims take their roleplaying very seriously. Observers are not welcomed at all locations. If you are interested in Gor, search in PLACES and read the location descriptions carefully to see if it is okay to visit.

Q Age play: Some adults choose to inhabit childlike avatars and roleplay being a child. Others roleplay as parents. This is a controversial subculture that has divided opinion in SL. Linden Lab has banned age play sexual activities. Much age play does not centre around sexual activity, rather on recreating family roles. There are SL maternity clinics, daycare centres and so on for those interested in this roleplay.

Relationships and more…

Interacting on SL can be very intense and vivid – being a virtual world, you have so much more than typed text to get to know a person. You can do things together, hear each other’s voices and literally live a second life with another person. Inevitably, relationships that run deeper than mere friendship can form and this can be thrilling, exciting and emotionally fulfilling.

It is possible to become partners with another avatar. This is a bit like getting married, except there are no gender or even species restrictions on who you can marry.

It currently costs L$10 to make a partner request through the SL website and your partner will also have to pay L$10 to make it official. You can partner for romantic, business or any reason you like – the choice is yours. If you want to divorce or dissolve your partnership later on it will cost L$25.

To make a partner request you just need to go to your profile and click on the ‘?’ button next to PARTNER to be given a link to the SL website where you can apply for partnership.

There are a few points you need to remember about forming close relationships in SL, as it can be quite different from RL:

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Q As with any online interaction, be sensible about the information you choose to divulge about yourself – you never know who you might be talking to!

Q Some people form relationships in SL when they are having an RL relationship.

While this comes down to personal preference and morality, do think about the impact SL attachments might have on your RL relationship, as well as the impact on the SL person who might not know your relationship status.

Q Always remember that behind every avatar is a real person. Just because you are interacting on an avatar-to-avatar basis, it doesn’t mean the real people behind them can’t form attachments and can’t get hurt – they can, and they do. SL is much more than a game when it comes to forming relationships so it is best to operate on the principle of treating others in the way you’d like to be treated.

Q When it comes to relationships, drama is rife in SL. Some say it is down to the fast-moving and intense nature of SL. According to many members, a relationship that lasts longer than a month is a rarity. In reality, there are many successful and lasting SL relationships that endure, and some even make the jump to RL love and romance.

Sex in SL As soon as you arrive in SL, it is hard to ignore the barrage of information about sex clubs, escorts, pole dancing and orgy rooms. In particular, BDSM and Gorean slavery are very popular SL subcultures. While these can be fun to visit and very liberating, as they offer an opportunity to try all sorts of things that one might not dream of doing in RL, there is more to sex in SL. The act of sex itself in SL revolves mainly around poseballs and animations. You click on either a pink (usually for women) or blue (usually for men) and let the animation do its thing. If both avatars are wearing good quality skins and you are the sort who is particularly visually stimulated, you might find this arousing in the same way that some find animé porn exciting, but it might not do much for you.

To have good sex in SL consider the following:

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Q Genitals and skin: Your avatar doesn’t come with genitals or nipples – for a more realistic experience, you will need to invest in a skin that is more realistic than the default and, in the case of male avatars, purchase some genitals (yes, you read that right!). It is possible to find basic ‘bits’ in freebie warehouses.

Q Penises: Penis attachments need to be removed after you have done the deed as they will still be visible after you put on your clothes.

Q Renting rooms: If you are landless, consider renting a room by the hour rather than heading for a sex club (unless exhibitionism is your thing).

5.2 A couple relaxing in romantic surroundings

Q SexGen beds: If you have your own private home, consider investing in a SexGen bed. This is a scripted sex bed with a menu of various animated positions your avatars can take. SexGen is the main brand of bed, although there are many others on the market. Shop around as prices can vary considerably for very similar products. You might like to investigate more exotic equipment, such as BDSM devices, if that is what you enjoy.

Q Edit the positions: As avatar sizes and shapes are different, do take the time to edit the positions on your bed to suit the size of you and your partner. It does take patience and time to do, so you could ask your partner to send you details of his/her shape and change your avatar to this shape and make the adjustments yourself when you have a moment. If you have an alt (an alternative avatar) it might be preferable to use your alt for this.

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Q Sexy chat: Words plus pictures are more interesting and exciting so don’t be afraid to talk during your SL liaisons. Don’t forget to use IM rather than chat to keep your conversation completely private.

Q Be prepared: If you are going to have SL sex, make sure that you have an object that stops animations readily available in your inventory. If something goes wrong and you find yourself ejected from a place while having sex, you might find yourself somewhere unexpected while in flagrante (it does happen!).

If this happens you can quickly use your object to stop your embarrassing animation in an instant.

Griefers, violence, abuse and weapons Some people go into SL with the object to ‘grief’ or cause disturbance to other residents.

This might include shooting at or pushing other avatars, delivering verbal abuse or harassment. Outside of combat sims, random violence is generally frowned upon and it can be quite disturbing to be on the receiving end of it.

Many sim owners will have rules against violence, and you are well within your rights to file an abuse report against the perpetrator to Linden Lab. If someone is verbally harassing you or being abusive, it doesn’t matter where the event has taken place – this behaviour is against the terms of service and a report might earn the person a ban from SL, which may be temporary or even permanent. To file an abuse report, go to HELP in the menu bar and select REPORT ABUSE. You should include a picture if appropriate in your report or a copy of the chat log for Linden Lab to investigate.

Privacy Sometimes, as in RL, you might feel the need to get away from it all with your avatar.

Obviously this is easier to do if you own your own land. Here are some methods of keeping other avatars from bothering you in your personal space: Q Lock your door: If you have a house, get a locking script for your door. It is still possible for other avatars to view into your house with their camera,

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however, and they might even be able to select to look into a house and sit on an object, thereby circumventing the lock.

Q Tint your windows: Tintable windows can help guard against prying eyes, but it is still possible to cam through them if you know what you’re doing.

Q Get some security: A more effective way to keep people out is to buy a security system (for example a DT security system) that ejects people who are not on an access list.

Q Restrict your parcel access: Alternatively you could set up your land parcel allowing access to certain avatars only. You can do this by selecting ABOUT LAND in the WORLD drop-down menu. If you then select the ACCESS tab from the ABOUT LAND window, you can select to limit the access to either a certain group or specific avatars only. This is what creates those well-known and highly frustrating red ban lines that stop you moving into an area.

Q Stop people logging out there: Ask visitors to log off outside your house so they won’t turn up inside your house again the next time they come back inworld. You don’t want them turning up in your living room – or worse.

Q Be careful about giving landmarks: If you give out landmarks to your land, ensure they are outside your house if you don’t want people teleporting straight inside.

If you don’t have your own space you can indicate to other avatars that you aren’t available for chat by selecting either BUSY or AWAY from WORLD in the menu bar.

If you select to be busy, the word ‘(Busy)’ will appear above your name display and will stop you being able to see the public chat around you. It also means that anyone who sends an IM to you will get a message to say you are busy. You can personalise the message that is sent out by going to EDIT, PREFERENCES, COMMUNICATION, typing in your message in the RESPONSE box and clicking APPLY. If you select you are away your avatar will have the word ‘(Away)’ over its head and your avatar will look like it is slumped over. If you start moving inworld, however, your avatar will immediately stop being ‘(Away)’, so this is only suitable if you are standing still.

You can maintain your privacy with your friends by selecting various options in the friends list. You can choose to be invisible to them so they can’t see when you are

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online or not by selecting CAN SEE MY ONLINE STATUS in the COMMUNICATE window. You can also choose here whether they can see you in the map.

Remember that when you are in open chat, you can be heard for a 20-metre radius. If you are discussing sensitive or personal matters, be sure to remember to move to IM and if you have multiple IMs going, be sure to type your text in the correct box to avoid embarrassment!

Etiquette in SL Generally speaking, the same rules of courtesy apply in SL as in RL: Q People are generally friendly in SL, but sometimes they are busy. If you approach a group of people talking, ask if you can join them instead of assuming you can.

Q If you talk to someone and they don’t answer you, they may be ‘afk’ (away from their keyboard). Don’t get upset or bad tempered with them – people sometimes need to get up and attend to RL. Q I’ve said this before, but it’s an important point – don’t wander into other people’s houses unless you’re invited, and certainly don’t do that if the inhabitants are in there. You wouldn’t do it in real life, would you?

Q When you meet someone and want to make contact with them, speak to them in open chat as opposed to sending them an IM. Q Don’t add people to your friends list until you have taken the time to get to know them, and certainly not if you’ve never spoken at all. You may be disappointed if you get rejected.

Q Don’t feel pressured into accepting friendship offers from people who are pushing them onto you.

Q Read someone’s profile before making an advance on them. Many people specify that they are not looking for sex or relationships or have partners to indicate this to the SL world.

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Q Remember that as you gain experience, there will be newcomers finding their way around just like you once were. Welcome them into the SL community with kindness, and offer help and advice should they need it.

Q Be prepared to keep your roleplay in appropriate areas if it troubles other people.

Q SL is a 24/7 environment with people from many time zones. Please respect that in customer service situations, business owners need to sleep and eat sometimes – not to mention have a real life too.

Q If you enjoy a location or service consider supporting the owner’s efforts with a tip if you are able to, as tier is expensive and they work hard to create an enjoyable environment for you.

Q If you experience glitches or bugs in the SL software, report the bug by going to WORLD, BUG REPORTING, REPORT BUG. If Linden Labs don’t know what is wrong, they don’t know what they need to fix.

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Hints and tips Q Developments: SL is constantly evolving and sometimes changes can be radical, so it is a good idea to read the blog every time you first enter SL to find out about recent developments.

Q Profile notes: You will find that you have so many conversations and so many friend invitations that you can’t remember who everyone is. When you first meet someone, write something down in the ‘notes’ section of their profile that will jog your memory – it will be very useful later.

Q Be cautious: Be wary about anyone in SL who insists on knowing personal details about you. Also don’t trust the name on someone’s group tag. They may have forgotten to change their tag from another place or be posing as a member of the land.

Q Read IMs when out of SL: You can get IMs sent to your email so you can read them when you’re not inworld. To do this go to EDIT in the menu bar and select PREFERENCES. Then look at the COMMUNICATION tab and tick the ‘SEND IM TO EMAIL’ box.

Q Presents: Be wary of any gifts from people you don’t know.

They could be scripted to do nasty things.

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The question newcomers most frequently ask me is how they can make money. Anyone can make money in SL, but it does take time, patience and a bit of know-how.

As I’ve briefly explained before, the SL economy is based around the Linden dollar (L$) and this fluctuates in its value in relation to the US dollar. Linden Lab currently regulates the exchange rate by controlling the flow of Linden dollars in and out of SL in a variety of ways, in order to keep it relatively stable – a bit like the way a government manages an economy in RL. At the time of writing it is L$275 to the US dollar.

Although Linden dollars are an in-game currency there is one major difference to other online communities: they can be transferred to real world currency. The main place to exchange your money (both from RL money to Linden dollars and from Linden dollars to US dollars) is the LindeX, a page on Secondlife.com. You can find this by selecting ‘Buy L$’ or ‘Sell L$’ from the main page or your account page.

The Linden dollar fluctuates daily, as real money exchanges do. Because of this, SL and its residents can make money through exchange on the LindeX by buying when the exchange rate is low and selling it back when the rate is high, just as you can make money on RL exchange rates.

There are other sources for buying and selling Linden dollars. Slexchange.com and apez.biz are probably the best sites for money selling and buying at the moment in terms of exchange rate and speed of transaction. There are many other sites, but be vary wary about using any of them, especially auction sites. Linden Labs does not support the trade of Linden dollars through auction sites and engaging in such trades may put you in breach of the terms of service, so beware. If something looks too good to be true it probably is – they could be scams or the money may have come from fraudulent means. If a case of fraud is investigated inworld you could have all your inworld money taken away from you and your account suspended while the investigations take place.

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I need money now and I need it fast First I’m going to tell you how to make a very small amount of money quickly. This will mean you can buy yourself a piece of clothing, do a bit of gambling or perhaps even pay someone a tip.

Money trees In SL money can actually grow on trees. These money trees are set up by generous landowners to help out newbies. They are funded by donations by SL residents.

You will only be able to take money off the trees if you are under a certain SL age – either 30 days or 60 days, depending on the tree. To find one, search for ‘money tree’ under CLASSIFIEDS and then find the tree and see if there is any money left.

Usually you will only get a few Linden dollars from a tree, but there are quite a few trees around.

Some money trees have fruit on them to pick, which also pay you money. Bananas will give you L$5, apples will give you L$10 and cherries will give you L$20. You usually aren’t allowed to gather more than L$25 from the same tree.

6.1: A money tree

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Camping Camping means being paid by a landowner for staying on a spot of land. The owner does this because having people there boosts the traffic level, which in turn puts the land or the business higher up in ratings and searches.

To search for a camping spot type ‘camping’ into the search bar of PLACES or CLASSIFIEDS. This is a very popular search item, however, so you may find that cunning a dvertisers have used this term when they don’t have real camping. Camping spots are easy to recognise as they have text over them, usually saying ‘Camping’ on the top with the amount of Linden dollars you earn per ten minutes underneath. Camping spots often take the form of dance pads, where your avatar will dance when you select to SIT there.

The rates vary, but the average is about $L2 per ten minutes. And for the new player looking for a bit of free money it can be a worthwhile hobby while you are doing something else. It can be tricky finding a camping spot, however, as they are very popular.

6.2: An avatar dancing for cash on a camping spot

Some camping devices have anti-afk devices fitted. They can detect if you are not actually at your computer and will kick you off the camping device, plus possibly leave you without money. It is a good idea to move your mouse every now and then to ensure your avatar stays active.

You will be able to find devices that will pay you 24/7 and you will even be able to camp overnight while you are sleeping. At L$3 per ten mins you can earn L$18 an hour.

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If you leave yourself camping for a whole day you could earn L$432 and for a whole week you could make L$3,024. That’s not a bad little spending fund for free.

While camping might be a way for you to earn money at the outset of your second life, be aware that many seasoned players are against camping because the scripts that are required to give out the money cause a lot of lag. In addition, campers take up a lot of capacity on a sim without making a contribution to the community. Some people even have environmental objections, with it taking a long amount of time on your computer to earn a small amount of money, creating a very large carbon footprint if you leave your computer overnight while you are sleeping.

Stopping the 30-minute logout If you are planning to stay on a camping spot while you are away from your keyboard, you will need to stop the automatic 30minute logout that is usually set up. To do this follow these steps: 햲 Press CTRL, SHIFT, ALT and ‘D’ at the same time. This will

allow you to access two extra options on your menu bar – CLIENT and SERVER. 햳 Next, press CTRL, ALT and ‘D’ to make these extra two op-

tions disappear. (You can then do this to make them reappear if you wish.) 햴 Go to the new menu option CLIENT and select CHARAC-

TER. 햵 Then select CHARACTER TESTS. 햶 You will see the option GO AWAY/AFK WHEN IDLE with an

‘X’ next to it. Click on this so the cross goes away. 햷 You will no longer be automatically logged out.

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Online surveys You can also do online surveys for Linden dollars and these are advertised all over SL. This is a form of data mining for marketing companies, so only do these if you are willing to pass on your RL details. Some of these firms are legitimate businesses and they truly want opinions. However others may just be collecting your name and email address for spam. Do also be aware that doing surveys is frowned upon in public areas.

If you are still keen you can search for these online surveys links easily by searching for ‘survey’.

Converting RL money into Linden dollars The fastest way to get money to spend in SL is to actually convert a little real money into Linden dollars.

A little RL money can go very far in SL; the current exchange rate will give you around L$5,500 for roughly £10/US$20. Given your average outfit in SL costs between L$100 and L$500, this money will go a long way. It might be worth investing a little money in SL to get you started off. Then you can learn how to create money in SL and maybe even earn it back.

Jobs You can find jobs through the search window, through the Secondlife.com forums (some actually have an employment section), adverts in places you visit or by word of mouth. There are even job centres in SL, such as People Pool (located in Danmu).

One unfortunate thing about SL is that the money you get for jobs is nothing like you would get in RL. For example someone might pay you L$100 or L$200 an hour for a job like security guard or greeting visitors at a club. On the other end of the scale, if you have RL skills like 3D modelling you can earn better money for building, scripting and animations, which can run to hundreds of US dollars for large jobs.

Many of the SL jobs are menial and don’t require much activity from you so it can be sensible to multitask while you are doing them, perhaps doing things like texturing or making objects on a nearby plot of land or even sending IMs to your friends.

There are many different types of jobs in SL. I’ll go through some of the most popular ones to let you see what is involved.

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To look far away from your avatar If you want to be in one place, but also want to be able to look at or build somewhere else you can stop the camera constraints to zoom out much further away. To do this: 햲 Go to the CLIENT option in your menu bar (see the box on

p 78 if you can’t see this option). 햳 Then select DISABLE CAMERA CONSTRAINT so that an

‘X’ appears next to it. 햴 Then hold down ALT and left-click on an object that is in the

direction you want to be looking at. Move your mouse or scroll to zoom in on the object in the direction you want to focus your camera/viewer on. 햵 Once you have zoomed in on this object, choose another

object further away to focus on. In this way you can continue focusing further and further away until you get where you want.

If you can find a nearby piece of land that you can build in, such as a sandbox, you can build to your heart’s content while your boss thinks you’re working.

Disabling your camera constraints can be very useful for looking far away or in places you can’t normally see, but it can create difficulties with your normal viewing, so it is worth turning the constraints back on again when you have finished your task.

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Greeter Greeters are quite simply there to greet and welcome people and to give information about products or the land.

Q Essential tools: You will need some respectable-looking skins and clothes and a nice manner.

Q What’s expected of me? You will have to greet people who come into the area.

Q What should I expect to earn? This can range from very little ($L50 a session) to average SL pay ($L250 per session). I would say that L$400 per week for 20 hours would be good pay.

Security Security people watch over clubs and events, looking out for any trouble and throwing out or banning griefers from the area. You can be of any gender or species for a job in security. Unfortunately quite a lot of the time security is just a fancy name for a camper (but with slightly more wages).

Q Essential tools: You will need a uniform of some sort (usually military or police), a scripted weapon that can defeat shields and a good orbiter (these are weapons that send the offender millions of feet into the orbit). Of course, as new weapons come out better shields are also developed.

6.3: A security guard outside a club

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Q What’s expected of me? You will be expected to take care of residents and guests and keep the land free of troublemakers. Be aware that to orbit or shoot a troublemaker, even in defence, is in breach of the terms of service. Although security cannot or are not meant to retaliate, they can inform Linden Labs or the landowners about griefers, which may lead to getting them banned.

Q What should I expect to earn? The wages vary from club to club, but L$500 a day for four to five hours’ work is average.

Host/games host Hosting games or events, such as multiplayer games like bingo, requires few skills and can be rewarding in many ways.

Q Essential tools: You will need nice skin and a friendly, chatty manner.

Q What’s expected of me? You’ll have to talk in live speak or in chat to host the events. You may need to oversee quizzes and live games.

Q What should I expect to earn? It’s possible to earn good money from hosting, via both a standard salary and bonus tips from players who win. The money varies from place to place but can command L$500 a session (which usually lasts a couple of hours) and above.

DJ This is another popular job in SL. DJs usually play at live events like openings and clubs. As there are plenty of DJs in SL the wages are not as high as some other jobs.

However, a good venue can be quite profitable.

Q Essential tools: You will need software to stream music into SL, such as SHOUTcast from shoutcast.com. You also need a varied supply of music, and possibly even the ability to access music on demand. You should also have some decent skin, nice clothes and good animations and gestures to keep the crowd happy as the mp3 switches.

Q What’s expected of me? You will need to play varied music and some venues will require you to talk over the microphone.

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6.4: A DJ in action

Q What should I expect to earn? As you are paid in tips, your earnings are dependent on how good you are, but a ballpark figure for a one-hour set in a club is L$500–750.

Dancer This involves dancing for tips in clubs and other venues. Dancing is generally a role for women and is often quite a sexual role, involving pole dancing and/or stripping. You are expected to chat and flirt with the customers.

Q Essential tools: You will need to look attractive, with nice skin and sexy clothes. If you will be stripping you’ll need to have a skin that looks real (ie with nipples and genitals).

Q What’s expected of me? You’ll have to dance on a podium or a pole.

Q What should I expect to earn? You’ll only earn tips, so this is entirely dependent on the generosity of the clientele and your skill at creating a rapport with your customers. If you’re good, you can expect to earn up to L$1,000 an hour or more.

Model Models are needed to display clothes and products and for magazines in SL. Q Essential tools: You will need superb skin and a vast range of clothes and poses.

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Q What’s expected of me? You will need to pose for photos for magazines or promotional shots.

Q What should I expect to earn? Earnings vary from shoot to shoot and sometimes you get free clothes instead of or in addition to money.

6.5: A model posing for a photoshoot

Escort There is no getting away from this very popular job, which is mainly for female avatars.

As in RL, the sex industry in SL is thriving. You can either work as a lone escort or you can join an escort agency. There are hundreds if not thousands of escorting establishments all ready to place you with prospective clients.

Q Essential tools: To be an escort you will need a very attractive avatar. You must have excellent-looking skin (including genitals), various sets of quality clothes and sexy lingerie. You will also need sex balls (balls you can select to sit on that are scripted to animate your avatar with various sexual acts). You may also need specialist clothing and items for the thriving specialist sex industry, such as leather outfits and whips.

Q What is expected of me? Just as in RL you will be expected to perform sexual acts with clients. This will range from the normal to the very bizarre. Being in a virtual world means you can do things in SL that you can’t in RL. Although it’s important to remember you still have to abide by the rules of the country.

And also abide by the terms of service that you agreed to upon signing up.

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Q What should I expect to earn? This can vary greatly, but you could expect to earn from L$2,000 upwards. I do know a lady who charges L$3,000 per 30 minutes and she works for five hours a day. That works out at the current rate of exchange at roughly ÂŁ400/US$800 a week. She is obviously good at what she does and she has real video cameras for real meetings with her clients. I have heard of others who earn even more.

Skilled jobs Skilled jobs can earn you a good deal more in SL, but require talent and expertise.

They can be split down into a few basic sections: Q Texture artist: Making textures for building and clothing is big business in SL. You can do custom textures for people or even open a store. The biggest store in SL is Textures R Us at English Rose (128, 158, 31) owned by LillyBeth Filth.

It has literally thousands of textures and is well worth a visit to see what a really good store in SL looks like.

Q Scripter: Scripting is brought in from RL programming experience and people will pay especially well for custom scripts. A good script combined with a good build can make you quite a good RL income.

Q Builder: Being a good build and a very good builder can be the difference between a poor SL life and a good RL income. Builders can make anything from houses and castles to cars and boats.

