Module 1

Module 1 Introduction

The first module of the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives (ITLP) is concerned with giving you a general knowledge of primitives (prims); their creation, positioning, resizing, parameters and so on, things that apply to all prims no matter how manipulated they've been.

This first station deals with primitive creation and the raw, prim types you may choose from when you create a primitive (prim). 

To create a prim, right click a place near you to get the pie menu  and choose create.  You may also press CTRL-4 to go into create mode immediately.*

When you create a primitive, it's commonly said that you 'rez' it.  This word comes from the Disney movie, "Tron," and it's commonly used in Second Life.  It's so commonly used that I've been using it throughout the library but forgot to reference it.  Thanks to Geneko Nemeth for reminding me to put it in here :-)

 You'll be given the prim creation menu from which you may select a variety of prims.  Choose one and you'll get a magic wand cursor.  Touch this cursor to the ground or on top of an existing prim and your selected prim will appear!

Obviously this is the single most important part of building, creating prims.  The second most important part must be linking those prims together.  