Q Business owner: Anyone can own a business with enough SL know-how.

Hopefully after reading this book you will be able to own a successful business that sells quality products.

Q Animator: Animating is a skill that’s not easy to learn, but once mastered it can make a good income.

Q Land buyer/seller: This is a very unpredictable market and is better investigated at length before entering into. It is a business with a few people making some good RL wages and some even making vast fortunes.

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Q Clothes designer: This is a good craft to learn and there are some great rewards. However, the market is already saturated and it can be difficult to start up a thriving business when there is so much competition.

Q Live singer/DJ/host: I’ve already mentioned some of these earlier, but it is worth mentioning again as there is skill involved in these and there are some good live acts making half-decent money in SL at the moment.

Q Event organiser/marketing consultant: Once you have mastered SL and the tools available to you, there is money to be made in organising festivals, conferences and corporate events, especially if you have RL experience. There are a growing number of RL companies who need seasoned SL residents to help them gain a presence inworld.

There are many more SL industries that I haven’t covered, including some very obvious ones.

Reselling Another way of earning money without making a product or really doing anything is to RESELL. There are plenty of businesses in SL (including mine) that pay commission to resellers to set up vendors – scripted objects with pictures of products displayed on the front. Vendors can hold literally hundreds of items and the company that owns the vendor would pay anywhere from 2 to 50 per cent of every item you sell.

If you own land this is a great way to increase possible profits. If you don’t, you’ll need to look into the finances in more detail. If you are going to rent land it needs to be in a good location with free rental for a week or two on a rental booth (a small shop in a mall or sim that you can rent weekly).

You can select click on the left and right arrows at the bottom of the large main screen and the pictures will move. The customer will pay the price stated in the middle of the picture and the script will deliver the product, which is held in a separate box or server. When a purchase is made the business owner will receive his money and the vendor gets a commission payment.

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6.6: A typical vendor in SL

Winning at events Another good way of getting money is through events that give out prizes. Some places hold events nightly. They can pay from L$100 to L$1,000 per event.

Prizes are often given out to attract people to events like club nights, and are given for particular themes, such as ‘best in black’ or ‘best couple’. There will be no guarantee of winning at these events so they can be a bit hit and miss. You’ll also probably need great clothes and charm to improve your chances of winning.

There is also an item in SL called the prize chair that gives out items or objects. It sings a letter of the alphabet out and if your SL name begins with that letter you can sit on the chair and it will give you a prize. These can be really good prizes from a nearby shop’s stock.

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Hints and tips Q Finding the job for you: Look at what skills you have. If you decide on a skilled job then do something you actually enjoy as you will be more inclined to spend your time this way.

Q Applying for jobs: It can be useful to have an SL CV, listing the inworld skills you possess and personality attributes you can bring to a position.

Q Meet a demand: Find what needs or wants other people have which are not yet met by any existing product and find a way to meet this need with your skills.

Q Consider the competition: Always check your competitors before you embark on a skilled job.

Q Confidence: Remember everyone starts at the beginning, just as you are now.

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Just as in RL, everyone in SL wants their own land – to live on, build on, start a business on, host a group on and to generally be their own. Land can be bought from either Linden Lab or from land barons. Land barons buy and sell huge amounts of land for a living.

There are two types of land in SL – mainland and estate/islands: Q Mainland: Despite how it sounds, this is not one big chunk of land but various continents of sims that are placed next to each other. These fixed plots are created by Linden Labs and then sold off at auctions.

Q Estates/islands: Islands are the same size as mainland sims. The difference is that they are built to order and are literally islands because the owner of the land controls who is able to build on the four bordering coasts of the sim. It is possible to choose your location on the grid – where you want the island to be built – and Linden Lab will build it with a choice of island shapes and terrains.

An infinite amount of land can be built in the SL world so you can expand the map out by picking anywhere that hasn’t yet got a piece of land on it. You need to find a space to build by looking at the Land Store on Secondlife.com.

It can be very advantageous having estate land or islands as they are run with more server space, so there is less lag. One other feature of islands is that you get fewer flybys (people browsing over your land). This can be a benefit if you don’t like lots of traffic slowing down your area and people wandering onto your land, but it could also be a disadvantage if you’re hoping to get browsing customers and a high traffic-rating for your business.

Prices Usually land is sold per metre and the land prices fluctuate daily. At the time of writing, a 512-square-metre plot is usually priced between L$3,000 and L$5,000.

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You can’t just buy a large amount of land for one flat fee. For land over 512 square metres you have to pay further monthly fees. These are called tier payments or land-use fees. These fees are subject to change so check the SL website for the latest information. You can pay your monthly fee in US dollars or Linden dollars. It is a little bit like paying property tax on what you own.

If you own mainland you will pay your tier payment to Linden Lab and this fee is billed on the amount of land you have and the peak usage of the land in a given month.

If you own a whole estate or island you will also have to pay an island tier to Linden Lab, but this is a fixed rate.

Some people only own part of an estate or island from someone who originally bought the land from Linden Lab. If this is the case you will have to pay a monthly fee to the owner of the estate (to enable them to pay Linden Lab for the whole island).

The estate owner can decide what this fee is.

Prim allowances The world of SL is made up of basic units called prims. It has often been said that the real currency in Second Life is not Linden dollars, but prims.

Land in SL has a prim allocation which is set by Linden Lab. Each sim has a prim allocation of 15,000 prims, which means the owner and those authorised to build on the land can only build objects on the land up to this amount of prims. Land parcels of a smaller size have a proportional allocation of the total amount – so a parcel that is half a sim would have an allocation of 7,500 prims.

To find out the prim allocation on a given piece of land, click on WORLD on the menu bar and select ABOUT LAND (or just double-click on the name of the land at the top of the screen). Then click on the OBJECTS tab and look at the number next to PRIMITIVE PARCEL SUPPORTS. This tells you the number of prims that can be built on that parcel of land.

If you are considering buying some land make sure you check this option before you buy to see how many prims you can get on the land. On the mainland this is usually 117 prims to each 512-square-metre plot. On private islands, the owner has the ability to set the number of prims on a parcel, as long as the whole island doesn’t exceed the 15,000 allocation, so be especially sure to check if you are renting island estate land.

You prim allowance is per sim, so you can increase your prim allowance for a piece of land by buying another piece of land in the same sim. The amount of prims that are

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supported will be added together and will increase on both pieces of land (you can see this by going to ABOUT LAND, OBJECTS). The land doesn’t have to be adjacent to yours, but it must be in the same sim.

Finding land for sale One of the easiest ways to buy land is to go to the LAND SALES tab in your SEARCH window.

7.1: The LAND SALES tab in your SEARCH window

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The LAND SALES tab gives you the opportunity to search within the following parameters: Q Type of land: You can select from ALL TYPES, AUCTION, MAINLAND or ESTATE. I’ve already covered the differences between mainland and estate land earlier. Auction land is land from Linden Lab that can only be bought through this search menu. It will either be new land or land that has been sold back to Linden Lab or abandoned. (The types that aren’t sold at auction will be private listings by individuals.)

Q PG or mature: I’ve explained before that mature land has no restrictions, whereas PG land has restrictions for content – usually regarding adult images and nudity. A whole sim is registered as either PG or mature. Because of the restrictions, PG land tends to be cheaper.

Q Price or size: You can search for land that is under certain price regions and over certain square metre areas by ticking PRICE and/or AREA and inserting your limits.

You can also search for land through the advertisements in the CLASSIFIEDS section of your SEARCH window or through web forums, such as on Secondlife.com.

Another way to search for land is to click on the WORLD MAP and look for LAND FOR SALE by selecting this option in your map key. This will highlight the areas of land for sale with a little dollar sign and yellow land parcels. If you click your mouse on one of the dollar signs on the map if will give you information on it, including the price and the square metres.

Before you buy Before you buy land from Linden Lab you need to be a full-paying premium member of SL. To become a premium member go to Secondlife.com and click to view your account. (If you will be buying your land from a private estate owner you don’t need to be a premium member.)

You also need to be streetwise about buying land. You wouldn’t buy a house in RL without viewing it, doing surveys and thoroughly investigating it, and you should

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do the same kind of research in SL. Make sure you take the following steps before purchasing: Q Take a good look at what you are buying: Teleport to the location and take a good look at the neighbouring areas. Avoid areas with clubs or camping venues nearby or other busy areas as they will cause lag. On the mainland, advertising farms, where land is split into 16-square-metre parcels for huge advertising signs, are a blight on the landscape and you might not want to live next door.

You will also find it harder to resell your land if you are near any of these areas when you’re ready to move on.

Q Find out as much as you can about the land: Right-click on the land and select ABOUT LAND to bring up all the information about the land. This will cover details such as its name, its owner, the exact area, the traffic, how many prim objects are allowed on the land and how many prims are currently on the parcel. Take a look through each of the tabs, especially the COVENANT tab, which will show if the land has any limitations and if it is an island or private estate. This is very useful as you’ll need to know if you will be paying your monthly tier payments to Linden Lab or to a private owner.

Q Know the market: Before buying a piece of land you should investigate thoroughly the value of different types of land by doing research on forums and searching through LAND SALES. Then you will know whether you will be getting value for money on a particular piece of land.

Q Consider whether the land is the right size for your prim use: What will you be using the land for and how many prims you will need on the land? Do you really need a huge piece of land just to build a house? Do you want to start a business on a very small plot of land as you may want to expand when you have built up a reputation and many customers will have landmarks to your shop/business?

If you are building a business it’s best to buy in a quiet sim, where there is some spare land available for purchase and you can use the prims for your main plot.

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Making the purchase When you are ready to buy a plot, teleport to it and right-click on the land. You might have the option here to BUY LAND. If you do, click on this. If not, select ABOUT LAND and select the BUY LAND button on the GENERAL tab.

The BUY LAND window will then tell you exactly what you are buying. You should check these details again and make sure you are happy before clicking PURCHASE to buy your land.

Renting land You can also rent land in SL. You either pay a vendor on your land or you pay the sim owner directly. Listings of rentals can usually be found from the forums, by word of mouth or by searching CLASSIFIEDS or PLACES in your SEARCH window.

Remember to check the same things for rental as you would for buying – how many prims you are given for the price, what the neighbours and surrounding areas are like and whether there is much traffic. You will also need to check out the permissions for the land, such as if you will be allowed to have your own music.

Changing the preferences for your group Once you’ve got some land you should take care to ensure you set up all the right options.

If you’ve bought your land to share with a group you can associate the group with the land by going to ABOUT LAND and clicking on SET in the GENERAL tab. You can then add in the group. This will mean you can allow special access and rights to the group when they are in your land.

You can even give the deed of your land to a group by clicking ALLOW DEED TO GROUP or OWNER MAKES CONTRIBUTION WITH DEED.

Altering permissions on your land Now that you are a land owner you can determine what other people can and can’t do on your land and what types of behaviour are acceptable.

If you go to the OPTIONS tab in the ABOUT LAND window you will see that you can enable/disable others from doing the following:

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Q EDIT TERRAIN: If this option is checked, anyone can terraform your land.

Since the owner can terraform even when this is unchecked, it’s best to leave it unchecked.

Q CREATE LANDMARKS: This allows residents to save the land as a landmark.

Q FLY: If checked, residents can fly on your land. If unchecked, they can fly into and over your land but they can’t start to fly while there.

Q CREATE OBJECTS: This can allow objects to be created and edited on the selected land by others. The owner can create objects no matter what. You can select to let ALL RESIDENTS do this or the GROUP that is associated with the land (if there is one).

Q OBJECT ENTRY: This determines whether objects such as cars or bikes can enter from another parcel.

Q RUN SCRIPTS: This enables/disables scripted objects owned by others to run on your land. Leaving this unchecked can help prevent others from doing things like firing scripted weapons on your land.

You can also set further permissions through other tabs in your ABOUT LAND window: Q Set limit access to your land: Do this by selecting the ACCESS tab from the ABOUT LAND window. You can ADD or REMOVE residents from the list as well as sell passes for Linden dollars.

Q Ban people from your land: To do this, select the BAN tab from ABOUT LAND and ADD a resident here.

Other land options Q To make your land safe: Select SAFE (NO DAMAGE) in the OPTIONS tab of ABOUT LAND. This means that no damage can be done to those visiting your land.

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Q To be listed in the PLACES search: Select SHOW IN SEARCH > PLACES in the OPTIONS tab. This will cost L$30 per week. If you select this feature, be sure to also select the category you want your land to be listed under. You should also add a description and a picture for your land in the GENERAL tab as this is what people will come across when they are searching.

Q To select a landing point: Click SET next to LANDING POINT in the OPTIONS tab to create a landing point where you are standing. This is where people will be directed if they teleport to your land through searches.

Q To return objects people have left on your land: If you go to the OBJECTS tab, you can select to return individual items to their owners or select to automatically return any objects left for a certain number of minutes. If you’ve decided not to do an automatic return, you will be able to see a list of objects on your land, under the following headings: OWNED BY PARCEL OWNER (you), SET TO GROUP (the group you’ve set in the GENERAL tab), OWNED BY OTHERS and SELECTED/SAT UPON. You can view all of the objects listed here and choose to return them back to the owner. If you click on RETURN OBJECTS, the objects about to be returned will be highlighted and you will be asked if you’re sure you want to return the selected objects.

Terraforming your land To make the land truly yours you can redesign the terrain to make it your own.

First you’ll need to thoroughly plan it out. Decide exactly how you want your land to look and what you want to build on it. How do you want the landscape to look?

Where do you want hills, trees, lakes and buildings?

Once you have made your plans you will need to terraform the land, in other words alter its appearance. If it is mainland or rented land you will only be able to change the shape of the land by flattening it or making hills. If it is an island you can also change the textures of the land. You could have sunny white beaches with blue waves in the sea or snow-capped mountains.

To edit the land, right-click on the particular piece of land you want to alter and select EDIT TERRAIN. This will bring up the LAND editing menu (CTRL 5 also opens this menu). From this menu you can do the following:

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Q Select the land: You can select a part of land by clicking on SELECT LAND and clicking on the part of land you want to alter. You can alter the size of the land selected by selecting SMALL, MEDIUM or LARGE from the drop-down menu and you can click on APPLY TO SELECTION to terraform the whole selected plot.

Q Reshape it: You can alter your land to your liking by selecting: FLATTEN LAND, RAISE LAND, LOWER LAND, SMOOTH LAND, ROUGHEN LAND or REVERT LAND. Q Cancel any changes: If you’ve made a mistake you can easily select REVERT LAND to take it back to its original state.

If you want to speed up your terraforming, just hold down the left mouse button and move it around over the area of land.

Building on your land Once you’ve set all your security options and terraformed your land, you are ready to build. You can now scour the shops for buildings and other items to purchase or read the next few chapters to learn how to build items for yourself. Houses in SL can range from your basic house at $L500, all the way to a huge castle for $L10,000. Basically, you get what you pay for. The housing stock in SL are called prefabs.

Alternatively, you could hire someone else in SL to do the work for you. Take a look in the forums, search through the CLASSIFIEDS or chat to a few of your neighbours to find experts who can help you create your perfect virtual home.

When you start building it is easy to get carried away, creating several pets and other fun items. Remember, however, that all items you either make or purchase have a primitive (prim) count and you need to ensure that you do not exceed your parcel allocation, otherwise you will be unable to place more objects or excess items will be returned to your lost and found folder.

To see how many prims an object has you just need to right-click on it, select EDIT and click on the MORE>> button. Under the first tab (GENERAL) you can see how many prims the object has.

If you’re on a prim budget, be sure to check the prim count of items before you buy to make sure you can accommodate them on your land to avoid nasty surprises.

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Note that prim items of clothing such as hair, clothes and jewellery do not count towards your prim allocation when they are attached to you. The prim count of objects in your inventory do not count either.

Playing media on your land Most land has music playing in the background and you can choose your own music to play. At present, the only way to stream music into your land from an internet address is by going to the MEDIA tab in ABOUT LAND and entering the web address details.

You can also play videos on your land by creating a box (see the next chapter to learn how to create objects) with a texture that hasn’t been used elsewhere in the land.

Then go to the MEDIA tab in ABOUT LAND and select the texture of the box from the list in the REPLACE THIS TEXTURE box. Then you can enter the URL of a movie stream (this will need to be in Quicktime format). Every instance of this texture will then display the movie stream. To watch the video in SL on the box you just need to press the triangular play button that will appear at the bottom of your viewer.

7.2: A media screen for pictures and videos on Book Island

Selling your land If you want to move to a better piece of land or just get rid of it altogether you can sell your land to another resident.

Go to the GENERAL tab in ABOUT LAND and go to the FOR SALE section. You will need to enter the sales price here and select the box SELL FOR LINDEN DOLLARS.

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If you want to set it for sale to a particular resident then click the SELECT button and find them via the SEARCH function. Click OK once you’ve selected the person.

Be careful if you’re experimenting with selling and make sure you set the price properly. Most people are kind enough and will let you know if you have made an obvious mistake, but others will readily take advantage.

There are controversial things called land bots in SL at the moment, which are robots that are programmed to look out for cheap land that is for sale. Many people feel this gives the bot owners an unfair advantage in the purchase of land. If you set your land for sale and the price is low enough you will find that a land bot will teleport to your land within two seconds and buy it.

Renting your land You can also rent some or all of your land to others and make your tier payments back.

This can be a good income if done properly. See Chapter 16 for more details on this.

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Hints and tips Q Add-on islands: It is possible to buy void islands (collections of four ‘low prim’ island sims, each with 1,870 prims) and to attach them to any existing estate islands you own.

Q Abandoning your land: Be very careful not to hit the ABANDON LAND button on the GENERAL tab in ABOUT LAND as this will give the land back to Linden Lab. You will probably be able to recover this land if you react quickly and immediately send an email to Linden Lab with an explanation.

Q Be neighbourly: It is a good idea to get to know your neighbours and have a good chat with them so you are on friendly terms. They might be able to give you some advice on building or where to buy your items.

Q Tier payments: Make sure you keep on top of your tier payments. If you don’t, Linden Lab can suspend your account and even close it completely.

Q Best place to buy land: The best place to find out about buying land is still the Secondlife.com main forums, accessible from your account page. Click SEARCH and enter BUY LAND and you will be presented with lots of very good information.

Q Best place to buy homes: Good places to purchase homes or prefabs are abundant. When buying your home always look at how big the footprint is. A footprint is the physical size the prefab will take up. So if you have 1,024-square-metre plot of land and the footprint is 1,500 square metres, the prefab will be too big. You should also take into account the prims it uses. My favourite place to buy is Hoffman Designs (6, 129, 25). It’s a onestop shop, with prefabs and furniture spread over two islands.

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Creating and Editing Prims

Creating your first object Prims (or primitives) are the basic building blocks that make up SL. Virtually everything you see in SL is made of prims – buildings, hair attachments, pets, cars and vendors. To create any object in SL you start off by choosing a basic prim shape, which you can then manipulate to create a more complex object by changing its shape, colour and texture and linking it to other prims. To be able to build you need to be in land where you have permission to build, so make your way to such an area.

You can tell if you can build on the land by checking the icons on the menu bar at the top of your screen (see the key for these on p 49). It is bad manners to build on privately owned land without the owner’s permission, but if you still decide to, it goes without saying that you should delete everything you put there before you leave. Anything else is just littering and plain antisocial.

If you don’t have your own land yet, or aren’t a member of some land with permission to build, it is best to make your way to a sandbox area and find yourself a nice quiet spot somewhere with room around you to work.

As you probably don’t want to be disturbed when you’re building, it’s best to set yourself as busy (click on WORLD, then SET BUSY).

Creating a ball For your first task, I’m going to show you how to rez (create) a ball: í˘ą To start building you need to bring up the CREATE menu. Do this by rightclicking on the ground and selecting CREATE from the pie menu. í˘˛ If you only have a small part of the CREATE window up, click on MORE >> to reveal the rest of it. í˘ł Take a look at the rows of shapes towards the top of the CREATE menu. These show various different shapes that you can create. í˘´ Select the image of a sphere.

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8.1: A build menu box

í˘ľ Now move your mouse arrow away from the menu and point to the ground.

You will see the mouse arrow change into a wand shape. í˘ś Left-click on the ground with the wand. This will create a ball shape where you just clicked. Well done, you have just created your first prim.

When you have created your prim you will see the CREATE window has changed and the EDIT button at the top of the window is now selected (rather than CREATE). You are now able to edit your object with this window.

Moving your object You will see various coloured arrows around your ball – green, red and blue. These

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arrows show the position of your object in the SL world. At the top of the screen you will notice some coordinates – a red ‘X’, a green ‘Y’ and a blue ‘Z’. These correspond with the red, green and blue arrows. í˘ą It is possible to move the ball anywhere you wish in the area around you. Left-click and drag the BLUE arrow and move it up and down. You will see ruler guides on the side of the box as you move it. These show half-metre measurements. í˘˛ Notice how the ‘Z’ coordinate in your EDIT window changes as you change the position of your ball. í˘ł Now try this with the red and green arrows.

8.2: The TEXTURE tab

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í˘´ You can also move around your object by going to the OBJECT tab of your EDIT window and changing the ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ references under POSITION. You can also move your object by selecting the MOVE option from the squares at the top of the BUILD menu. Once you have selected this mode you can simply left-click and drag your object to move it.

Texturing your object You will notice that your ball currently looks wooden. Everything you create in SL starts off with this wooden texture. Try changing this texture to something more exciting by doing the following: í˘ą Click TEXTURE tab in the EDIT window. í˘˛ Click on the picture of the pine texture with TEXTURE underneath it. This will open up a window containing a list of your inventory textures. í˘ł Go to your LIBRARY folder and then TEXTURES. Then choose any of the textures here that you would like to use. As an example I am going to use ‘Fabric – Denim’ from the FABRIC folder. í˘´ When you’ve clicked on a texture you will see a picture of the fabric appear to the left of the inventory list. When you’ve decided which texture you like, click on SELECT. You will now see that your ball has taken on this texture.

Modify your object at any time You can come back and carry on modifying your own object whenever you like. Try this by closing down the EDIT window. You can then open it up again by right-clicking on your object and selecting EDIT from the pie menu. You should be at the exact same place in the menu as when you left it.

Make your object movable Your object is currently still and fixed in its position, unless you move it using the CREATE window or by holding down CTRL and dragging it. You can make your ball actually roll around and act like a ball does in RL by making it PHYSICAL.

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í˘ą Do this by clicking on the OBJECT tab in the EDIT window. This shows the properties of your ball. í˘˛ Next, tick the box next to PHYSICAL. Your object will now be able to move around. í˘ł Test this out by closing down the CREATE window and left-clicking on the ball.

It should move a little. Try left-clicking and dragging the ball to move it around. í˘´ Now experiment kicking the ball around like a football by walking into it. See how it rolls around. í˘ľ Go back to the CREATE menu and click on the ball so you can see the coloured arrows around it. Move the blue arrow so your ball is lifted up in the air. Then exit the CREATE window and the ball will drop and roll around on the floor until it settles in a position.

Name your object If you go to the GENERAL tab in the EDIT window you can see the general information about your object, such as its name (the default name is ‘Object’), the creator (you), the owner (you) and the group associated with the object (for example, the group that is allowed to build on the land). There is also a line for a description about the object.

It is important to name your objects so you can easily identify them later on when you have stored them in your inventory. Edit the name of your ball now to something like ‘My ball’ in the NAME box. It is also worth adding a description of your ball here to show what it does or what it is for.

Put the object into your inventory í˘ą Close down any menus and right-click on your ball to open the object pie menu. í˘˛ Select TAKE. This will move the object into your inventory. í˘ł Go into your INVENTORY and type ‘My ball’ (or whatever you named your object) into the search box. This should find your item. If you didn’t name it earlier it will still be called ‘Object’, so take a look for items with this name.

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í˘´ Once you’ve found your item, drag it from the inventory to the ground to rez it again (bringing an object out of your inventory again is also referred to as rezzing).

Selling your object You can sell your items in SL for Linden dollars. If you make enough Linden dollars you can then exchange them for real US dollars via the LindeX – a dollar exchange site on Secondlife.com.

Setting your item for sale is a very easy process. Just take the following steps: í˘ą Right-click your ball and go to EDIT. í˘˛ Select the GENERAL tab. í˘ł Tick the FOR SALE box. í˘´ Set a price in the PRICE box below. í˘ľ There are three options under the price box: ORIGINAL, COPY and CONTENTS. These options determine what the purchaser actually gets – the original object, a copy of it or the contents of it (as objects can contain other objects inside them). Make sure that COPY is selected. í˘ś Select your permissions options by ticking the options under NEXT OWNER CAN. I usually set my items to no modify, no copy and transfer. This means the new owner can transfer the object to another person, but can’t copy it or modify it. Whatever you do, don’t set your item to copy and transfer unless you want someone to be able to sell infinite copies of your hard work without you gaining any benefit. í˘ˇ Finally, open the pull-down menu under WHEN LEFT-CLICKED. This controls the action the object takes when you left-click it. At the moment your object will have the default, TOUCH/GRAB, which allows you to move the object around. Select BUY OBJECT.

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í˘¸ You have now set your ball for sale. Anyone who sees your object and left-clicks on it will be able to buy a copy of it.

Of course, it is not very likely that anyone will actually buy your object as it doesn’t serve a purpose and is very easy to create. However, once you get more advanced with your building you may find many people want to buy your creations.

Practise your building skills You just made a very basic shape using one prim. I’ll be teaching you much more about building in the next chapter, including how to link your prims together, but for now have a play around with creating some of your own basic objects. It is also worth taking a little tour around the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives, a place dedicated to educating SL users about how to build. Search in PLACES for this fantastic location.

I’ll be showing you how to combine these basic shapes to make more complex objects in the next chapter. When you link prims together to make one object it doesn’t mean the prims themselves are combined – they will still count as separate prims. This means that it is better to use fewer prims if possible so they don’t use up the prim allowance of any land they are on.

Once you know how to create and join prims you can make virtually anything. You could build a small building from 20 prims or, if you include a script in your prim, you could make a car that moves or a jacuzzi that bubbles. You can only link 255 prims together at once. For prims that have been made physical there is an even smaller limit of 31 prims.

Building proficiently is definitely a skill, and it is one that can be learnt. Some people spend a lot of time creating and building in SL, and others are not interested in it at all, preferring to buy what others create. However, if you have a talent for building, it is possible to make good money in SL to support your second life, and even in some cases contribute towards your real life. In the previous chapter you learnt how to make a simple one-prim sphere. To be able to make more complex objects you need to be able to change the shape of these basic prims by prim manipulation. You will also need to learn how to link up different prims to form one object. Once you have learnt these basic skills you will be able to build some very impressive-looking objects and create a whole array of items.

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Hints and tips Q Always name your notecards and objects: If you don’t you’ll find it difficult to find them again when you store them in your inventory. All notecards will be named NEW NOTE and all objects will be OBJECT unless you have given them a new name.

Q Always try to keep your inventory tidy: Use lots of individual folders to organise your creations so you can find them easily and won’t get any of them confused.

Q If you want to see what is inside any object around you: Right-click on the object and select EDIT to bring up the CREATE window. Then select the CONTENT tab and it will show you a contents folder. If there are items or scripts inside it they will be listed here. For example if you click on a chair there will be a sitting script there.

Q To find out more information about an object: Hover your mouse over the object.

Q If your object goes beneath ground level when you are building: You can find it again quite easily. You will need to open up the CREATE window, so select the blue BUILD button at the bottom of your screen and then select the option EDIT at the top.

Then left-click and drag to the ground to create a large square.

This selects all the items in that area. If you do this over the area where your object is it will select the object. You can then move your object back up above ground level again. Alternatively, if you’ve disabled your camera constraints through the CLIENT menu (see p 80) you will be able to manoeuvre your camera beneath the ground level.

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Prim manipulation You will need to be on land where you have permission to build, so go to your own land if you have some or to a sandbox. Next, rez a cube-shaped prim (right-click on the ground, select CREATE, select the cube from the prim pictures and the click on the spot of land you want to build on).

Once you’ve rezzed your cube, take a good look at the OBJECT tab in the EDIT window. You already used this tab in the last chapter to make your ball physical so it could roll around. Now I am going to show you what else you can do with this OBJECT tab. At the top of the tab you have the following EDIT OBJECT PARAMETERS that you can select: Q LOCKED: This locks the prim so it can not be mistakenly moved or deleted.

Q PHYSICAL: As you saw when you made your ball, this makes the object react with the world with physical properties.

Q TEMPORARY: This means that the object will only be inworld for one minute before it will be deleted (the prim being lost forever unless you have a copy saved in your inventory).

Q PHANTOM: This makes it possible to walk through the object (this is useful for doors).

Below these options there are ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ coordinates for the object’s position, size and rotation. To edit any of these you will need to select POSITION, STRETCH or ROTATE at the top of your EDIT window.

You will see that when you click from one of these options to the other (for example from POSITION to ROTATE) that the ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ of the corresponding sections below are highlighted in red, green and blue. The red, green and blue options on your box itself will also change, giving you the ability to alter these aspects on the box itself.

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POSITION í˘ą Select POSITION at the top of the EDIT window and then click on the up arrow next to the red ‘X’ in the OBJECT tab. You will see how the box moves along the axis of the red line running through your cube. Here you can align your objects from side to side (or front to back, depending on your camera view) with perfect precision. í˘˛ You can also directly change the number in the box next to ‘X’ to move it. The number in the box refers to the point in the centre of the box. Have a go at altering this, but don’t change the number too much or you might lose your object in someone else’s land. í˘ł Try this with the green ‘Y’ and blue ‘Z’ entries too. The ‘Y’ will move the object from front to back (or side to side, depending on your view) and the ‘Z’ will move it up and down. í˘´ You can also physically move the box itself by clicking on the red, green and blue arrows – as I have shown you before.

Try moving the box around with these different methods.

STRETCH í˘ą Select STRETCH at the top of the EDIT window to activate the ability to stretch.

You will notice that the cube select lines change to coloured squares on each side of the box and to grey squares on each corner. í˘˛ Try left-clicking one of the coloured squares and dragging it. This will stretch the object, changing its proportions. When you stretch the box you will see ruler guides on the side of the box in half-metre increments. If you move your mouse across to the ruler while you are stretching your object, it will snap to the half-metre points when you stretch it further. The maximum size of any prim is ten metres in any direction so you won’t be able to stretch it any more than this.

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í˘ł Try left-clicking and dragging on one of the grey squares. You will see how the object is being stretched, but its proportions remain the same. í˘´ Note how the corresponding number in the EDIT box under SIZE changes as you alter the size of the box. í˘ľ You can also change the box by typing in a new size or fine-tune it with the arrows next to the ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. The ‘X’ here relates to the width, the ‘Y’ relates to depth and the ‘Z’ relates to height.

ROTATE í˘ą Now click on the ROTATE at the top of the EDIT window and see how the box now has circular rings around it. í˘˛ Try rotating the box by left-clicking and dragging the red, green and blue rings around it. í˘ł You will see that the corresponding numbers change in the EDIT window. Try rotating the box by using these numbers alone.

Undoing and redoing If you have made a mistake in editing an object it is possible to undo your changes if you are still in the same mode (POSITION, ROTATE or STRETCH) by going to the EDIT menu bar and selecting UNDO. You can also REDO any steps here. The short cuts for these are: Q Undo: CTRL and ‘Z’ Q Redo: CTRL and ‘Y’

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Shift-copying You can make an exact replica of a prim or object you’ve created already. Try this on your box by taking the following steps: í˘ą Bring up the EDIT menu for the prim you want to copy. í˘˛ Select POSITION and hold down SHIFT while left-clicking the red position arrow on your box. í˘ł Still holding down SHIFT, move the box to the side and let go of SHIFT. You will see that you have made an exact copy of the box.

Making a chair Using this new knowledge, I am going to show you how to make a simple object that you can actually use – a chair. Delete any prims you have left lying around (right-click, select MORE > and DELETE) and find a nice clean space on a flattish area of ground.

Create a base í˘ą Create the prim for the base of the chair by rezzing a cube in front of your avatar. í˘˛ For ease of explanation in these steps, please ensure that you are viewing your object so that the ‘X’ position refers to moving from left to right, and that the ‘Y’ position refers to moving forwards and backwards. í˘ł Change its SIZE to the following: X: 1.000 (width) Y: 1.000 (depth) Z: 0.500 (height) í˘´ Keep the ROTATION as it is (X: 0.00, Y: 0.00, Z: 0.00).

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Create the sides í˘ą Now shift-copy the box. (Select POSITION, then press SHIFT while moving the red position arrow.) í˘˛ Adjust one of the boxes so the ‘X’ width is 0.500 and the ‘Z’ height is 1.000. í˘ł Now shift-copy this newly sized box so you have two tall prim boxes and one shorter one. The two taller prims will be the sides of the chair and the shorter one will be the base. í˘´ Move the boxes so the smaller base is in between the two taller side prims.

Create the back í˘ą Now shift-copy the base prim. í˘˛ Change the copy to the following size: X: 1.000 (width) Y: 0.010 (depth) Z: 1.000 (height) í˘ł Reposition your new chair back so it is behind the base prim.

Arranging your objects You should now have four boxes in a similar layout to those in Figure 9.1 (overleaf). If you don’t, check you’ve got the right sizes and reposition your objects.

Now you are going to have to work really hard at positioning your objects in the perfect place to make a chair. You can do this by moving the position arrows, although it is very difficult to be precise. Unfortunately I can’t give you exact position references as this might move your object far away from you where it isn’t suitable to build (or where you aren’t allowed to build).

A much easier way to position the objects perfectly is to use the ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ coordinates to work out exactly where the objects should be. You will need to do some sums but don’t worry if you’re not a maths whizz – it’s pretty simple. Just follow these steps:

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9.1: The four pieces that will make up your chair

í˘ą ‘X’ positions (side by side): To place one object exactly to the right side of another you need to take the ‘X’ position of your first object, then add half the width of this first object (0.250) plus half the width of the second object (0.500).

(This is because the ‘X’ position refers to the centre of the object so you need to take into account only half of each object to find the central ‘X’ position of the second object.) A formula for this is: ‘X’ position for second object = ‘X’ position of first object + ½ ‘X’ width of first object + ½ ‘X’ width of second object (To place an object exactly to the left you will need to subtract the half widths rather than adding them.)

Use this formula to place the sides of the chair and the base. The back of the chair is the same width as the base so type in the same ‘X’ position reference here. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look quite right at this stage. You will need to get the depth and height correct too before it all fits together perfectly. í˘˛ ‘Y’ positions (depths): The ‘Y’ depths of both of the sides and the base are all the same: 1.000. As these objects all need to be level, they should all have the

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same ‘Y’ position (as their centres will all be at the same point) so type in identical ‘Y’ numbers for these three elements of your chair.

Next you’ll need to work out the ‘Y’ position of the back of your chair. To do this take the ‘Y’ position of the base, add half of the ‘Y’ depth of the base (0.500) and half of the ‘Y’ depth of the chair back (0.005). ‘Y’ position for second object = ‘Y’ position of first object + ½ ‘Y’ depth of first object + ‘Y’ depth of second object í˘ł ‘Z’ positions (heights): The ‘Z’ heights of both of the sides and the back of the chair are identical (1.000). Therefore their ‘Z’ positions (in their centres) will all need to be in the same place. So give these three the same ‘Z’ reference.

The base, however, is not as high as the others and its centre needs to be lower so the bases of all of these boxes line up. To work out the height of the base you first need to work out where the bottom of the other objects are. Take the ‘Z’ position of one of the sides and subtract half the height (which is 1.000/2=0.500) of one of the sides. This is where the bottom of the side is. To get the base to line up with this you need to take the number of where the bottom lies and add half the height of the base (which is 0.500/2=0.250). This gives you a number for where its centre should be, so add this number into the ‘Z’ position box. ‘Z’ position of second object = ‘Z’ position of first object – ½ ‘Z’ height of first object + ½ ‘Z’ height of second object Your objects should now line up perfectly and look like Figure 9.2. If they don’t, check that you have the right size and that all the rotations are set to 0.000. If these are all correct, try recalculating.

9.2: The lined-up boxes

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Joining up your prims Once your chair looks perfect you will need to join it up. í˘ą With the EDIT window still open, highlight all of the boxes by left-clicking one piece at a time while holding down SHIFT. This allows you to select more than one prim or object. (Alternatively you can drag a box over the ground to select all the objects in the area – this is only useful if there aren’t other prims or objects nearby.) í˘˛ Once all four prims are highlighted, go to TOOLS in your menu bar and select LINK. Now your bunch of prims has become one object. (You can also unlink prims here.)

Viewing objects you are building When you are building you need to be able to zoom in and out on the object and easily view it from different angles. You already know how to rotate and zoom in on an object by holding ALT, left-clicking and moving your mouse. In the BUILD menu there is an option to change the view of your object much more easily.

Go to the BUILD menu and select FOCUS from the squares at the top. Here you will see you can select the following: Q ZOOM: Here you can easily zoom in and out on your object, while rotating it if you wish. Do this by holding down a leftclick and moving your mouse.

Q ORBIT: This allows you to orbit around your object when you click and move your mouse, so you can view your object from directly from above or under the ground.

Q PAN: This allows you to move up and down and left and right on the object you are editing.

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Sit on your chair Well done. You have successfully made an object out of a number of prims. Try sitting on your chair by right-clicking and selecting SIT. You can even make your chair have an automatic action to sit on it when you leftclick it. To do this, open up the EDIT window, go to the GENERAL tab and select SIT ON OBJECT from the drop-down menu WHEN LEFT-CLICKED. Test this out by standing and then left-clicking on your chair.

Texturing your chair After you’ve had a rest, stand up and have a go at giving your chair a better pattern.

You’ve looked at texturing a basic object before, but I’m now going to show you how you can texture individual surfaces and different parts of your more complex object. í˘ą First you’ll need to rename your chair. Open the EDIT window, go to the GENERAL tab and name it ‘My first chair’. í˘˛ Then go to the TEXTURE tab and click on the TEXTURE box to bring up your choice of textures. í˘ł Choose a texture from your inventory and then apply it. í˘´ Now let’s put a different texture on the seat of the chair. Go to the top of the EDIT menu and select the option SELECT TEXTURE. Then left-click on the seat of your chair. This will highlight just the texture of the seat. í˘ľ Go to the TEXTURE box and choose another texture for the seat. í˘ś Now have a go at giving different textures for the arms too, and perhaps even the whole chair.

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Some helpful building short cuts Q To link selected objects together: Press CTRL and ‘L’.

Q To unlink a selected object: Press CTRL, SHIFT and ‘L’.

Q To go to build mode: Press ‘B’ when your CHAT box is shut.

Q To go to zoom mode: Press CTRL and ‘1’. This takes you to the zoom mode in the FOCUS section of your BUILD window.

Q To move your object: Press CTRL and ‘2’. This takes you to the MOVE section of BUILD. Q To edit your object: Press CTRL and ‘3’. This takes you to

EDIT in the BUILD window.

Q To create a new object: Press CTRL and ‘4’ to go to CRE-

ATE in the BUILD window.

Q To edit the land: Press CTRL and ‘5’ to go to the LAND section of BUILD.

Prim torturing (changing its shape) I’ve already explained that when you are creating any object you have a set of basic shapes to work with and so far I have just shown you how to adjust the size of your prims. There is much more you can do to your prims however – you can cut, shave, bend and adjust them so their actual shape changes. This can be done by accessing the following tools on the right-hand side of the OBJECT tab in the EDIT window: Q BUILDING BLOCK TYPE: From here you can select to change the prim to another shape.

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9.3: An object path cut by 1.000 at the end

Q PATH CUT BEGIN AND END: This allows you to path cut (cut) a whole slice from your object from either the beginning (‘B’ – this cuts in a clockwise direction) or the end (‘E’ – this cuts in an anticlockwise direction).

Q HOLLOW: This hollows out your shape by a certain percentage by cutting out a certain shape from the centre of the object. The maximum percentage/number you can cut out is 95.0.

Q HOLLOW SHAPE: Here you can select what shape is hollowed out from your object. You can choose a circle, square or triangle.

Q TWIST BEGIN AND END: Here you can twist the object from its beginning (the bottom) – through ‘B’ – or from its end (the top) – through ‘E’.

Q TAPER: This allows you to taper the object by the ‘X’ coordinate or the ‘Y’ coordinate.

Q TOP SHEAR: This allows you to slant your object by the ‘X’ coordinate or the ‘Y’ coordinate.

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Go through the following steps to experiment with some of these tools to alter the shape of a basic prim: í˘ą Rez a cube. í˘˛ Go to the OBJECT tab in your EDIT menu and create a hollow in your object by typing 66.0 into the box next to HOLLOW. Then select the HOLLOW SHAPE to be a CIRCLE. í˘ł Enter 0.25 into the PATH CUT BEGIN AND END box ‘B’ to path cut into your shape. í˘´ Stretch your object to be two metres tall by changing the ‘Z’ in SIZE to 2.000. í˘ľ Now twist your object so the TWIST BEGIN AND END is 180 for ‘B’ (begin) and -180 for ‘E’ (end).

You should end up with an object that looks like Figure 9.4.

9.4: A prim that has been hollowed, path cut and twisted

Creating a nano prim A nano prim is a normal prim which, when edited, appears smaller than a standard prim. Many people use them to make jewellery and other small detailed builds. As an exercise to test your skills in building, have a go a creating a nano prim.

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í˘ą Rez a sphere and hollow it by 20.0. í˘˛ Select CIRCLE as the hollow shape. Path cut from the beginning (‘B’) by 0.400.

You will be able to see that there is a little ball within the centre of your sphere. í˘ł Tick the SELECTIVE TEXTURE and EDIT LINKED PARTS boxes and click on the inner surface on the hollow centre of your sphere. í˘´ Change the texture of this to BLANK. í˘ľ Then click on the outer surface of the sphere and select a full alpha (ie seethrough) texture. To get one of these for free you can visit PICKS in my profile and teleport to the alpha texture link. í˘ś Now change the path cut ‘B’ back to 0.000. í˘ˇ Use STRETCH to reduce your ball down to the smallest size you can. í˘¸ You now have a nano prim.

9.5: A finished nano prim, selected in EDIT

You have now tried out the basics of what you can do to bend, cut and reshape a prim.

There are further manipulations, but this goes far beyond the scope of this book and you may well never use them. If you want to find out more, there are some excellent places in SL that can give you further information and tutorials on advanced prim cutting and torturing. The various New Citizens Incorporated sites have excellent tutorial boards, as does the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives at Natoma (210, 164, 27).

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Hints and tips Q Name everything you build: It can be quite confusing if everything you build is stored as ‘Object’ so remember to name any items you create before saving them to your inventory. It is good to be as descriptive as you can with the name. If you upgrade an object to a new version then save it with a date on it – this will mean it is easier to find in your inventory later on.

Q If it looks remotely good, set it to sell: It’s amazing how many different tastes there can be out of 10 million people.

Q Always take a copy of your build: Before you experiment with something you are happy with, remember to take a copy of it first. If the viewer crashes or the sim is reset, you may lose it.

To take a copy, right-click the object, select MORE>, then TAKE COPY. Or you can shift-copy the object.

Q Auto-select a texture: If you left-click a texture inworld and then go to SELECT TEXTURE, and then click the TEXTURE again, it will be auto selected (if it exists in your inventory).

Q Learn to use the camera controls: Camera tools are an essential tool in building. Use CTRL and ALT or ALT to zoom, or CTRL and ‘L’ to bring up the ZOOM menu of BUILD. Q Consider how many prims your object is using: If you are going to sell your item on consider the number of prims. Building big 500-prim builds instantly cuts off lots of potential buyers as they will not have anywhere to store it. Look at your build and see if the prims used could be cut down without losing the look.

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Q Work out ways to cut down on prims: There are various ways to cut down on prims. You can create two-stair steps with one prim by rezzing a box and path cutting begin to 0.125 and late-cutting end to 0.875, then rotating it.

Q Always build in a non-cramped area if possible: Even I still use sandboxes for building.

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If it wasn’t for textures you would have a very boring second life. Everything around you would look like plain wooden shapes. Luckily, as I have briefly shown you before, you can add textures to your builds.

There are many places you can find textures in SL. Some are free and some are made and sold by texture artists.

You will already have a number of free textures in your inventory LIBRARY to start you off, but it is also worth popping along to a freebie yard to find some more for your collection. Try typing in ‘free textures’ into your SEARCH window. If you are considering being a builder in SL a collection of good textures is an absolute necessity.

Creating textures in SL So how do textures get inside SL? You can either create textures inworld or upload them from RL for a charge of L$10.

There are many RL graphics applications you can use to create textures. Microsoft Paint is a very basic graphics program that is built into all Windows PCs, or there is Mac paint on Macs. You may even have used the more advanced Adobe Photoshop or Corel Paint Shop Pro. As well as commercial packages there are some fantastic free graphics applications to suit your needs as a beginner or even a more advanced texture maker.

The two main programs I use are Paint.NET and GIMP (which is short for the GNU Image Manipulation Program). They are both fantastic tools with simple interfaces and are great for people just starting out. GIMP is available from http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ for Windows Linux and Mac users. Paint.NET is available from http://www.getpaint.net/download.html and is only available for Windows at this time.

Uploading a picture from RL To create a new texture in SL you need to upload a saved picture from RL. You can upload anything – perhaps a picture of your favourite pet to hang on the wall of your SL house (please note that this will cost you L$10). All you need to do is pick a picture from your computer and upload it inworld by doing the following:

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í˘ą Open the saved file, select SAVE AS from the FILE menu and select one of the file formats that SL recognises, either: .BMP, .TGA or .JPG. í˘˛ Select UPLOAD TEXTURE from the FILE menu. (The short cut for this is CTRL and ‘U’.) í˘ł You will then be given a browser to find the file from your computer. Select the file from here and a window should open up with the picture. í˘´ Click on UPLOAD (L$10) and your picture will be saved to your INVENTORY at a resolution of 512 x 512 dpi for a fee of L$10.

Permissions for textures Although textures can be quite easy to copy and upload, you need to be very careful when you are using images from websites. Some websites will allow you to use their images and textures without any problem. Many, however, will have an end user agreement (an agreement between the seller and buyer which states what you can do with the textures) about textures being resold due to copyright. So please do not copy.

This also applies to the world inside SL. People make these images for your enjoyment and use, and set them at full permissions so you can use them. Certain residents see this as an open invitation to resell these textures for their own gain. This never lasts long due the owner of the said texture filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint to Linden Lab for removal of the offending items. More information can be found on Secondlife.com about copyrights and the DMCA.

The TEXTURE tab So now take a look at the TEXTURE tab in more detail in the EDIT window. At the top of the tab are the following: Q TEXTURE: You have used the TEXTURE box previously so you know it opens up your inventory for you to select a texture.

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10.1: A TEXTURE tab

Q COLOR: This opens up the COLOR PICKER window, allowing you to pick colours for your object. You need to click on one of the small colour boxes first to change the CURRENT COLOR square. Then you can pick from the rainbow of colours and can adjust the levels of RED, GREEN and BLUE, as well as the HUE, SAT (saturation) and LUM (luminescence).

Q TRANSPARENCY: Here you can make your prim slightly or completely transparent (90 is the maximum).You can make convincing windows or glass using this option.

Q FULL BRIGHT: Ticking the box here automatically brightens up your texture. This is very useful if the image is particularly dark or if you would like to mask any joins in the build.

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Q MAPPING: You can select PLANAR or DEFAULT here. DEFAULT stretches the texture to the size of the prim, whereas PLANAR applies the texture per metre of the prim, so it will tile a large prim with repetitions of the image.

Q SHININESS: This allows you to make your object look shiny, giving it an attractive-looking sheen and allowing it to reflect light. You can select LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH levels of shininess or NONE, which is the default. To view shininess you need to have a good quality graphics card. Tick ENABLE BUMPMAPPING AND SHINY box in the GRAPHICS DETAIL tab in PREFERENCES. Q BUMPINESS: You can add bump maps to objects from here. This can make a texture appear bumpy – for instance, you can create bricks or bubbles. Once again, you will need a good quality graphics card and to select the option in PREFERENCES to view bumps.

Create a window Try out some of these new tools by creating an object that looks like glass. í˘ą Rez a cube and go to EDIT. í˘˛ Change your object’s size to: X: 0.010 Y: 2.000 X: 2.000 This will produce a (practically) flat square. í˘ł Go to the TEXTURE tab and select BLANK from the TEXTURE window. í˘´ Then go to the COLOR window and choose a light blue colour for your object.

This should change your object to a flat blue prim. í˘ľ Now change the TRANSPARENCY to 70.

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í˘ś You now have a good window (or whatever you wish it to be) to use in a building.

TEXTURE alignment tools Next take a look at the tools at the bottom of the TEXTURE tab. These tools are similar to the movement tools of the object, but they allow you to move the image or texture on the prim itself.

Q REPEATS PER FACE: This distinguishes how many times the texture will repeat itself on the prim face. You can edit this horizontally and vertically. If you have selected DEFAULT on MAPPING you can zoom into the centre of the picture by putting a smaller number into the HORTIZONTAL and VERTICAL boxes. You can also start to tile or repeat your image around the central image’s edges by adding in a higher number. If you have selected PLANAR on MAPPING you can easily increase and decrease the number of times the picture is tiled on your prim. You also have the option to flip the image both horizontally and vertically by selecting the FLIP tick boxes.

Q ROTATION: This allows one or more face textures to be rotated and is useful for fitting pictures to angled objects.

Q REPEATS PER METER: This sets how many times the image is repeated, but by metre, with both the horizontal and vertical proportions being the same.

Q OFFSET: Here you can move the image from left to right through altering the HORIZONAL number and up and down by altering VERTICAL. This is very useful to hide an unwanted part of an image and to zoom in on a certain part of the picture when used with REPEATS PER FACE or REPEATS PER METER. And there you have the main texture menu. It is a very flexible set of options and mastering these tools is a must to any builders in SL.

Create a three-seater couch I will now show you how to create an object that you can use lots of textures on to further your building and texturing skills. You have already made some simple items

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so now have a go at making an object that you can add to as you progress through the book. Hopefully you will be able to sell it in your own shop or give it away to your friends. That’s the great thing about SL – you can make the decision.

So have a go at the following steps to create a three-seater couch.

Make the base í˘ą Rez a torus (the ring-shaped prim). í˘˛ Go the OBJECT tab. You will notice that there are some extra options in the OBJECT tab now that you have picked a more complex prim: HOLE SIZE, PROFILE CUT BEGIN AND END and RADIUS DELTA REVOLUTIONS. í˘ł Path cut ‘B’ to 0.500. í˘´ Change the ‘Y’ number under HOLE SIZE to 0.50 í˘ľ Change the size of the object to: X: 0.500 Y: 4.000 Z: 1.500 í˘ś Name your prim ‘base’ in the GENERAL tab.

Create some cushions í˘ą Rez another torus. í˘˛ Change the HOLE SIZE of ‘Y’ to 0.50 í˘ł Change the size of your prim to: X: 0.275 Y: 1.500 Z: 1.000

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í˘´ Now shift-copy the cushion twice so you have three. (To do this hold SHIFT and drag one of the position arrows a little way.) í˘ľ Line the cushions up next to each other in a row of three using the position tool. It is easiest to use the snap to grid for this, so select EDIT on one of the cushions and select POSITION in the OBJECT menu. Then use the arrows to line the objects up, snapping the objects to the rulers on the side by moving the mouse towards the rule when dragging. í˘ś Link the cushions together by holding down SHIFT and left-clicking each one.

Then select LINK from the TOOLS menu. í˘ˇ Now shift-copy your linked cushions so you have two sets of three.

Join up the parts í˘ą Rotate one set of cushions so they are standing up. í˘˛ Move one set of cushions on top of your couch base and the other behind the base of the couch to make the back cushions. í˘ł You should now have something that looks like Figure 10.2.

10.2: A three-seater couch

í˘´ Now link up the whole couch. Select all parts as before and then go to TOOLS and LINK. í˘ľ Name your object ‘My three-seater couch default 1’.

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í˘ś Right-click your couch and select MORE>, then TAKE COPY. Now you have a spare blank copy which you can use for future use or as a backup.

Texture your couch í˘ą Now right-click your couch, select EDIT and go to the TEXTURE tab and have a go a texturing your cushions. I will leave the textures up to your own personal taste and experimentation. í˘˛ To texture a single cushion: Click the EDIT LINKED PARTS box and then click on a single cushion and you can edit its texture and colour individually. í˘ł To texture three cushions at once: With EDIT LINKED PARTS selected, hold SHIFT and select the cushions and choose your texture and colour. í˘´ Name your couch ‘textured 3-seater couch’ and take a copy.

10.3: A three-seater couch with texture

Congratulations. You’ve just made a three-seater couch. If you right-click on one of the cushions you can SIT on it.

Make a matching chair It is very easy to make a matching chair for your couch. All you need to do is take a copy of your three-seater couch, then follow these steps:

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10.4: A chair with one bottom cushion

í˘ą Now UNLINK your couch. í˘˛ Delete all but one bottom cushion and back cushion so it looks like Figure 10.4. í˘ł Select the bottom cushion and shift-copy downwards to make a copy, lining it directly underneath the first cushion. í˘´ Now stretch the back cushion down towards the ground.

Copy a nearby prim’s texture or colour When you open up the TEXTURE window and the COLOR PICKER window you will see there is a box with an eye dropper icon in it. This tool allows you easily to select the texture or colour of an object around you. (You can only recreate it if you already have this texture in your inventory, however.)

To use this tool, tick APPLY IMMEDIATELY so you can see the colour selection, then click on the eyedropper. When you move your cursor out of the window your arrow will change to an eyedropper. You can then click on a side of any object and the texture or colour will be applied to it. This eliminates scrolling through your inventory list or selecting colour after colour, trying to find a match.

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í˘ľ Link all of the parts together and name it ‘matching chair’. í˘ś You have now created a matching chair so take a copy for your inventory.

You can see from this very simple exercise that once you have a base model and have saved it you can make other items very easily, using what I call the chop ’em up method.

If you look at most builds you will see this method has been used.

10.5: A finished matching chair

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Hints and tips Q Find a texture’s UUID number: Every SL item, texture agent or group has a Universal Unique Identifer (UUID) number in SL. If you right-click a texture in your inventory you will be able to copy this number to your clipboard by selecting COPY UUID. You can then paste this in a notecard or external program to see the UUID. Q Texture your prim out of edit mode: You can texture a prim by simply dragging the texture from your inventory onto the prim, which will texture just the side you drop it onto.

Q Find out the creator of a texture: You can see who created a texture by right-clicking on the texture in your inventory and selecting PROPERTIES. Q Organise your textures more effectively: Instead of buying storage boxes, simply rez a square prim, name it ‘Wall textures’ and drop copies of all your wall textures inside. If you do this for all of your textures, you can then delete them from your inventory. To then add the items back into your inventory just right-click on your box, select OPEN and then COPY TO INVENTORY. This will copy all the textures inside a folder with the same name as the box. You can then place the box inside the folder to store it there. Try to get into the habit of doing this and you will never lose a texture again.

Q Copying a texture from SL to your computer: If you own the texture you can save it to your computer for storage or editing. Open the texture in your inventory. Then go to FILE at the top of the viewer and click on SAVE TEXTURE AS… and it will be saved.

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Sculpty Prims

The sculpty (sculpted) prim is the newest addition to the prim family. You won’t find them in your CREATE menu because you actually transform a normal prim into a sculpty prim by adding a special kind of texture called a sculpt texture. These sculpt textures are mapped out on a graphics program outside SL and actually involve a shape.

When you upload these textures and apply them to a prim, the prim takes on this shape. This means you can make unique and varied shapes that are not possible within the usual prim system.

With sculpty prims you can create objects like sharks, trees or flowers from just one prim. Imagine how many conventional prims these objects could take. Although sculpties are fantastic, you can’t make a complete car (yet) due to limitations on sculpties, but you can certainly make a sculpted front end of a car. A sculpty prim can only be the same size as a normal prim. The only way to make them bigger is to use what is called an oversized prim or megaprim, which are actually unauthorised in SL. As such, they may be deleted or removed altogether by Linden Lab if discovered.

When sculpty prims first came out they were regarded with a certain amount of scepticism since traditional builders would need to develop further skills in high-end graphics programs like Maya to actually make them. Now there is a new breed of free applications made specifically for SL, opening up the world of sculpties to the everyday user.

Sculpties are not here to replace the basic prims but to make a welcome addition to complement them.

11.1: A sculpty prim made using SculptyPaint

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User-made sculpt programs Here are some programs that were made by SL users specifically for creating sculpty shapes. They are limited but you can achieve some good builds and additions to your new prims and textures.

nand Nerd’s Sculpt Texture Generator This is a free online generator and has three different ways of generating textures. It is available from: http://www.nandnerd.info/sculpty.php.

There are three different sets of programs on this site that all create a different type of shape or sets of shapes. The website uses pictures to show what shapes can be achieved, and all three programs use the same technique. With this program you can create a prim shape by changing a column of numbers that relate to specific points on a 2D map. Once you have manipulated it to your liking you click GENERATE and the texture will be created for you to save. The page also has good links at the bottom to various forums and other resources concerning sculpty prims.

11.2: nand Nerd’s Sculpt Texture Generator

Rokuro This program is available as a free download (in both a PC Windows version and a Mac version) at: http://kanae.net/secondlife/. It is a very easy tool to use and a personal favourite of mine. If you are going to download it, please support the creator, Yuzuru Jewell, by donating through his supplied link at the bottom of the page.

The concept is basically the same as with nand Nerd’s, but you can actually move the points on the map by dragging them (rather than having to change corresponding numbers). You can change the number of points by going to POINTS in the menu bar.

Rokuro will save a texture via the FILE/SAVE AS TGA(.TGA being the file extension).

Once saved, you can upload the texture to SL in the normal way – FILE/UPLOAD TEXTURE.

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11.3: A simple vase created in Rokuro

TOKOROTEN(extruder) TOKOROTEN is also by the maker of Rokuro and is a very similar application. The difference is that instead of looking at and modelling the object from the side, you look on it from above.

It is available from http://kanae.net/secondlife/tokoroten.html. This is currently only available for PCs. Again, it is free, but please support this fantastic application by making a donation to the maker.

11.4: A star shape created in TOKOROTEN and uploaded and stretched in SL

SculptyPaint This application is available for Windows, Linux and Mac from http://www.xs4all.nl/~ elout/sculptpaint/ and it differs from the previous programs in many ways. The main difference is that you can see the adjustments in full 3D as well as 2D, so you don’t need to guess what your textured object will look like. You can also add colours to your prim here.

You edit your objects with a drawing tool in the same kind of way as the other programs, moving points up and down to change your shape. This application also has specific tools for creating a flower, stone, stairs or an arch. You can also create random shapes using the drawing tool and also smooth your sculpty.

The best way to learn how to use this program is to start sculpting with it. It has a very easy learning curve and is an addictive little application.

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Creating a sculpty prim Now have a go at creating your own sculpty prim with the following steps: í˘ą Have a go at creating a sculpt texture with one of the programs above and save the texture onto your computer. í˘˛ Upload the image into SL by selecting UPLOAD IMAGE from the FILE menu.

(Select SCULPTED PRIM from the drop-down list next to PREVIEW IMAGE AS to see what your texture looks like.) í˘ł Now create a normal prim. Any shape will do as it will soon change. í˘´ Go to the OBJECT tab and click the drop-down menu under BUILDING BLOCK TYPE. Select SCULPTED. í˘ľ The OBJECT tab will now show a picture with SCULPT TEXTURE underneath it. Click on this texture and upload your texture from your inventory. í˘ś Congratulations. You have just made a sculpted 3D prim. You can now stretch and reshape your prim and even add a normal texture to give it colour and a pattern.

Other graphics programs There are a few other programs that weren’t made specifically for creating sculpty textures but that can be used for the same purpose. The most popular of these are Blender or WINGS3D. Q Blender: is an open-sourced project and most of it is free. It is available from www.blender.org/ and is a fantastic program for creating sculpties. However, Blender does require an extra program called an exporter in order to get the sculpt maps into SL. In fact, this applies to all 3D software. Each different program would need to be exported to make the map compatible with SL. Although Blender is a great piece of software I must advise people that the

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learning curve is quite steep, and I personally recommend using the next program, Wings 3D, at least to begin with.

Q Wings 3D: Wings 3D is another free program and is a bit easier to use than Blender. It is available from http://www.wings3d.com/ and supports Windows, Macs and Linux. Information on creating sculpties in Wings 3D and more can be found on the following Niki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/ Wings_3D. You will need to download an exporter to use it. You can find details on installing an exporter on the following forum: http://forums. secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=183764&page=1&pp=20&highlight=exp orter.

And there you have it. It is well worth hunting down forums and links for further advice and tips and experimenting with whatever program you choose so you feel comfortable with it. Enjoy your shape making.

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Hints and tips Q Texturing your sculpty: A sculpty prim has only one side so you cannot apply multiple textures to it. Think of a sculpty texture as a flat sheet that is wrapped over the sculpty prim.

Q Animate your sculpty: You can make sculpty prims change shape with texture animation scripts. This can be done by using a texture changer, which changes the sculpty by altering its shape. For instance, you could make a shark sculpty have a realistic moving tail and mouth.

Q Further information on Wings 3D: There are some excellent web pages dedicated to Wings 3D, as well as information on the Secondlife.com forums and through Secondlife.com’s Wiki help section.

Q Tutorials on different programs: There are some starter tutorials for Maya and the above programs at: http://www.taunt.com/ 2007/06/sculpty_tutoria.html. Some of the best resources can be found on the main forums on Secondlife.com.

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Scripts

As I have briefly explained before, a script is a basic piece of code. If you put a script inside an object it can make the object do something. Scripts can make an object move, listen, talk or operate as a vehicle or weapon. They can even make the object change its colour, size or shape. A script can make an object listen to your avatar’s words as well as talk back to you, and they can even let objects talk to each other. In fact, any interaction you see between avatars and objects, or objects with other objects, is via scripts.

Learning how to script is much harder to learn than basic object manipulation, but is very rewarding once you make progress. If you’ve had a go at building in SL, you’ll be familiar with the EDIT window. Well, everything you can define in the EDIT window can be defined in a script.

A script has to reside in an object. It can’t be placed inside an avatar to animate it, but an avatar can wear a scripted object. So, for instance, I could wear a simple prim with a script inside and it could animate me.

The programming for scripts in SL is called Linden Scripting Language (LSL). It is based on Java and C. It is a programming language and, as such, isn’t something that everyone finds easy to grasp. I am going to give you a basic oversight to scripting and further resources to learn more so you can decide for yourself whether scripting is for you.

LSL is based around states, such as on or off. You can have a default state such as ‘closed’ for a door or ‘off ’ for a jacuzzi. Further states can be triggered off by avatars or other objects interacting with them. For example an avatar could right-click on a door, triggering a ‘touch start’ message in its event handler, which creates the action of the door opening. Alternatively further events could be written into the script.

Creating your own basic script A LSL script must have at least one (default) state and one event handler in it. I am now going to show you how to make a script of this sort. When your avatar right-clicks on the scripted object it will say ‘I love SLguides’. So follow these steps to have a go:

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í˘ą Select to create a new script. You can do this by two different methods: Q Through the inventory: Select NEW SCRIPT from the CREATE menu in your inventory. Then double-click the NEW SCRIPT that has appeared in your inventory.

Q Through rezzing a prim: Go to the CONTENTS tab in the EDIT window.

There is a NEW SCRIPT button here that you can press to create a script inside the prim. Then double-click the NEW SCRIPT that has appeared in the object’s CONTENTS file. í˘˛ The script will open much like a notecard and will contain the default script that is inside every new script that is created. (This default script instructs the object to say ‘Hello, Avatar!’ when the script is first placed in the object and then say ‘Touched’ when it is touched.) í˘ł Delete the default script. í˘´ Type into the script the following code (Please note that I have used Âś to indicate a new paragraph): defaultÂś {Âś touch_start(integer total_number)Âś {Âś llSay(0, “I love SLguidesâ€?);}Âś } í˘ľ Save your script. If your script is already in an object it will now run. í˘ś Check that the box next to RUNNING is ticked. This box allows you to alter whether or not your script is active or not. í˘ˇ If you created the script in your inventory, move it to an object by rezzing a prim then dragging the script from your inventory onto the prim.

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í˘¸ Test out your script by left-clicking on it. The prim should say: ‘I love SLguides’. í˘š Now drag the script from the object’s contents to your inventory and rename it ‘I love SLguides’. If you delete the script from the object’s contents, your object will immediately suspend its action, but it will go right back to it again if you put your script back into the object. ě?… You have successfully created, tested and stored a basic script.

Resetting scripts Each time you rewrite your code you’ll want to reset the script. Resetting the script tells the script to start the new instructions. So if you had to display text and you changed the text inside the script, you would need to reset the script for it to display the new text. You can do this in the following ways: Q Press RESET in the SCRIPT window.

Q Select the object, then go to TOOLS in the menu bar and select RESET SCRIPTS IN SELECTION.

Learning more about scripts Scripting is not an easy craft to learn and I don’t want to throw you in the deep end with it. If you would like to learn more about scripts try the main script forums and the Wiki on Secondlife.com. There are also a number of places in SL itself where you can actually run a script and see its impact upon prims: Q College of Scripting, Music, and Science at Horsa (41, 238, 85): This is a fantastic place to learn and is located over seven floors. Everything is displayed on easy-to-read boards with plenty of examples of the scripts running.

Q Linden Script Tutorial Exhibition at Daydream SE Islands (230, 30, 23): This is a free interactive in-world tutorial developed by Clive Pro of Bromley

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College to help you learn LSL. Again, this is a very good place to learn and it actually has copies of some very good free scripts.

Where to find scripts You don’t have to create your scripts from scratch. You can acquire the scripts themselves, just like freebie textures and objects, and you can also find places that give the scripting language for you to copy and paste into a new script.

Most scripts come from the scripting community and are distributed for free. One fantastic place to find free scripts is the scripting library on the SL forums. There are two forums here; one is a library and one is a help/discussion section. There are many fantastic scripts available for free and it’s a simple case of copying and pasting the coding into a new script.

Another great place is the script library on Secondlife.com, http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Library.

Copying a script from an item You can also copy scripts from objects if they have their permissions set so you can modify and copy them. All you need to do is take the following steps: Q Right-click on the object and UNLINK it (through TOOLS in the menu bar).

The object needs to be modifiable for you to do this.

Q Go the to CONTENTS tab of each prim and look for any scripts. If you open one of the scripts and look inside you will see comments about it in red. This usually states the name of the scripter and any term, such as asking to be mentioned by name if you use the script and/or leaving that message intact within the script.

Q Open up your inventory and drag the script from the CONTENTS folder in the EDIT menu to your inventory. Now you can use this script in another object later on.

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Editing scripts Once you have acquired a few scripts and saved them you can even have a go at editing them. This is a great way to learn the actual functions of scripting as it is easy to see just what something does (especially if the person who wrote the script has put in helpful comments to explain the function of each part).

Have a play around with finding some scripts and, if you feel confident, try editing some of the scripts. If it goes wrong, don’t worry – you just need to close the script without saving it. Then have a go at the more complex script-building exercise below.

The poseball script I am now going to show you how to create a poseball for the three-seater couch and matching chair you made in Chapter 10 so you can sit centrally and in a certain way on the seats. You will be using the free poseball script written by FlipperPA Peregrine and inserting the script on a ball. You’ll then be linking the ball to your couch.

Follow the steps below to make a poseball for your couch: í˘ą Go to a freebie yard and get yourself a box of animations. You’ll need to find a sitting animation to put inside your poseball so you can sit in a certain way on your couch. í˘˛ Then go to somewhere where you have permission to build (either your own land, a sandbox or a friend’s or group’s land). í˘ł Rez your three-seater couch from your inventory. í˘´ Rez a sphere prim and colour it yellow. í˘ľ Now move the prim and position it on top of one of the sofa cushions. í˘ś Go to the CONTENT tab of the EDIT window and select NEW SCRIPT. í˘ˇ Now you need to add in the poseball script to your new script. You probably won’t want to type all of this in by hand so you can find this exact script on the following website: http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=50071&

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highlight=Pose+ball. The poseball script is as follows (Please be careful to note the difference between the number ‘1’ and letter ‘l’.): // FlipperPA’s auto-transparent minimum lag pose thingy.¶ // STEP 1: Drop your pose into an object inventory with this script (only 1)¶ // STEP 2: Simply enter the text you wish to hover about the pose object below¶ ¶ string DISPLAY_TEXT = “Float”;¶ ¶ // STEP 3: Hit “SAVE” below. If you change the pose, you can reset the script to re-read the pose¶ ¶ /////////////////////// DO NOT CHANGE BELOW ////////////////////////¶ string ANIMATION;¶ integer is_sitting;¶ ¶ default¶ {¶ state_entry()¶ {¶ ANIMATION = llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_ANIMATION, 0);¶ is_sitting = 0;¶ llSitTarget(<0,0,.1>,ZERO_ROTATION);¶ llSetTexture(“5748decc-f629-461c-9a36a35a221fe21f”,ALL_SIDES);¶ llSetText(DISPLAY_TEXT,<1,1,1>,1);¶ }¶ ¶ changed(integer change)¶ {¶

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if(change & CHANGED_LINK)¶ {¶ key av = llAvatarOnSitTarget();¶ ¶ if(av!= NULL_KEY)¶ {¶ llRequestPermissions(av, PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION);¶ }¶ else¶ {¶ if((llGetPermissions() & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION) && is_sitting)¶ {¶ is_sitting = 0;¶ llStopAnimation(ANIMATION);¶ llSetText(DISPLAY_TEXT,<1,1,1>,1);¶ llSetTexture(“5748decc-f629-461c-9a36a35a221fe21f”,ALL_SIDES);¶ }¶ }¶ ¶ }¶ ANIMATION = llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_ANIMATION, 0);¶ }¶ ¶ run_time_permissions(integer perm)¶ {¶ if(perm & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION)¶ {¶ is_sitting = 1;¶ llStopAnimation(“sit_generic”);¶ llStopAnimation(“sit”);¶ llStartAnimation(ANIMATION);¶ llSetTexture(“f54a0c32-3cd1-d49a-5b4f-

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7b792bebc204â&#x20AC;?,ALL_SIDES);Âś llSetText(â&#x20AC;&#x153;â&#x20AC;&#x153;,<1,1,1>,1);Âś }Âś }Âś Âś on_rez(integer start_param)Âś {Âś llResetScript();Âś }Âś }Âś í˘¸ Once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve added this script, make sure RUNNING is ticked and then select SAVE. Your ball should now have the word â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Floatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; above it. í˘š Find a suitable sitting animation or pose from the freebies you have found and drop it into the CONTENTS tab of poseballâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s EDIT menu. Then reset your script. ě?&#x2026; Now right-click and sit on the ball. You will find that the ball has become invisible (referred to as alpha in SL) and you now look like you are sitting on the couch. ě?&#x2C6; Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t panic if you arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sitting correctly. All you need to do is rotate your poseball (and adjust its position too if necessary). To find the invisible poseball when you are sitting on it press CTRL, ALT and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; so all transparent objects have a red glow. You should then be able to see your poseball and go to its EDIT menu.

Adjust the rotation and position of your poseball until you are happy with the seating position. ě?&#x2030; Stand up, then resize your ball to 0.250 in â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Xâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Zâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which is the most common poseball size. ě&#x201D;&#x2C6; Go to the CONTENT tab in your poseballâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s EDIT menu and open up the script. ě&#x201D;&#x2030; You can change the words that appear above your poseball here. Just find where the script says â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Floatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and change it to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. ě&#x201D;&#x160; Now save and reset the script.

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씋 Take a copy of your ‘Sit’ poseball and rename it. You never need to make a poseball again – you can just use a copy of this ball and edit it, swapping in a different animation and changing the title that appears over it. 씌 Shift-copy the poseball twice so you have three balls. 씍 Move the balls so there is one on each of the couch cushions. 씎 Using the shift-select method (hold down SHIFT and click on the items one at a time) select the three poseballs and then the couch (this must be the last to be selected because it contains no scripts) and then LINK them all. 씏 Now sit on each poseball to test them. Any refining to the poseballs or the couch can be done using EDIT and EDIT LINKED PARTS. 앬 Take a copy of your new three-seater couch and rename it to reflect the changes. 앬 Take the matching chair that you also made in Chapter 10 out of your inventory and place a copy of the poseball from your inventory on the chair. 앬 You now have a set of furniture with poseballs that is worthy of any house.

This new scripting information should keep you going for a few weeks. Have a look through the forums for some further scripts and test them out. Perhaps you can make many different poseballs for activities such as dancing with another sim or kissing.

I hope you enjoy scripting in SL as much as I do.

12.1: A three-seater couch with poseballs

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Hints and tips Q You can stop multiple scripts from being active by selecting all the objects then going to TOOLS in the menu bar and selecting SET SCRIPTS TO NOT RUNNING IN SELECTION. You can then turn them on again by selecting SET SCRIPTS TO RUNNING IN SELECTION. Q When several prims are linked, they can each contain a script which speaks to the rest of the object via link messages. These are faster and more private than having objects ‘chat’ or email each other.

Q You can find some great educational scripting events in SL, and people are always willing to teach those wanting to learn. Try searching for EVENTS under the EDUCATION category.

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Making Your Own Clothes and Accessories

It is a very useful skill to be able to make your own clothes, tattoos, and jewellery in SL. Not only can you make yourself a unique wardrobe, but you can sell on any items you create and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible to earn a good deal of money. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to give you a very basic start on some ways you can make your own clothing items and accessories.

Create your own jewellery You can make ring-shaped jewellery â&#x20AC;&#x201C; body piercings, rings and bracelets â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and fit it to your avatar very simply. Before you start, however, I would advise getting yourself a posing stand so you can stand perfectly still while you attach your piercing. If you havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t got one already you can get one for free by going to my profile (by searching for â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;madddyyy Schnookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;) and looking at my PICKS. If you look at the SLGUIDES pose stand pick and TELEPORT to the location you will find one there.

Once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a posing stand, follow the steps below to create your own jewellery.

You can create a piercing, a ring, a bracelet or whatever you want: í˘ą Rez your posing stand and stand on it using right-click and STAND. í˘˛ Rez a torus (the ring-shaped prim) in front of you and change the size. For a piercing or a ring you will want it to be very small so try sizing it to: X: 0.010 Y: 0.011 Z: 0.014 If you want a bracelet you will want something a bit bigger, perhaps: X: 0.030 Y: 0.150 Z: 0.110

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Experiment with increasing the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Xâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; HOLE SIZE of your torus to get the look you want. í˘ł Position the ring shape vaguely where you want it to be on your body by zooming in and out on your avatar using CTRL and ALT. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no need to be too precise at this point, as youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll need to move it again. í˘´ Now youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve created your object you need to actually attach it to your avatar.

Do this by right-clicking the ring, selecting MORE, then ATTACH and selecting the specific body part you want to attach it to (for example, HEAD and SKULL for an eyebrow piercing). í˘ľ The ring will have now moved so youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll need to reposition it. If you are creating a piercing it may well have moved inside your avatarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body. You will still be in EDIT mode so it should be easy to reposition your prim. í˘ś Choose a texture for your ring. í˘ˇ Come off the posing stand and you will have a great new piece of jewellery.

13.1: My avatar sporting an eyebrow piercing

í˘¸ You will now be able to DETACH and WEAR your piercing again as the prim will remember where it is supposed to be worn on your body. í˘š Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget to name your item so you can find it in your inventory.

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You can now make jewellery and many other crafts and attach them to your body. You could even link prims together to make more complex jewellery or a hat. Only one object can reside on a particular body part’s attachment so you can see why linking objects makes sense.

Why not sell your piece of jewellery to friends or in a shop? Don’t forget to alter the permissions so the next owner can’t just copy and sell it on. To get more customers I would recommend making your item modifiable so people can change the colour and texture.

To bling or not to bling Bling is probably one of the most worn accessories in second life. If you have never seen bling in SL before, it is jewellery (often shiny and oversized) containing a script which makes it flash, a bit like a star blinking in the night sky. Unfortunately bling jewellery in SL can be annoying and is also reputed to cause lag (I am still trying to find out if this is, in fact, true). The script to create bling is actually something called a particle script. It creates very small little flashes of usually white light for a split second, giving the impression of shining jewellery.

Now the question is, is bling actually an annoyance or an enhancement? There is no doubting that a nice necklace with a subtle flash of light every few seconds looks amazing, but a 400-prim chain with a silver logo hanging off and 20 flashing bling scripts can be a bit much. If you are creating jewellery, please keep this in mind, as well as potential lag. I usually use a script that contains a ‘bling off ’ option, to turn it off. I must admit that I feel the less flashing jewellery the better when it comes to bling.

Creating realistic clothing In Chapter 3 I showed you how to make your own clothes in SL using the APPEARANCE tool. This enables you to make simple clothing shapes with various textures.

Most of the more elaborate clothing you see in SL, however, has been made by using external programs. The most popular programs for making clothes are still Adobe Photoshop, available for purchase from http://www.adobe.com /products/ photoshop/index.html, or Paint Shop Pro from Corel, available from http://www. corel.com. I would advise visiting the main SL forums before using these programs as you can find some great information on creating clothes. There are also some free clothing-building programs that are available. One very good one is Gimp. It allows you to create clothes from templates then upload them into SL as a texture. You can

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even take digital photos of your own clothes to add on top of your SL clothes. You can download gimp for free for Linux, Windows or Mac from http://www.gimp.org/ Downloads/. Another great program is Paint.NET available from http://www.get paint.net/download.html, which is also an open source and is free but only caters for Windows at this time.

As well as my inworld shop on Publishing Island there are also a few good places for clothes creating, including: Q SL forum clothes links: http://forums.secondlife.com/forumdisplay.php? f=109.

Q The fantastic Robin Wood: http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/ SL-Tuts/SLTutSet.html.

The main forum link has literally too much information for the beginner, so start with Robin Wood and then either pop to my shop or follow the links I gave in the forums to start being a budding clothes creator.

Flexi prims Flexi prims are prims that are flexible and move around, such as skirts, dresses or flags.

You will probably have seen some flexi prims on your travels around SL. You might even have bought one or found a free one. I am now going to show you how you can make flexi prims for yourself to show you how they work.

First Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to show you how to make a cloak.

The cloak í˘ą Rez a cube and size it as follows: X: 0.500 Y: 0.001 Z: 1.000 í˘˛ Now I want you to go to the FEATURES tab in EDIT and tick the FLEXIBLE PATH box. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re probably expecting something spectacular to happen but it

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will actually look the same. However, when you take the next step you will see how your prim moves. í˘ł The cloak is positioned the wrong way so select ROTATE in the EDIT menu and rotate the prim until the rigid end is located at the top. í˘´ Apply the following settings in the FEATURES tab on the EDIT menu after ticking FLEXIBLE PATH: Softness: 3.000 Gravity: 0.300 Drag: 1.000 Wind: 3.500 Tension: 1.500 Force X: 0.010 Force Y: 0.010 Force Z: 0.100 í˘ľ You should now have a cloak which flutters in the wind and flows behind you when you walk. Choose a nice texture and attach it to the cloak. í˘ś Position the cloak on your back, select WEAR and then reposition it to make it automatically go to the right place. You are now the owner or an attractive item of clothing that you made yourself.

If you manipulate the cloak you can give it a silken texture so that it flows in the wind.

Alternatively, you can make it really small, apply some hair textures, and turn it into locks of flowing hair. Use you imagination and you can make anything.

Flexi clothes and skirts Making a flexi skirt used to be a laborious task. These days, there are some good scripts you can get hold of that can automate the whole process, making it easy to create a flexible flowing dress or skirt.

If you want to find out how to make a skirt, go to my profile (by searching for â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;madddyyy Schnookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in the SEARCH window) and then look at my PICKS. You will find a skirt maker in the tab. If you TELEPORT to the location you will find a skirt-maker

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box. This will contain a free virtual book complete with full instructions, a flexi script for your skirt and plenty of free textures to make many skirts that you can wear and even sell. Once again the best place to find information on flexi clothes or anything flexi is on the forums in SL.

Make your own tattoos You can create your own tattoos and alpha images to upload onto your avatar very simply by using external programs, such as Paint.NET. All you need to do in Paint.NET is to create tattoo images using just a UV layer, deleting any other layers. The tattoo texture can then be worn on top of your skin as an item of clothing.

For a full lesson on creating tattoos outside SL go to my PICKS in my profile and find the TATTOO TEXTURE tab. There is a free special-edition inworld book at this location that will give you all the information you need.

Once you have created or acquired a tattoo texture you can apply it to your avatar by doing the following: í˘ą Find a good tattoo texture. I have provided five in my tattoo guide to get you going and you can do what you like with these. í˘˛ Go to a mature area, find somewhere private and remove your clothes.

13.2: A tattoo design worn as an undershirt

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í˘ł Go to APPEARANCE MODE. í˘´ Your tattoo will need to be worn as a layer of clothing so you should consider what clothes you will be wearing with your tattoo. If you are going to have a Tshirt on (which uses the SHIRT layer) you will need to wear a tattoo on your arms under this shirt so it should be on the UNDERSHIRT layer of clothing. í˘ľ Select UNDERSHIRT and CREATE NEW UNDERSHIRT. You will be asked if you wish to automatically wear your clothing. Select YES. í˘ś Next I want you to click on the FABRIC box, which will bring up the textures in your inventory. í˘ˇ Select the tattoo texture from your inventory. For example you could use the FrontDragonTat from my free tattoo textures. Once you have found the tattoo, click on the texture once and then click SELECT. You should see the tattoo appear on your chest. í˘¸ Click on SAVE AS and give yourself a name for your tattoo. You have now created a tattoo that anyone can wear from a tattoo texture. You can sell this tattoo if you wish or give it to your friends.

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Hints and tips Q Repositioning attachments: You can right-click an object and choose EDIT even while you are wearing the attachment. This means you can easily reposition or even resize attachments you have acquired such as shoes or hair attachments so they fit your avatar properly. This will, of course, depend on whether the creator has made the item modifiable or not.

Q Attach points: When you are editing an attachment, you may be limited in how far you can move the item due to the attach point, ie the part of the body that either you or the maker chose for the item to be worn.

Q Linking attachments: You can’t link and unlink prims while they are attached to your avatar. If you need to do this, right-click the attachment and drop it so you can edit it on the ground.

Q Tattoos: Tattoos are very easy to make and are a good seller in SL. Keep the designs simple and don’t use other people’s work or brand logos otherwise you could end up in trouble. The best place I have found for tattoos is once again the SL forums – search under textures.

Q Rebaking Textures: You might come across problems loading your clothing or clothing textures in SL. If you go grey or black, you can’t swap over your clothes or the patterns don’t load properly, then don’t panic. All you need to do is to ‘rebake’ (reload up) your textures by going to CLIENT, CHARACTER and REBAKE TEXTURES. This should sort out your texture problems.

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Build Your Own Home and Shop

If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve read the previous chapters you will now have the necessary skills and knowledge to build your own home and a shop.

There are many building designs, and once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got the basics you can create whatever kind of building you like. You can create elaborate castles or simple one-floor stores. For now, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to show you some simple designs for a shop and home, which you can then alter, experiment with and expand on as you wish.

Creating a shop First, let us begin with your shop. Get yourself in an area with a large amount of space for building (and somewhere quite flat if possible) and follow the steps below:

Build the floor í˘ą Create a cube with the following dimensions: X: 10.000 Y: 10.000 Z: 0.050 í˘˛ Shift-copy your cube to the right and position the two prims exactly beside one another. í˘ł You now have a floor that should look like Figure 14.1. For the moment, keep the prims unlinked so you can use the individual prims for further building.

Build the walls and ceiling í˘ą Select the two prims and shift-copy them to the back so you have two extra prims.

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14.1: The shop floor

í˘˛ Now rotate these two new prims vertically and position them just behind your floor prims to make the back of the shop. í˘ł Select one prim and shift-copy it twice so you have two separate new prims. í˘´ Position these two prims vertically on either side of your floor prims to make the two separate sides of the shop. í˘ľ Select your two floor prims and shift-copy them both upwards. Then position them directly above the floor and sitting just on top of the walls to make the ceiling. í˘ś Finally you will make one front panel to your shop so shift-copy one of your back-wall prims to the front and position it at the very front of your shop on the left-hand side. í˘ˇ You should now have an unlinked shop that looks like Figure 14.2.

14.2: A completed shop

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The final touches í˘ą You probably want a simple design for your shop, so I suggest that you colour all the prims grey. í˘˛ Then edit the left-hand front panel to make it slightly see-through by changing its TRANSPARENCY to 20. í˘ł Now link all of the prims together and name the object â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;My Shopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

You now have a basic shop.

Creating more complex buildings You can easily link together a number of copies of your simple shop to make bigger builds. All you need to do is shift-copy your whole shop and place the extra shop next to, or on top of, your original shop.

I created the building in Figure 14.3 in only eight seconds after having made the first shop.

14.3: A high-rise block

Build a home You could easily adapt your shop into a home. Perhaps you could shift-copy it upwards to add another floor and copy the floor panels to make a ceiling. However, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to show you an entirely different design for your house that not only gives you more space, but has windows and space for a door. This will give you more privacy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; something very important for many SL residents. Once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve built this basic house

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you can easily adapt it as you wish and experiment with your own designs. So follow the steps below and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll soon learn to master the art of building:

Make the floor í˘ą Rez a cube to the following size: X: 10.000 Y: 10.000 Z: 0.050 í˘˛ Shift-copy it and line up the two floor panels next to one another. í˘ł Now select both of these floor panels and shift-copy them, lining these panels up so you have a 2 x 2 grid, as in Figure 14.4. í˘´ Link the four floor pieces together. This is your house floor.

14.4: The house floor

Create one side í˘ą Right-click one of the squares and rez a new cube in the corner of the square. í˘˛ Resize the cube to the following: X: 5.000 Y: 10.000 Z: 0.500

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í˘ł Rotate the prim on the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; axis to 270. This will be a wall section. í˘´ Shift-copy it to complete a whole wall on one side. í˘ľ Hollow out the new wall panel in the OBJECT tab to 95. (If this doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hollow out it is rotated incorrectly. So rotate and adjust the panel.) í˘ś Then resize your panel to Y: 2.000 and position it next to your original wall panel. It should now resemble a doorway. í˘ˇ Shift-copy the door and change the new primâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s size to Y: 8.000. It should resemble a window. í˘¸ Change the solid wall to a red colour, the door to a blue and the window to a green. You should have something looking like Figure 14.5.

14.5: One side of the shop

Create glass for your window í˘ą Shift-copy the green window and change the HOLLOW to 0. The copy should now be solid. í˘˛ Then move the new prim into the exact position of the frame and resize it to: X: 4.750 Y: 7.600 (This is precisely 95% of the frameâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Xâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; size so it perfectly fits the hollow.)

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í˘ł Change the new primâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colour to black and set its transparency to 20. í˘´ Click on the SELECT TEXTURE option at the top of the EDIT window and then click on the inside of the black window. í˘ľ Set the transparency to 90 so you can see out fully. You can now see through your window perfectly from the inside, but only slightly from the outside. í˘ś Link together the two parts of the window.

Create the rest of the walls í˘ą Now shift-copy the red wall and move it to the opposite side of the floor. í˘˛ Shift-copy this second red wall and place the new prim next to it so you have one entire red wall. í˘ł Do the same for the remaining two walls. í˘´ If you wish you can replace another window with a wall panel. í˘ľ Link up all the pieces. í˘ś You now have the bottom floor of a house that should look like Figure 14.6.

14.6: The bottom floor of your house

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Make a top floor í˘ą Shift-copy the whole of the bottom part of the house upwards to make a second floor. í˘˛ Adjust the position so the top floor sits directly over the bottom floor. í˘ł Unlink the top floor and remove the door section. í˘´ Resize and reposition the window to fill the gap where the door was. (The width should be 10.000 rather than 8.000 to fill the gap.)

The finishing touches í˘ą Select the whole of the floor and shift-copy it upwards to make a flat roof section. í˘˛ Link up all of the parts of your house. í˘ł Finally, retexture your house to your own taste.

14.7: Your finished house should look something like this

You will now have a finished house. This is actually good enough to sell. You can put this on the market through another vendor if you choose.

Now you have learnt the basic building-making skills you can make a whole variety of different buildings. You can also start making and acquiring some furniture for your house.

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Furnishing your home Now you have a lovely new house, you need to fill it with some suitable furniture. You can either attempt to make this yourself, get it from freebie islands or buy some new or second-hand (at places such as flea markets or car-boot sales). Some places I would recommend include: Q Depoz at Depoz E (41, 24, 47): Probably the biggest supplier of household goods in SL – four islands full of everything you could need and more.

Q Del Sol Open Market at Del Sol (126, 127, 29): Another fantastic place for furniture with a range to suit most budgets.

Q TUi at Technical User interfacing (104, 205, 23): A fine island with many different ranges of courses and classes. Certainly worth a visit.

Q NCI at Fishermans Cove (37, 232, 25): I’ve already mentioned them a few times but it’s worth giving them another plug, as they have an excellent range of courses.

Have a good look around because there are thousands of places out there – these are just my personal picks.

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Hints and tips Q Plan your builds: When you are creating a building it is best to plan it out thoroughly before you start. I use a trusty paper and pencil to plan all my builds.

Q Prim usage: One thing to remember when you are creating buildings is that in RL doors, walls and roofs are necessary comforts and safety zones. In SL, however, they are just prims and may be taking up your prim allowance, so you will need to carefully consider whether they are worth it.

Q Special prim-saving tip: Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good way of saving some prims. Using your camera, line up your house close to your viewer, take a snapshot of one of the walls and save it to your hard drive. Then you can edit the image inside your favourite editing software. Remove the background, make a space were the door goes and make the windows alpha. Then you can save the image as a TGA and upload it. You can then insert the picture of the wall onto a one-prim wall.

Q Create proper doors: You can create doors that open and close in SL by adding in a door script to a prim that fits inside your door frame. To get a simple door script visit my PICKS or the SL script library forums, situated in the main forums.

Q Add stairs to link your floors: You can easily add stairs between the floors of buildings by deleting one of the floor panels and adding a set of stairs that reach up. You can create a oneprim set of stairs using a sculpty prim program.

Q Create alpha channels: You can make textures with see-through parts to them by using something called alpha channels. To learn how to make these textures go to the following forum:

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http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=80851&high light=alpha+chanel, which explains alpha channels in great detail.

Q Making the most of textures: Textures can make all the difference and can turn a good build into a fantastic one, so spend a while finding the right textures and experiment with different looks.

Q Creating different house designs: You can put many houses up for sale by just retexturing the same house once you have created a good build and design.

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Setting Up Shop

Now you have created a shop, you are ready to lay it out and make your stock available for purchase. The layout and appearance of your shop is very important to entice customers in to buy your items. You should take care to present all your items clearly so customers can see what they are buying. Think carefully about how you will place your products so they are displayed to their best advantage and so it is easy to navigate around your shop. Take a good look at some other shops around SL and see what works best in terms of design, accessibility and arrangement.

There are a number of different ways you can sell your stock. You can simply sell your items by putting products in pictured boxes for sale or you can use various vendors (scripted screens selling your objects).

Putting one item up for sale I have already shown you how to set an item for sale by changing its options in the GENERAL tab in EDIT. A simple way to advertise and sell one of your creations is to do the following: í˘ą Rez a box and drag your item into the CONTENTS. í˘˛ Then select the box and change it to FOR SALE under the GENERAL tab and set a price. í˘ł Select the box so that the next owner takes the CONTENTS of the box. í˘´ Change the WHEN LEFT-CLICKED option to BUY OBJECT. í˘ľ Now close down EDIT and left-click on the box to test it out. A window will come up offering you the option to buy the contents of the box. Try buying it to see how it works (if you have enough money) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; since you are the owner you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lose any money from the transaction.

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í˘ś Now try adding a script to add some hovering text over your box to advertise to customers what is inside and/or the price. All you need to do is create a new script in your box and insert the following: string DISPLAY_TEXT = â&#x20AC;&#x153;whatever you want to appear above the boxâ&#x20AC;?;Âś defaultÂś {Âś state_entry()Âś {Âś llSetText(DISPLAY_TEXT,<1,1,1>,1);Âś }Âś } í˘ˇ Try creating some such boxes for a few of your products and arrange them around your store.

Creating an advert for your box You can make some really great texture images to apply to your box that advertise your product and catch your customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; eyes. You will need to take a photo of your product in SL, then add text outside SL and upload it. í˘ą First you will need to create a white backdrop for a photo shoot so rez two cubes and change their sizes to the following: First prim X: 10.000 Y: 10.000 Z: 0.010 Second prim X: 10.000 Y: 0.010 Z: 10.000

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15.1: A photo shoot backdrop

í˘˛ Position them so the first prim is a floor and the second a wall, then texture both prims blank and make them full bright (so you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the joins). í˘ł You now need to take a photograph of your product. If it is an item of clothing, a piece of jewellery or an accessory, you will need to wear it and get your avatar to pose. You can do this through using a posing stand (you will need to edit it to colour it white and make it full bright so it canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be seen on the backdrop). Or if your object is a chair you might want to sit on it. You may, of course, just wish to have a picture of your item by itself, so youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll need to move your avatar away. í˘´ You are now ready to take some photos of your item. You can either take a snapshot using the SL camera, and save the picture to your hard drive or do a screen grab (by pressing SHIFT and PRINT SCREEN and pasting the picture into a drawing or photo program). í˘ľ You will need to use an external program to edit your picture. I would suggest using Paint.NET (as I mentioned before, you can download this from: http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html).

15.2: A picture of my avatar with space to the right for selling points to be added

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í˘ś Open up your image in your chosen program, fit it to the canvas if necessary and crop the picture. I tend to position my avatar on left-hand side of the ad, leaving space at the right-hand side for any selling points and at the top to insert my company logo. í˘ˇ Now add some text to advertise your goods. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll need a description of your product and a price. You can get some great fonts from various websites. One of my favourites is http://www.text2logo.com/signs/fancy-fonts/ where you can type in your text, choose your font and copy and paste the image from the website. í˘¸ Play around with your advert and make it look as appealing as possible. There are some great extra plug-ins for Paint.NET that can create various effects.

15.3: An advert I created using Paint.NET with fonts from text2.logo.com

í˘š Save your ad using FILE/SAVE and save it as a .BMP, .TGA or .JPG file. ě?&#x2026; Now upload your picture onto your box and display it in your shop. You can place the object wherever you like. You may choose to alter its shape so it is flat and can be hung on the wall like a picture or have it as a box on a table or the ground.

Creating a basic single vendor to sell an item Using simple boxes to sell items can be quite effective, but by using vendors you can do much more. Have a go at the following exercise to try out using a vending script to create a very basic vendor that can sell one item. To make a simple one-item vendor you

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need to get a vendor script. The following script was made free to the community by Wednesday Grimm and is available from SL forums. You can also get a copy of this via my PICKS or you can just type the following into a new script: // vendor¶ // Wednesday Grimm¶ // Simple vending script, gives correct change.¶ ¶ integer gPrice = 5; // cost of the item¶ ¶ // name of the item in object’s inventory, to vend¶ string itemName = “test_note”;¶ ¶ // two summary lines to describe the object¶ string summary1 = “this is a test note, it tests this script”;¶ string summary2 = “it is very interesting. Cost is $5”;¶ ¶ // give the item to a customer¶ dispense(key toWhom)¶ {¶ llGiveInventory(toWhom, itemName);¶ }¶ ¶ default¶ {¶ state_entry()¶ {¶ // you need this permission to give change¶ llRequestPermissions(llGetOwner(), PERMISSION_DEBIT);¶ }¶ ¶ touch_end(integer total_number)¶ {¶

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// if someone touches object describe whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for saleÂś llWhisper(0, summary1);Âś llWhisper(0, summary2);Âś }Âś Âś money(key id, integer amt)Âś {Âś if (amt >= gPrice)Âś {Âś // customer has given us at least enough moneyÂś amt -= gPrice;Âś dispense(id);Âś }Âś if (amt > 0) // give back changeÂś {Âś llGiveMoney(id, amt);Âś }Âś }Âś }

Create your vendor box Once youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a vendor script, follow these steps: í˘ą Rez a cube and size it to X: 2.000 Y: 0.500 Z: 2.000 í˘˛ Place the vendor script inside the cube. í˘ł A warning sign will come up asking you for permission to take money from your account. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t worry, this is normal as the vendor gives change if there is an overpayment or underpayment. Select GRANT to agree to this.

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í˘´ Shift-copy your vendor box and take the copy into your inventory so you can easily create another vendor.

Put an item up for sale í˘ą Go back to your original box and add the item you want to sell into the CONTENTS of your box. í˘˛ Open up the script in the vendor box to edit it. í˘ł Edit the price: Where it says â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;integer gPrice, = 5;â&#x20AC;&#x2122; change the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;5â&#x20AC;&#x2122; to the price you want to sell the item at. í˘´ Edit the item to be sold: Then when the script says â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;string itemName = â&#x20AC;&#x153;test_noteâ&#x20AC;?;â&#x20AC;&#x2122; replace â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;test_noteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with the name of the item you want to sell. You need to use the exact name that the object has in the CONTENTS here or it will not work correctly. The script is case sensitive, so make sure you type it correctly. Also be careful to surround the name with quotation marks. í˘ľ Edit the item descriptions: Where it says â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;string summary1 = â&#x20AC;&#x153;this is a test note, it tests this scriptâ&#x20AC;?;â&#x20AC;&#x2122; and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;string summary2 = â&#x20AC;&#x153;it is very interesting. Cost is $5â&#x20AC;?;â&#x20AC;&#x2122; replace the sample text within the quotation marks with two descriptions of the item you are going go sell. These descriptions are whispered to potential customers when they touch your vendor. í˘ś SAVE the changes to your script and RESET it. í˘ˇ You have just created a vendor. Test your vendor out by touching it and clicking on it. You will see there is an option to PAY. If you pay the price of the item, the vendor will give you it. í˘¸ Give your vendor a texture or advert of your choice and put it in your shop.

There are many more vending options and scripts inworld. For instance, you could have all your stock inside a server and have vendors sell via it, which means you only ever need to update the server instead of lots of vendors.

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For an absolute wealth of scripts you can go to the scripting forums here: http:// forums.secondlife.com/forumdisplay.php?f=15. Another good place I use is this website: http://www.mendicott.com/secondlife/slscripts.asp.

Between these and the free scripts in freebie yards, you should have enough to keep you going for at least a few months.

Vendor systems Vendors can do much more than just sell one item and with a proper vendor system you can network a number of vendors and connect them all to a server. This kind of vendor system will cost quite a large amount of Linden dollars and can be from around $L2, 000 for a decent one, but it is a worthwhile investment.

Payment methods for vendors There are two different payments methods: Q Fastpay: When you select to buy the item it automatically selects to take the correct amount out of the buyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s account when you click on the blue fastpay button.

Q Manual pay: With manual pay the buyer has to select to PAY and enter the correct amount of money to receive the goods.

There are various different vendor systems and you should consider what you will be selling and what your business needs and carefully decide which vendor you are going to use. Here are a few of the vendor systems that are on the market:

JEVN JEVN is a system of networked vendors connected to one server. You can update and manage all of your vendors from one single location in SL, making your vendor network easy to control. There is no limit on the number of items or vendors you can have in your system and you can actually split the income with up to four owners. All JEVN vendors use the fastpay feature.

You can buy a JEVN system by going to the JEVN store, in SL, which is currently located at Ironjaw (156, 40, 138).

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HippoVEND HippoVEND is the most well-known and well-used vending system and has an established support network. You can buy a Hippo system from the Hippo Technologies Main Store in SL which is currently at Tech Expo (56, 49, 241). It runs, much like JEVN, with a network of vendors connected to one server. One of the main differences with HippoVEND is that you can have a backup server to stores your products in, so if the server with your products in crashes, the backup server can continue to deliver goods to your customers.

The other main difference is that the system is online so you can set up and update your products on a website, rather than through SL. HippoVEND also enables you to do the following: Q Give catalogue vendors to customers and affiliates: Catalogue vendors are like RL shopping catalogues in that you can give them to customers to take away with them and they can shop from them at a later date. You can also give these to affiliates so they can sell your products for an agreed commission rate.

Q Price your items in Linden dollars or US dollars: If you use US dollars, your vendors will regularly check the current exchange rate via the LindeX and will adjust the sales price accordingly.

Q Add a ‘Buy as a Gift Option’ so customers can buy your products as a gift for their friends.

Apez vendors The Apez vending systems allow you to keep all your items inworld in a central location. You can also set up and manage your products on the Apez website at www.apez.biz/index.php. It is a very well-written product with a bank for safekeeping your money. You can buy an Apez system at Apez Group, Hope Capital (94, 48, 23).

Apez vending systems have the following features: Q You can sell all your products you set up from the website or from vendors inworld.

Q It is good if you have no stock as you can sell other people’s until you have created your own.

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Q It’s also possible to give people commission to sell your goods from their own vendors without you doing anything, once this has been properly set up from the site.

Other selling tools If you want to attract more customers to your store and keep them there, you will need to use some extra selling tools. Here are a few of the selling tools you can use to attract customers: Q Demo products: These are a great way for customers to try before they buy.

If there is a good demo to try out, customers will be more ready to part with their cash. The demo products are disabled or flawed in some way so the customer will want to buy the actual product. For example a demo skin or texture may have ‘Demo’ all over it in visible places. I use demo books (a partial book) to tease customers into wanting the full product. The bonus is that you then have a database of potential customers.

Q Freebies: Giving out free goods will encourage people to come to your store.

Free goods can also work like a demo, showing the customer what your goods are like, and therefore making them more willing to buy a product. I give a full book away so customers can see how they work and what the products are like. You can also give out a notecard with information about the shop and a landmark with the freebie, which is extra advertising for your business and the customers can easily come back.

Q Lucky chairs: These give away prizes to people in the shop at set intervals.

The chair will pick a random letter of the alphabet and any avatar whose name begins with that letter can sit on the chair to claim the prize. This is a great way to give away one good item along with an information notecard and a landmark. It also creates competition between customers and drags people in from far and wide, boosting your traffic.

Q Other prize-giving schemes: Any prize-giving item is a good device. I use four chairs that give out one of my books after a certain amount of time to

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one person at a time. This increases my traffic and means the customers may come back to me if they are interested in a guidebook.

15.4: A prize chair

Final touches Now you are nearly ready to go. You will need to put all your products and vendors in place and work hard on getting a good display. You should think hard about which items in your shop you will want to group together and where things should go. The easier the shop is to navigate, the more sales you’ll get. You’ll also need to sell to the customer visually with attractive adverts to show off your products.

Again, take a good look around the shops of SL to see which ads are the most appealing and effective. You should also see what kind of prices similar quality items sell for. Once you know your competition and the market you’re much more likely to create a successful shop – but more on this in the next two chapters.

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Hints and tips Q Information boards: It is a good idea to have an information board in your shop. These tell the customers who is the owner and how to contact the person (whether by IM or a notecard, which you drop on the personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s profile), along with any other information about the store and the products sold. You can create an information board very easily using an external drawing program and uploading the texture in SL. Q Accessibility: Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t clutter up your shop. Make sure it is neat and tidy and everything is easy to view. This will make it easier for the customers to view the items in your shop and move around.

Q Design: Use simple textures in your shop and stick to a similar style of advert throughout. If the shop looks messy it may put customers off.

Q Clutter: Excessive use of textures in your shop will increase loading time and potential customers may just go to the next business on the search list. Similarly, cluttered products that are not easy to find can also cause this.

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Marketing and branding are my favourite subjects in SL and I hold my secrets so close to my chest it almost hurts. But I like seeing good businesses succeed, which is why I am passing on my knowledge to you.

Once you have made your product or decided on the service you wish to provide, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essential to market your business. You could have the best idea in the world, but it means nothing if no one knows about it. I see so many beautiful buildings and great products that have no visitors and no exposure and it is a real shame, especially when marketing and advertising is so simple and, in many cases, completely free.

In this chapter I will not be telling you how to make money in SL as such, but I will be showing you how you can build a successful SL business. This can, of course, amount to making money.

Basic marketing The aim of marketing is to make people aware of what you do, where to find it, how to get hold of it and from whom they get it.

There are two main ways of marketing your business. First, you need to make the most of what you already have and second, you have to reach out to get your message across the grid.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s easy to overlook the basic marketing tools you have in SL. If you make the most of the following to present your business you are halfway to successfully marketing your business: Q Your avatar: Your avatar can greatly contribute to the way your business is perceived. You should carefully consider how you look, the way you conduct yourself, the people you associate with, the places you frequent and the groups you belong to. The same principles apply in RL and a lot of this is common sense.

If you are trying to establish a recruitment agency, you are more likely to be taken seriously if you wear a business suit than hot pants. However, if you are marketing hip or urban products, such as clubbing gear, then cool casual

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clothes and messy hair are a must. And it might not be tolerant or fair, but some people do have reactions to furries, robots and child avatars, so you should decide whether such avatars suit your business.

The way you behave is also incredibly important. If you are aiming to be a marketing consultant to RL businesses in SL, it might not look good if one of your clients finds you escorting in a club in your leisure time (although it begs the question of what they’re doing there too!). You should also think about the type of groups you belong to as they paint a very descriptive picture of what your second life looks like.

This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the fun and frivolous side of SL too – many successful business people have an alt so they can switch identities and enjoy some time in SL without any business enquiries or needing to maintain a professional appearance.

Q Your profile: Nearly every tab on the profile menu holds a marketing opportunity. On the 2ND LIFE tab you can put a professional-looking avatar photo to reflect the nature of your business or even use the image of your business branding. You can also use the ABOUT text space to describe your business or explain why you are qualified to be the best in your chosen area of business.

The WEB tab is useful if you choose to set up a website or blog – many established business owners have a blog to announce new products, services and updates and it is highly recommended. You can use the INTERESTS tab to underline your areas of interest and expertise by ticking the relevant boxes and using the blank boxes to describe further.

The PICKS tab can be a great place for advertising as many people look at your picks when they browse your profile. Although picks were designed so people could show their favourite places inworld, many people use them to advertise their businesses and those of their friends. To create a pick you just need to stand on the land you want to use as a teleport point then select NEW in the PICKS tab. You can add descriptive text about your business and even load a picture of your products or logo, so this is a great advertising tool. You can also use picks further by asking others to include your business in their pick list, and I will discuss this more fully later.

The CLASSIFIED tab on your profile will be dealt with in more detail later in Chapter 17. The FIRST LIFE tab can be useful if you are promoting

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16.1: The PICKS tab

your RL business. Be careful not to divulge more information here than you are willing to share inworld though.

There are actually profile enhancing services available in SL, where you can get help with writing text and getting pictures or textures for a fee. For some nice free pictures you can go to Talisman at Yawgoo (102, 103, 98) and use a free photo studio.

Q Your land: How you present your land in the ABOUT LAND menu is very important as it will determine how easy it is to find it in the search tools. To open this menu you need to stand on your land and then select ABOUT LAND from the WORLD menu.

In the GENERAL tab are two very important marketing tools that are often underused: the name of the land and a description of it. These are

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important as every word you use in these sections will come up in a search, rather like keywords on an internet browser. Many people make the mistake of picking a poetic or evocative name for their land parcel, when a factual, descriptive and no-nonsense name for your land will help you to be found by more people. Name the land after your business, but also include one or two keywords that describe what you do. Think in terms of keywords that you might enter into google to find your business. For example, my parcel is called SLGuides – Book Tutorials Education Class. People who find my land listing will correctly assume I sell SLGuides, books and tutorials.

For the description, many people write a paragraph of text that describes what they do. Unless you are very clever and make a full list of all the search terms you’d like to be found under and work them into text, I recommend making a list of keywords and key phrases that describe what you do to serve as your land description. For example, ‘learn to make jewelry, clothes pose 16.2: The ABOUT LAND menu

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sex balls scripts animations huds, learn to build class, or step by step guide freebies gor $’. It does what it says on the tin.

The COVENANT tab is generally not important unless you are running a rental or land sale business – this is where you would put your rental agreements or land sale conditions. This is a fine art and more involved than I can go into here, but look at big landowners and rental locations to get an idea of the kind of things you need to include.

The OPTION tab is important as you can change the preferences for your land and select to be found in searches. For the land preferences, it is important for a business that you have checked the box to allow people to create landmarks on your land so visitors can easily return, and it is probably a good idea to make your area safe and restrict pushing as this protects your land to some extent from griefers. It is definitely worth the L$30 a week to let your business be shown in the searches, so you should check the SHOW IN SEARCH > PLACES option. You should also pick the category that best describes what you are using your land for so your land can be found on narrow searches.

It is also worth ticking the PUBLISH LISTING ON THE WEB options to maximise the places you are listed.

The option page is also where you upload a snapshot for your land. It is best to use your logo here as this is what will be displayed when people search for your business under PLACES in the search tool. This is also where you select your teleport point – I will talk about the importance of this later on.

Under the MEDIA tab, you have the option to set music on your land. It is up to each visitor whether they listen to it or not, but it is another tool to help people buy when they arrive on your land – think about soothing supermarket music that studies have shown stimulate purchasing. You might have classical music if you’re selling formal clothes or wedding gowns, sexy music for romantically inclined products, trance for club wear and so on. It all helps set the mood and promotes your business. I personally choose not to have music, but it’s a matter of personal preference. An easy way to get music on your land is to search for and buy an SL radio, which comes with pre-set internet radio stations. You could always search the web and find one you like if you prefer not to spend money on this.

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Your shop Once you have set up your listings for your avatar, profile and any land ready for business, you can start to consider how to further your business’ appeal.

It is vital to make sure you shop has a pleasing environment as it is more conducive to spending than a hectic or cluttered space. If customers enjoy spending time in your shop, they’re more likely to spend money.

16.3: My SLGuides texture store

It is important to keep your shop simple, tidy and organised, like my shop above. You should take care to keep aisles clear, define the areas properly and mark out your vendors well. A good layout that draws shoppers deep into your store and keeps them walking around before they reach the exit again will increase sales. You should also use signage that explains to your customers what they are looking at and give an information board that shows who customers should contact and what your sales policies are. This will make your shop look reputable and easy to navigate.

Remember that avatars tend to be impatient – if they can’t see what they want straight away, they are likely to teleport over to the competition in a matter of moments.

If there is a lot of lag on a certain day, some things in your shop may be invisible when people first teleport over and customers will walk into things. With a spacious layout you minimise this possibility.

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Location You should think carefully before you buy land for a business about what your needs are. Getting the right location can make a real difference in terms of getting customers and clients.

Renting or buying You don’t need to be a premium member and own land to set up a shop or office. You can easily rent space instead.

When you own land there are certain benefits – you have the security of knowing that your land can’t be sold from underneath you and you have the ability to control access to and the settings of your land. However, there are also many benefits to renting. First, you can test the market by starting with small premises before making the commitment to land prices and tier payments. Second, if you rent in a good location with similar businesses nearby you can be assured that there will be the right traffic coming through your door.

Estate or mainland You might choose estate or island land rather than mainland because there will be less lag in the area. Or you could decide that mainland is better as you will get more people wandering onto your land, which will increase your traffic and might give you more potential customers or clients. This kind of traffic isn’t always beneficial, however. You may find that you get many people walking and flying over your land without being at all interested in your shop or business. When people are shopping in SL they don’t walk or fly around – they search and teleport. A high amount of foot traffic can cause lag in the area, which may frustrate and put off actual customers. That said, it is better to build at ground level to maximise your chances of any interested wanderers coming your way.

Minimising lag To minimise lag, it is best to buy or rent in a sim or island without clubs, freebie warehouses and sex clubs. Of course there is no guarantee that a club won’t pop up overnight. This happened to me once: a 4,000-square-metre plot came up for sale and after I’d bought it a casino set up within four hours and I had to sell up.

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Branding Your logo or branding is the first and main visual representation of your business that customers will see – whether in the search tool, on the front of your premises or even in a vendor – and it is important that you get it right. There are a number of great artists and designers in SL who can help you if design is not your strong point. For example at Textures R Us, by LillyBeth Filth, there is a whole team of artists who do custom jobs. There are even some branding consultants in SL who can advise you to a high level.

Branding is essential in this day and age as recognition of products depends on a memorable image or perception. A strong brand will conjure up emotions, aspirations and memories and will inspire loyalty. In SL, this is mostly achieved with a strong visual image, although slogans can help too.

To achieve a good brand status in SL takes time and there are many design and marketing issues to take on board. As with laying out a shop, it is best not to have a cluttered image for your logo. The name of your business and perhaps an item associated with your trade is enough. My logo has strong colours and an image of a flying book.

The black and yellow colours and the simple font also make it reminiscent of other ‘how to’ book series.

Once you have designed your logo put it on everything that you sell or give away.

A logo is only as effective as how much you use it. If your business is selling items, you should even put your logo on the boxes you pack items in. If someone leaves one of your boxes in a sandbox you will get free advertising in a high traffic area for several hours. Make sure your notecard and landmark have transfer and copy permissions so anyone chancing by the box can take a copy if they are interested.

Many RL principles apply to SL branding and I can only really touch the surface of this topic. One difference in SL is that things move much faster and you will see the results of your work sooner rather than later. Do remember that once you have settled on a logo you shouldn’t change it without a seriously good reason or all your hard work at building up your brand could be lost.

Adverts for your products If you are selling SL items, you should think about the way you present and describe your product – both visually and verbally. The photos that you put in your vendors will

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16.4: My logo for my SLguides, designed by texture artist Disq Hern

determine whether potential customers will consider buying your product, and this is long before they wonder if they can afford the item or not. If you make your products look appealing enough, people will feel that they need and not just want your wares and they will be less resistant to pricing issues.

When you are creating an advert you should make sure that the main focus of your image is the product itself, rather than any text or models. It is a good idea to keep a simple background for your image – perhaps rez a backdrop for a photo shoot, as I showed you in Chapter 15.

You should use brief text on your image to highlight the features of your product.

Don’t list the price or permissions of the item on the image or you’ll need to re-do the image every time you change your pricing. Try to be vivid with any descriptions of your product. Instead of listing your item as a ‘pink coat’, you could say ‘an elegant pink satin coat with flowing flexi train – a must for the true romantic’.

Vendors I covered vendors in the last chapter, so I won’t go into too much detail again. Getting the right vendor system for your business can make a great difference in the efficiency and management of your business and can be a great marketing tool.

If you are taking your business seriously and are willing to invest, I recommend a server-based vendor, such as HippoVEND. These vendors track your sales in a way that allows you to monitor trends, sales of individual items and even things like who, when and where a person bought one of your items. If you use a non-server based vendor, you will need to rely on your transaction history records on the Secondlife.com website (found under ‘My Account’) which does not contain the same level of information, is not analysed in any way for you and only goes back one month.

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Your competition Make a point of doing regular searches for similar products or businesses. Search under CLASSIFIEDS and PLACES, and look at websites like Slexchange.com and onrez.com to see what others are doing in your field. If you are entering a crowded market such as clothing or furniture design, be very specific in what you look for. For example, if you sell 1950s-style dresses, search for ‘vintage fashion’, ‘retro fashion’ and ‘1950s dresses’, etc.

Take a good look at the CLASSIFIED listings and where your business comes in the rankings. To improve your position in the classifieds, don’t just throw money at your listing – you should have a look at your keywords to see if there is another way you can top the rankings. Slexchange.com and onrez.com are worth searching too as they rank the sales of items, so you can see how well the competition is doing compared to you.

You should also take a good look at the businesses and shops of your competitors. If you are afraid of being recognised in a competitor’s business it might be worth using an alt. Take a good look at what they are doing well and what you can do better. You should also take a good look at how they are presenting their premises and any products. You might want to react accordingly and create a similar look with your business so it will be familiar to customers (be careful not to be too similar or you may face accusations of copying). Conversely, you might decide to strike out and present yourself differently so you stand apart from other businesses and appeal to a slightly different market.

Don’t be complacent about the design, layout and branding of your business if you’ve found a look you like. The SL world moves quickly so you should make sure you keep an eye on what others are doing.

If you are selling products in SL you should research the pricing of competing products and price accordingly. You don’t want to be way off the mark by being more expensive, but you don’t need to feel pressured into undercutting the competition. If your product really is better than other people’s, it follows that your customers will be prepared to pay a little more for the quality.

Customer service The way you treat and look after your customers is very important in SL, just as it is in any RL business. It is important that you log in regularly to check for notecards and feedback from your customers, and that you are available to deal with questions or

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queries. No reasonable person would expect you to be available 24/7, but it is important for you to be responsive in a reasonable time frame.

Gadgets Gadgets are your friend in SL. Here are a couple of innovations that you can buy to help your business: Q Greeter bots: You can buy automated objects that greet visitors to your store with a message and notecard. Many of these make lists of all avatars visiting within a certain radius from the bot. You can then use this list to invite customers to your group, boosting your marketing list.

Q Landmark and URL givers: You can also have objects that give out landmarks (so people can easily find your business again) or URLs (to guide people to an RL business). These can be either automated or manual, where the avatar touches the object to receive the item).

Q Off-world stat collectors: This is a small script that sends data to a website for viewing. It tells how many people visited, how long they stayed, what time of day it was, etc.

One such device (which even tells you how old the person is) can be found at MechanizedLife at Skyridge (81, 225, 28) and is well worth looking into.

Q Visitor counter: A counter that gives a physical website tally as to how many people have been in. Some even connect to a website so you can view the data.

Q Update servers: A server that when you update, allows you to upload new products and send them to all the customers who bought the previous ones.

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Listen to your customers. The clichés ‘the customer knows best’ and ‘the customer is king’ are well known for a reason. Customers can be a valuable source for troubleshooting information, ideas for innovation, advice on your premises or products and much more. If you meet customers in your business premises, ask them questions and listen to them. You’ll learn a lot.

I pride myself on helping everyone I speak to and helping anyone I can (time permitting, of course). This investment will pay back in sales as people remember good service as well as bad.

Banking If you are successful in your business venture, you might wonder what to do with your money. Many successful people have a banking avatar – an alt that exists solely for the purpose of holding your money. This is useful as it allows you to keep your profits in a place where you’re less likely to spend them and you can amass your earnings to cover your tier payments, marketing and other expenses. Your banking avatar can pay you a reasonable wage every week or month to keep your spending in check. By having an avatar who rarely comes inworld, you are protecting your savings from inventory loss and, in the unlikely event of you getting banned, of losing your hard-earned cash.

If you are ready to pull some of your earnings out of SL, you can convert Linden dollars into US dollars on a number of sites (see Chapter 6 for more details on this).

Remember to be aware of the tax implications of earning real money in SL. You should seek advice from your local tax office or an accountant as to your country’s law regarding this.

Plan a strategy It is important to have a plan or a goal set for your business and to take steps to try and achieve it. It is the return traffic that will spell the success of your business and ideally you want to generate word-of-mouth sales through providing a good service as well as a good product.

It’s worth spending at least a few days doing research on possible ways of marketing and researching its potential for a good return. A book can only guide you and give you advice and help. The rest comes from your own experiences and your own learning curve. Remember this: building a business takes time, effort and work, but the end result is worth it.

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Hints and tips Q RL to SL: If you have an RL business and want to promote it in SL without much effort you can find a company who specialises in developing your SL brand for you. A good example is New Business Horizons, who will create a presence for you in SL from scratch.

Q Create a customer survey: Get hold of a questionnaire script and follow the instructions to construct a customer survey. You can choose to give money for the survey, but this risks clogging up your shop with people looking for free money rather than your products, so it is advisable to invite only purchasers to complete the survey. You can do this by giving them a notecard when they have made their purchase.

Q Distribute product releases: Regular product releases can be a good way to keep customers coming back. Notify your group whenever there is a new release scheduled and be sure to be at your store when you send the group notice out so you can assist your most loyal customers.

Q Donation boxes: Many business owners have a tip or donation box and it is not unusual to be tipped for good customer service or in appreciation of an attractive build. Don’t expect to get rich from donations, but every Linden dollar helps.

Q Branding: Choose your brand name carefully so as not to conflict with other SL or RL brands. The last thing you want is to have to remove your branding due to an infringement of someone else’s copyright or logo.

Q Permissions: When selling your items, be very aware of the permissions you are setting and the material you include with your item for sale. You need to protect your hard work by ensuring new owners can’t copy and transfer your products.

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Once you have invested the time and effort into setting up your business infrastructure and marketing, you will be a long way along the road to success. But for further success you need to advertise and get the word out to potential customers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; if nobody knows about your business, all your efforts will have been in vain.

Many of the recommendations I am about to share might seem obvious when you read them, but you would be surprised how many SL business owners fail to cover the basic ways to bring traffic to their premises.

Slurls A slurl is a link to a particular location in SL that enables you to teleport from a website or link in an email to a particular location inworld. You can put slurls at the bottom of your emails, on your website, in RL sales material and at the bottom of forum notices â&#x20AC;&#x201C; essentially anywhere you can think of in RL. To generate a slurl take the following steps: í˘ą Open the map. í˘˛ Click on the spot on the map that you wish to generate the slurl for. You should get a red circle marking the spot. í˘ł Click on COPY SLURL TO CLIPBOARD and paste the resulting slurl to a notecard, Word document or email.

Publicity and the media There are a solid core of successful SL newspapers and magazines and countless SL blogs. Among the best-known publications are SLNewspaper, SLNN.com, Metaverse Messenger, AvaStar, SLHerald and SecondStyle Magazine.

As with any industry in RL, it is essential to know your trade press and to make

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sure that the media is aware of you and your business. Take the time to cultivate media contacts and be sure to send press releases to relevant reporters and bloggers about your news, new products and events. It is not difficult to get coverage in the SL press and an editorial piece can be worth many adverts in terms of their effectiveness. Remember that publicity for your avatar as the face of your business can be almost as helpful as publicity for your products.

Advertising There are so many ways of advertising in SL and many are not very cost-effective. However there are some cheap and effectual, even essential, ways to advertise your business.

Classified advertising Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve already shown you how to list your land in the SEARCH function so it comes up in PLACES searches. You can also advertise in the CLASSIFIEDS searches for a minimum of L$50. The more you pay the higher you will come up in search results.

This is essential advertising, and if you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t own any land it is the only way you will be able to show your business in the search tool (except for events and groups). Classified adverts are very effective and you will definitely see the results from placing a well-written and keyword-peppered classified ad.

To list a classified ad, you just need to follow these steps: í˘ą Right-click on your avatar and select PROFILE. í˘˛ Select the CLASSIFIED tab and click NEW and OKAY. í˘ł Change the title of the classified to whatever you want. Be sure to use effective keywords here as this will determine whether or not people find your ad. í˘´ Enter a brief description of your product or service, again listing as many relevant keywords as you can at the bottom of the text. í˘ľ Drag and drop your logo from your inventory onto the picture box to upload the image for your ad.

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17.1: My ad board

í˘ś Go to the point where you want people to teleport to from the ad and click SET LOCATION. í˘ˇ Select the category you would like your ad to appear under. í˘¸ Select AUTO-RENEW EACH WEEK. (It is surprisingly easy to forget to renew ads and you can amend your ad as often as you like once it has been placed). í˘š When you are done, hit PUBLISH (not OK) and you will be asked how much you would like to pay for your advert. Make sure that you pay something you can afford each week. $L50 (the minimum) is actually sufficient to appear high on the listings for your keywords.

If you own a fair-sized parcel of land you can section a small plot and use different keywords from your main classified ad, which will help yield more search results from potential buyers and customers. I would personally do maybe one or two maximum small plots relating to your product.

Remember to keep checking your classified ad every week to make sure you are high in the listings. You should keep tweaking the wording of your ad and increase the amount you pay, if you can, to stay towards the top of the listings.

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Ad boards Ad boards are generally one-prim ads placed flat against a wall in a busy location. You need to pay the ad board a set amount which ranges from free to L$1,000 a week, so research your venue before spending money on a bad location that may look busy but actually isn’t. Ad boards are a very effective way of promoting your brand and your product. I advertise throughout SL on well-placed ad boards. I particularly favour boards in busy clubs as people tend to move around and interact with their environment more than at camping locations.

Newcomer areas and sandboxes are also good areas to place ads. Even if the avatars don’t have any money to make use of your business when they first start out in SL, they are still likely to remember your brand later on.

If the ad board allows it, be sure to put your landmark, notecard and logo texture in the board to be given out to interested customers. If it doesn’t, be sure to use a logo that lists your location. If you acquire new premises at any point, don’t forget to change your ad boards though.

There’s no need to limit yourself to a stationary advertising board. You can make a sandwich board. Make two simple boards containing your logo, that someone can attach to their front and back and you can pay them to walk around with it.

Ad farms Ad farms are sections of land that have been divided into 16-square-metre plots (the smallest parcel of land currently allowed, each supporting only three prims) and have large rotating adverts. You need to contact the ad agency to get instructions on how to advertise. You can usually do this by right-clicking and sending a message to the creator of the ad farm or it may even be in the profile, picks or in the classifieds on the profile.

I am not alone in feeling that ad farms are a blight on the landscape of SL and are ruining the mainland with their ugly adverts. Ad farms decrease land values and are anti-social. I also personally believe that advertising in an ad farm devalues your brand and will give your business a bad name.

If you are loaded with Linden dollars and feel like doing a good turn, you could purchase ad farm land which is threatening an otherwise nice neighbourhood and donate those parcels to the Arbor Project (a group of people who want to keep sims green).

They will then either plant trees on the land or donate it to local land owners to help them get more prims on their properties.

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Free rentals in malls Take advantage of free one-week rentals in various malls. They always start out on new malls with plenty of events and adverts and special deals. It’s also a good way to get cheap and sometimes free vendor space.

Websites and forums In my opinion, the very best form of advertising is placing a banner advert on Slexchange.com, onrez.com or Slsmart.com for a few weeks. You purchase packages that include a number of page views and supply your logo. You can also add an animation if you wish. The cost isn’t that large and can start as low as L$1,999 per page.

You really can’t beat the coverage, especially if your products are already listed on the website as a merchant.

Make use of the forums on any SL websites to post comments about new products and events, including a slurl in the signature of your post. You can also list your new items for free on the Secondlife.com shopping forum.

Groups and marketing lists Setting up a group for your business is essential to your success. They can work like marketing lists in RL and can be a great source of advertising. If you invite everyone you meet and anyone who visits your premises (by getting a greeter bot who collects the names of any visitors) you can easily create a group for your business.

In addition, you can try to come up with an attention-grabbing and relevant tag above your head so people will notice it and look up your group. You should take care to always wear your group tag and it should clearly state you are the business owner.

It is a good idea to take the time to amend the default titles for each role to suit your group’s needs. What better way to promote your business than to have people walking around with tags above their heads that advertise your group?

Once a group has a certain number of members, it tends to develop its own momentum. The larger the group the more people will notice it when searching for groups, and they will gravitate towards joining it rather than that of your competitors.

Depending on the area of business you are in, this number is often around the 600 mark. Have a look at competing groups and consider inviting their members manually. It is a little cheeky, as you are tapping into your competitors’ marketing list, so be prepared to have it done to you. Some might regard a manual invite out of the blue as

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spam, but if you have genuine reason to believe they would be interested in what you have to offer, most people wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mind.

Sending group notices Be sure to notify your group of any events and new product lines â&#x20AC;&#x201C; anything that might make them want to visit your premises. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t oversaturate your group with notices however â&#x20AC;&#x201C; one or two a week is adequate. If you send too many, you will find people dropping out of your group.

To send a group notice you need to do the following: í˘ą Right-click on your avatar and select GROUPS. í˘˛ Click on your group, select INFO and click on the NOTICES tab. í˘ł Select CREATE NEW NOTICE. í˘´ You need to add a subject for the message. This should include the SL time and a brief title. í˘ľ For the message it is better to type in a description here, rather than cut and paste from an external program as group notices donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take much text. í˘ś Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget to attach a landmark to you notice so recipients can easily teleport to your event. í˘ˇ After youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve entered all the details, select SEND NOTICE and then OK.

Driving traffic to your business In addition to all your marketing and advertising efforts, certain events and innovations help drive traffic and repeat business to your operation.

Events Events are a great way to increase your traffic and bring new customers or clients to your business. Your options for events are as big as your imagination. It is best to use

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your imagination and organise an event that will bring potential customers to your premises that might not otherwise visit your business.

You might hold a fashion show, a talk by an expert (which might even be you once you are established!), bring a well-known figure into SL to do a question-and-answer session or have a party â&#x20AC;&#x201C; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s entirely up to you. Be sure to tailor your event to your target audience. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no point holding a speed-dating event if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re, in fact, selling weapons as youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be attracting a different clientele.

To list an event you need to do the following: í˘ą Select SEARCH and click on the EVENTS tab. í˘˛ Click on the SEARCH button. í˘ł Select CREATE EVENT. A notice will come up asking you if you want to go to the Second Life events web page. í˘´ Click on OK to go to the Secondlife.com events page. í˘ľ Now select ADD EVENT from the Secondlife.com website. í˘ś You will need to select I AGREE to the rules on creating events. í˘ˇ Add a name for your event. You should be brief, factual and concise here. í˘¸ Next add a description. This should be one paragraph only, and a brief one at that. Remember to reiterate where and when the event is. í˘š You will then need to add the date and time for your event. Remember to put the SL time rather than your RL time zone. You should think about which time is most convenient for as many different time zones as possible if you are trying to get people from all over the world. ě?&#x2026; You should add a duration for your event. The default is only 10 minutes. ě?&#x2C6; Add a category for your event â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whichever fits your event the best.

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쐉 You can also add a cover charge for your event where people have to pay to attend. This isn’t recommended as nearly all events in SL are free and you won’t get many people attending. 씈 Finally, you should add the location for your event from the list and click to SAVE EVENT. Listing your event on the SL website will bring a lot of traffic, but nearer the time, don’t forget to ‘group notice’ your group. Send your group an IM to remind them that your event is starting and let all your friends know via a friends conference IM. It is best to list your event at least one day in advance, but even a few hours’ notice makes a big difference.

If all this sounds like too much hard work, you could always find a marketing consultant to hold an event for you or look to sponsor an existing event. For as little as a couple of hundred Linden dollars you can sponsor an event and reach around 50 or 60 people in one go.

When you are in the middle of your event, remember to invite all visitors to your group. This is a good, quick way of increasing your marketing list substantially.

Sales and special offers We all love a bargain in RL and it is no different in SL. Having a sale is a good way of advertising your business and increasing your revenue. For an effective sale, make sure you list the event on the events page on Secondlife.com so that people can find it when they search inworld for events. Once the event is listed you will get a listing on the SL website and a pink star on the main map to show an event.

To stand out from all the other shopping events, make a reason for your sale – grand opening, end of season, birthday sale – anything you like. Make some signs that show where the reduced stock is and be present during the sale to enhance customer service. Giving a token free gift to visitors along with a landmark is a good way to get people to come back.

Loss-leading products Loss-leading is an RL strategy used to bring people into shops. It’s when you underprice something, even to the extent of making a small loss, to tempt customers into making an impulse buy. Of course in SL you only make a product once and sell many copies on, so once your work is done (and you have selected the right permissions) you don’t

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17.2: SL voucher system

need to worry too much about pricing an item or two at massive discounts. As long as the rest of your products are properly priced you will still make a profit.

Combining loss-leading products with a good shop layout can get your customers buying many items. Think about convenience shops in RL that put its milk right at the back of the shop – most people pop in to buy milk, but they have to walk right past all the other goods in order to get to it. The chances are that they will see something else they want on their way to the item they want. The same works in SL shops.

You should put your more popular items throughout the store, but make sure they want to keep walking to see what comes next.

I keep items around the teleport point to a minimum. The first product my customers usually see is a top selling item at a reduced price with an obvious ‘Sale’ sign.

A further trick I sometimes use is to underprice an item deliberately. Put the price of your product on the front of the box (something you won’t normally do), but price it lower so the floating text above your vendor shows a lower price than the product image. Customers will think they’ve found a steal and will be more likely to make that impulse purchase. It goes without saying that this technique will lose its effectiveness if you overuse it – you should only use one item at most in a visible place.

Gift vouchers There are also some very good gift voucher systems around. If you search in the classified ads on SL you will see them advertised. Some vendors also have a gift purchase button on them for sending your friend or loved one a present.

Freebie warehouses Do you remember when you were new and trying to kit out your avatar so that you

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didn’t look like a total newbie? I’m sure you were very grateful for the free items provided to you. Most of those freebie boxes contained landmarks to the donor’s shop and unless you’ve done a massive clear-out of your inventory, you will probably have some of these landmarks in your inventory. You might well have visited some of these shops again and have remembered a good number of the shops and brands that helped get you on your feet.

If you sell products in SL you will also be in the position to help newcomers get set up by donating old stock, giving full permissions on the items. You will get a good selection of new and old residents taking your free items and all are future possible customers. It is a great way of establishing brand loyalty. You will notice the increased traffic to your store almost immediately when you place a freebie box.

Contact the owner of various warehouses and ask them how to get a freebie box there. Good sims include Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise, Chrischun Fassbinder’s Freebie Warehouse 2 and Yadnis Junk Yard.

Commission vendors Establishing a distribution network in SL is very important for selling products. A quick way of doing this is to set up a network of commission vendors. People with shops and malls can get a free copy of your vendor and sell your products in their space in return for a commission.

Before you embark on this, have a think about the image you wish to project for your product. If you want to sell something that feels exclusive and rare, this might not be the best way for you to proceed. If you’re simply concerned with getting your product in as many hands as possible, this is also a good way to get your logo and brand out there and have multiple outlets without having to pay rent or tier payments.

To get your commission vendors out in SL you can list them as free items on Slexchange.com and other websites or you can hand them out to people after vetting their malls yourself – the choice is yours.

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Hints and tips Q Always promote your business: Tell everyone who you are and what your business does in SL at any opportunity. You should also take advantage of any opportunity to advertise.

Q Hire others to help you: If you don’t have the expertise or time in any area of your business – from making textures to holding events – then hire someone to do for you. You could go to http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=vi ewforum&f=16 and place an advert for someone. You could also post an ad on SL forums or search the classified ads for help.

Q Keep going: Don’t give up if you don’t succeed immediately. You can continue to tweak the various aspects of your business and research the market until you find something that works for you.

Q Look for niche markets or markets that do not yet exist: There are plenty of products, trades and devices just waiting to be introduced into SL. Look for what is not there and build on that.

Q Research your competition: If you are going into a saturated market because your skills are good in that particular area, be sure to find out about your competition. The good thing about SL is that all adverts/classifieds and information are there for viewing in one place.

Q Always try to be one step ahead (or at the least in line with) current trends: Be sure to regularly visit the forums and top 10 product listings, which can be found at www.slexchange .com/modules.php?name=Marketplace. It’s also a good idea to view the local news sites or newspapers and look at your competition. Try looking at the daily news at www.secondlifeherald.com.

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Bringing It All Together

You are now at the end of your tour through SL. Hopefully you will have learnt many skills that will set you up for your second life. You should also understand the bigger picture of SL â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the world, its people and its etiquette.

The most important tip I can give you is to enjoy your virtual life. Once you have found your place in the world you can get a huge amount of enjoyment and fun out of it.

You may want to take part in the social side alone or you may want to start up your own SL business or promote your RL business. Whatever your motivation and your aims, have fun and enjoy your SL adventure.

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A Guide to SL Slang

Here is a list of common acronyms used in SL and web forums: AFAIK: As far as I know AFK: Away from keyboard

GL: Good luck GOL: Giggling out loud

B4N: Bye for now BAK: Back at the keyboard BBL: Be back later BBS: Be back soon BF: Boyfriend BFN: Bye for now BG: Big grin BIAB: Business in a box BRB: Be right back BTW: By the way

H&K: Hug and kiss HAGN: Have a good night HAND: Have a nice day HIG: How’s it going?

HTH: Hope this helps

CU: See you CUL or CUL8ER: See you later CYA: See ya DIKU: Do I know you?

EMFBI: Excuse me for butting in F2F: Face to face FOMCL: Falling off my chair laughing FUBAR: Fucked up beyond all repair or recognition FWIW: For what it’s worth G: Grin GA: Go ahead GF: Girlfriend GFN: Gone for now GGP: Gotta go pee

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IAC: In any case IAE: In any event IC: I see IGP: I gotta pee IHU: I hear you IIRC: If I remember correctly IM: Instant message IMCO: In my considered opinion IMHO: In my humble opinion IMing: Chatting with someone online usually while doing other things IMNSHO: In my not so humble opinion IMS: I am sorry IOW: In other words IRL: In real life IWALU: I will always love you IYSWIM: If you see what I mean JIC: Just in case JK: Just kidding JMO: Just my opinion KOTC: Kiss on the cheek KOTL: Kiss on the lips

| A Guide to SL Slang

L8R: Later LHO: Laughing head off LL: Linden Lab LLTA: Lots and lots of thunderous applause LMAO: Laughing my ass off LMSO: Laughing my socks off LOL: Laughing out loud LTM: Laugh to myself LTNS: Long time no see LY: Love ya LY4E: Love ya forever MMPORG: Massively multiplayer online roleplaying game MTF: More to follow MUSM: Miss you so much NFG: No fucking good NFW: No feasible way or no fucking way NP or N/P: No problem NRN: No response necessary OIC: Oh, I see OMG: Oh my God OTF: Off the floor OTOH: On the other hand PM: Private message POOF: Goodbye PU: That stinks!

RL: Real life ROTFL: Rolling on the floor laughing RSN: Real soon now RT: Real time

SETE: Smiling ear to ear SHID: Slaps head in disgust SNAFU: Situation normal, all fucked up SO: Significant other SOL: Smiling out loud or shit out of luck SU: Shut up SUP: What’s up?

SWL: Screaming with laughter SYS: See you soon TA: Thanks again TAFN: that’s all for now TCOY: Take care of yourself THX: Thanks TIA: Thanks in advance TMI: Too much information TNT: Till next time TOY: Thinking of you TP: Teleport TTFN: Ta-ta for now TTT: Thought that, too TTYL: Talk to you later TU or TY: Thank you UW: You’re welcome VBG: Very big grin WAYD: What are you doing?

WB: Welcome back WBS: Write back soon WT?: What/who the?

WTF: What the fuck?

WTG: Way to go!

WU?: What’s up?

YW: You’re welcome

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alpha (Alpha Channels/Alpha Textures): Referring to transparency in images. A 32bit TGA format file is used when uploading transparencies (see-through items) into SL. alt: An extra avatar used by one person on the same SL account. animation: A file which makes your avatar move to a set sequence. anti-afk device: A device that can detect if you are not actually at your computer. attachment: An object that can be attached to your avatar. avatar: Your virtual self in SL. calling card: A link to someone’s profile that is stored in your inventory. camping: Where a resident is paid by a landowner to stay on one spot because it increases the traffic. These are affectionately known inworld as zombies. coordinates: A position in the virtual world, represented by ‘X’, ‘Y’, ‘Z’ and various numbers. estate: A collection of one or more regions.

Assembling regions as an estate provides the landowners with specific tools to manage multiple regions more easily. flexi: Describes a prim that has been made flexible so it moves as your avatar does or looks like it is moving in a breeze or wind. flyby: A person browsing over your land. gesture: A combination of animations, poses, text and sounds that can be triggered by short cuts on your keyboard or text in chat. grid: Refers to SL’s world, which is made up of a collection of networked servers. griefer: Someone who causes trouble or is abusive to another resident or group.

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Glossary

history: A window that shows all the chat that has occurred in your current session in SL. home: This is the location you will be teleported back to if you die in a combat zone. Your home location can be selected in the WORLD menu.

HUD (Heads-Up Display): An attachment point on the screen where you can select to launch scripts, animations or other objects.

It cannot be seen by others, only by you. inventory: Where all the items you own in SL are stored. inworld: In the virtual world. island (or estate): Land that is built to order

by Linden Lab. lag: The delay experienced when there is too much activity in an area or when there is a slow internet connection. landmarks: Links to locations that are stored in your inventory.

Linden Lab: The company that created and runs SL. Linden dollars (L$): The SL currency. At the time of going to press it is L$275 to the US dollar.

LSL (Linden Scripting Language): The SL scripting language that is used in scripts to make objects active. mainland: The main fixed areas of land in SL. mature: A rating for the land. In mature areas you are allowed to show sexual content, nudity and use obscene language (in other areas the grid age limit is only 13). mouselook: Viewing your land as your avatar sees it. newbie: A new or relatively new resident in SL. notecard: A note containing information that is given out in SL.

| Glossary

object: An item that has been created using one or more prims. parcel: Sections of land within sims or regions. path cut: Basically to cut something in SL. permissions: The properties applied to an object by the creator that determine what other residents can do with the object when they acquire it.

PG: A rating for land. In a PG area you are not allowed to use obscene language, use violence, show sexual content or display nudity, meaning it is a safe area for minors to enter. poseball: An object with an animation or set of animations which animates your avatar. prim (primitive): The basic building blocks of all objects in SL. profile: A window of information about an avatar that other users can see. region: Land masses of 256 square metres are called regions or sims. If you look on the map, you will clearly see these divided masses throughout the grid, each region has a unique name and is rated mature or PG. resident: A member of the SL community. rez or rezzing: Creating a new object or putting an object back inworld from your inventory. sandbox: A space where anyone can build. script: A program in SL to create activities in objects. sculpt texture: A texture that involves a shape and is mapped out on an external graphics program. When the texture is uploaded and applied to a prim in SL the prim takes on the shape of the sculpt texture. sculpty prim (sculpted prim): A prim that has been transformed into a unique shape with the use of a sculpt texture. shift-copying: Creating an exact replica of a prim or object by holding down SHIFT while dragging a position arrow in edit mode.

sim (simulator): Often used synonymously with region. However, a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;simâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is actually a reference to an SL server that runs simulations of one or more regions. A sim is a 65,536-square-metre area in SL. slurl: A link in RL that takes you to a particular location inworld. takedown order: An order from Linden Lab which forces you to remove an item that you have up for sale. teleport: Travelling instantly from one SL location to another. terraform: To transform the appearance of the land. texture: An image that can be applied to prims to give them a pattern or picture. tier payment: A monthly land payment to Linden Lab for any land that is owned. torus: A ring-shaped prim. traffic: A measure of the popularity of a piece of land.

UUID (Universal Unique Identifier): A unique reference number that every item and avatar has.

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Moving Walk forwards: UP arrow or ‘W’ Walk backwards: DOWN arrow or ‘S’ Turn left: LEFT arrow or ‘A’ Turn right: RIGHT arrow or ‘D’ Fly up: PAGE UP or ‘E’ Hover: Home or SHIFT + ‘F’ Fly down (controlled): PAGE DOWN Fly down (fall): HOME or ‘F’ Running mode: CTRL + ‘R’ Teleport to home location: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘H’

Camera controls Mouselook: ‘M’ Reset view: ESCAPE Zoom in: CTRL + 0 Zoom out: CTRL + 8 Zoom default: CTRL + 9 Zoom to selection: SHIFT + ‘H’ (in edit mode)

Menus Build: ‘B’ Focus: CTRL + 1 Move: CTRL + 2 Edit: CTRL + 3 Create: CTRL + 4 Land: CTRL + 5 Close window: CTRL + ‘W’ Inventory: CTRL + ‘I’ Preferences: CTRL + ‘P’ World map: CTRL + ‘M’

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Short Cut Keys Gestures: CTRL + ‘G’ Mini-map: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘M’ Statistics bar: CTRL + SHIFT + 1 Search: CTRL + ‘F’ Friends: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘F’ SL help: F1 History: Opens with chat – CTRL + ‘H’ Open and close CLIENT menu: CTRL + ALT + ‘D’

Building Snap object XY to grid: SHIFT + ‘X’ Property lines: CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + ‘P’ Highlight transparent: CTRL + ALT + ‘T’ Link: CTRL + ‘L’ Unlink: CTRL + SHIFT ‘L’ Undo: CTRL and ‘Z’ Redo: CTRL and ‘Y’

Communicating IM: CTRL + ‘T’ Say: ENTER Shout: CTRL + ENTER

Miscellaneous Force noon: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘Y’ Force sunset: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘N’ Take snapshot: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘S’ Take snapshot to disk: CTRL + ’ Upload image: CTRL + ‘U’ Grid options: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘B’ Hover tips: CTRL + SHIFT + ‘T’

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Index

NB: page numbers in italic indicate figures or illustrations

30-minute logout 78 abuse 22, 70 activities and locations 50–60 see also events business 55, 56 clubs and dance halls 51, 51, 52 combat sims 58 education 54, 150 live music events 50–51 places of virtual beauty 52, 52, 53, 53 sex scene 56–57 shopping 53–54 themed sims 57, 57, 58, 58 advertising 170, 171, 171–72, 172, 188–89, 204 boards 197 classified 195, 196, 196 farms 197 and free rentals in malls 198 on websites and forums 198 advice 15 alpha channels 167–68 animation(s) 4, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 68, 79, 82, 145, 198 overriders 55 stopping 29, 56, 70 texture 140 appearance, your 31–44 see also clothing; inventory and sandboxes altering body parts for 34–35, 35 editing 33–34 hair attachments for 36, 36 and permissions 42–43 shoes for 37

avatar, your 7, 16, 16, 17–20 appearance of 181–82 gestures for 18, 19 naming 4 avatars, other 20–21, 21 ball, creating 101–06 see also objects body parts 24 altering 34–35, 35 building 6, 107 and alpha channels 167–68 complex buildings 161 doors and stairs 167 home and shop 159–68 see also houses, building and shop(s) planning and design 167, 168 and prim usage/saving 167 short cuts 118 textures for 168 viewing objects for 116 business see advertising; marketing; publicity and the media and shop(s) calling cards 21, 24–25, 62, 65 camera/viewer 7–8, 13, 24, 110, 167, 171 angle 33 constraints, disabling 80, 108 controls, using 122 chair 112–18 and arranging objects 113, 114, 114–15, 115 base for 112 joining up prims for 116 sides for 113 sitting on 117

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texturing 118 clothes and accessories 151–58 see also clothing bling 153 flexi prims for 154–56 jewellery 151–52, 152, 153 tattoos 156, 156, 157, 158 clothes/attachments 17–18, 15 and attach points 158 linking 158 repositioning 158 clothing 98 altering 36–36, 37 creating new 37–38, 38 creating realistic 153–54 and flexi clothes/skirts 155–56 and making a cloak 154–55 and Robin Wood 154 and SL forum clothes links 154 communication tab/window 18, 74 copyright/Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 125 currency 3, 11, 75, 90 see also Linden dollars escorts 56–57, 68, 84–85 etiquette/behaviour 59, 72–73 events 66, 150 for business/marketing 199–201 organiser 86 flexi prims 154–56 flying 5, 6, 8–9, 9, 9–10, 20, 37, 49, 95 and flight feathers 10, 55, 59 friendships 18, 62–63 multiple 62–63 gadgets 10, 18, 55–56, 191 animation overriders 55 chat bug scanner 56 flight feather 10, 55, 59 greeter bots 191

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landmark and URL givers 191 multi-time global clock 56 off-world stat collectors 191 radar 56 shield 56 stop animations objects 56 update servers 191 visitor counter 191 gestures 18, 25, 28, 29, 82 creating complex 19–20 Google 59, 184 griefers 20, 21, 70, 81, 82, 185 groups 6, 11–12, 12, 13, 17–18, 45, 46, 48, 50, 61, 181–82, 193 business 89, 198–99 creating your own 64–65 and IMs 64 Help Island 14, 39 hints and tips (for) 15, 29 appearance 44 building home and shop 167–68 business: basic marketing 193 land 100 making clothes and accessories 158 making money 88 objects and prims 122–23 prims, creating and editing 108 scripts 150 sculpty prims 140 socialising 74 textures 134 visiting places in SL 59–60 houses, building 97–98, 161–63, 163, 164–65, 165, 166 finishing touches 165 floor 162, 162, 164, 164 furnishing 166 second storey 165 sides/walls 162–63, 164 window glass 163–64

| Index

instant messaging (IM) 11–12, 12, 62–63, 75 group 64 inventory 5, 6, 23–24, 24, 25–28, 29, 36, 108 boxed items 41 creating new items for 28 objects in 105–06 organising 26–27, 27 recent items 28 searching and filtering 27 Ivory Tower Library of Primitives 54, 107, 121 jewellery 151–52, 152, 153 jobs (as) 79, 81–86, 88 dancer 83 DJ 82–83, 83, 86 escort 84–85 greeter 81 host/games host 82 model 83–84, 84 security 81, 81, 82 skilled 85–86 lag 78, 89, 93, 153, 186 reducing/minimising 52, 187 land 89–100, 183–84, 184, 185, 187, 196 abandoning 100 altering permissions on 94–95 bots 99 building on 97–98 buying 92–94, 100 and changing group preferences 94–96 estates/islands 89 finding 91–92 mainland 89 options 95–96 playing media on 98, 98 prices of 89–90 and prim allowances 90–91 renting 94 renting out 99 sales/sales tab 91, 91, 92, 93

selling 98–99 terraforming 96–97 land terms 46 landmarks 14, 22, 25, 30, 45–46, 56, 67, 71, 93, 95, 178, 185, 188, 191, 197, 199, 201, 203 light 13, 127, 153 changing 15 Linden, P 3 Linden dollars 3, 11, 21, 22, 53, 75–79, 90, 95, 98, 106, 176, 177, 192, 197, 201 buying and selling, sites for 75 converting RL money into 79 Linden Lab 4, 31, 43, 59, 67, 70, 73, 75, 82, 89, 92–93, 100, 125, 135 Linden Scripting Language (LSL) 141, 144 LindeX 75, 106 location(s) 14, 22, 25, 31, 39, 42, 48–50, 53, 56–57, 67, 73, 86, 89, 93 business 187 camping 197 event 201 finding 45–46 rating of 31 rental 185 rules of 59 and using search bar 46, 46, 47–48 looking 7–8, 13, 59 far away 80 see also camera/viewer lost and found 25, 97 marketing (and) 181–93 see also advertising and shop(s) advertising 188–89, 189 avatar, appearance of 181–82 banking 192 branding 188, 193 commission vendors 203 competition 190, 204 customer service 190–91 customer survey 193 donation boxes 193

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events 199–201 freebie warehouses 202–03 gadgets 191–92 see also main entry gift vouchers 202 hiring expertise 204 land/about land menu 183–84, 184, 185 loss leaders 201–02 niche 204 permissions 193 product releases 193 profile/profile menu 182, 183, 183 sales/special offers 201 strategy 192, 204 vendors 189 see also vendor systems mature areas/rating 31, 41, 42, 49, 59, 64, 92, 156 money, ways of making 75–88 see also jobs camping 77, 77, 78 converting RL money into Linden dollars 79 and fraud 75 money trees 76, 76 online surveys 79 reselling 86, 87 and stopping 30-minute logout 78 winning at events 87 mouse, using the 16–30 and your avatar menu 16–20 mouselook 8–9 flying in 9 walking in 8 music 49, 50–51, 82, 94, 98, 185 New Citizens Incorporated (NCI) 15, 32, 54 notecards 14, 16, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, 43, 50, 134, 142, 178, 180, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 197 naming 108 object menus 21–22, 22, 130 objects 25–26, 108 creating 101–02, 102

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in your inventory 105–06 interacting with 13 making movable 104–05 modifying 104 moving 29, 102–03, 103, 104 naming 105, 108, 122 selling 106–07, 122 texturing 104, 122 viewing 116 objects and prims, advanced 109–23 see also prim manipulation and prim torturing making a chair 112–17 see also chair and nano prims 120–21 orientation 14 permissions 42–43, 94–95, 125, 193 PG areas/rating 31, 49, 59, 92 photo album 26 picks 40, 47, 127, 151, 155–56, 166, 167, 173, 182, 183, 197 creating 60 poseball script 145–49, 149 poseballs 23, 68 premium membership 3, 92, 187 prim manipulation 109–12 position 110 rotate 111 shift-copying 112 stretch 110–11 undoing and redoing 111 prim torturing 118, 119, 119–20, 120 prims, creating and editing 101–08 see also objects; objects and prims, advanced and prim manipulation and building skills 107 prims 36, 97–98 see also sculpty prims cutting down on 122–23 flexi 154–56 usage and saving 167 privacy 59, 70–72, 161 private houses 59, 70–71

| Index

profile 17, 20–21, 44, 47, 60, 62, 63, 67, 72, 74, 182–83 programs Adobe Photoshop 124, 153 for making clothes 153–54 GIMP 124, 153–54 Paint Shop Pro 124, 153 Paint.net 124, 154, 156, 171, 172, 172 publicity and the media 194–95 see also advertising and marketing groups and marketing lists 198–99 group notices, sending 199 publications/media 194–95 Publishing Island 54, 154 ratings, PG/mature 31, 49, 59 red ban lines 50 relationships/partners 67–68 roleplay (RP) 66, 66, 67 sandboxes 31–33, 41, 42, 54, 80, 101, 109, 123, 145, 188, 197 New Citizens Incorporated (NCI) 32, 54 public 32 Sarah Nerd’s Freebie Paradise 39–40, 40, 203 screen and menus 4, 5, 5–6 scripts 26, 141–50 and College of Scripting, Music, and Science 143 and copying from objects 144 creating basic 141–44 editing 145 learning more about 143–44 and Linden Script Tutorial Exhibiton 143–44 poseball 145–49, 149 resetting 143 where to find 144–45 sculpt and graphics programs 136–40 Blender 138–39 Maya 135, 140

nand Nerds Sculpt Texture Generator 136, 136 Rokuro sculpted prim maker 136, 137 SculptyPaint 135, 137 TOKOROTEN (extruder) 137 tutorials on 140 Wings 3D 139, 140 sculpty prims 135, 135, 136–40 see also sculpt and graphics programs animating 140 creating 138 texturing 140 search bar, using 46, 46, 47–48 search rankings 59 searching and filtering 27–28 security 71, 81, 81, 82, 97 selling 169–80, 188–89 and advertising 170, 171, 171–72, 172, 179 competition and markets for 179 and information boards 180 and payment methods 176 tools for 178–79 see also selling tools using basic single vendor 172–76 and vendor systems 176–78 see also vendor systems selling tools 178–79 demo products 178 freebies 178 lucky chairs 178, 179 prize-giving schemes 178–79 sex 56–57, 68–69, 69, 70, 84–85 shop(s) see also business; marketing and selling accessibility of items in 180, 186 clutter and textures in 180 creating 159–60, 160, 161 design of 180, 186, 186 estate vs mainland 187 final touches for 161, 179 floor of 159, 160 information boards in 180

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location of 187 and minimising lag 187 renting vs buying 187 walls and ceiling of 159 short-cut keys 210 signing up to SL 3–4 sims combat 58 themed 57, 57, 58, 58 sky buildings 59 slang 11, 206–07 slurls 194, 198 Snow Crash 3 socialising 61–74 see also events; friendships; groups; relationships and sex meeting people 61 sounds 4, 19, 26 speech/voice 12–13 Stephenson, N 3 talking 10, 10, 11 tattoos 156, 156, 157, 158 teleport(ing) 14, 18, 40, 48–49, 59, 71 problems 48 textures 26, 124–34, 168 see also three-seater couch alignment tools for 128 copying 134 creating 124–25 finding creator of 134 organising 134 permissions for 125

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rebaking 158 and texture tab 125, 126, 126–28 and uploading pictures 124–25 UUID number for 134 and window in texture tab 126–27 three-seater couch 128–31 base for 129 copying texture/colour for 132 cushions for 129–30 joining parts for 130, 130, 131 matching chair for 131, 132, 132–33, 133 poseball for 145–49, 149 texturing 131, 131 time zone(s) 15, 56, 73, 200 trash 26 vendor systems 176–78 Apez 177–78 HippoVEND 177, 189 JEVN 176 vendors 172–76, 189 commission 203 visiting places in SL 45–60 see also locations walking 15 basic 6–7 in mouselook 8 warehouses 39, 69, 187, 202–03 weapons 23, 49, 55, 56, 58, 70, 81, 95, 141, 200 websites 3, 124, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 153, 154, 171, 172, 176, 177, 204

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Acknowledgements

I would like to send a big thank you to my editor, Louise Coe – without her help there’s no way these pages would have become a book. It must have been a mammoth task to turn my sometimes-hard-to-grasp teachings into an accessible book format. And to put up with my horrendous typos.

I would also like to say thank you to a few other people. My family, for the many hours I was away in my new second life, working. To Linden Lab, for creating Second Life. To my friend who invited me in many moons ago. And to my publishers, for realising my dreams. Special thanks to Janet and Selina – two special ladies, one virtual, the other not so virtual.

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About the Authors

madddyyy Schnook is an avatar in Second Life and has sold nearly 100,000 copies of his SLguides virtual books. He resides in a half-sim shop on Publishing Island.

Andrew Sullivan gave up a ÂŁ65,000/US$130,000-a-year sales and marketing job to work full-time in Second Life to pursue his dream career. Before SL he worked in sales and marketing for 10 years and spent 15 years working in the merchant navy.

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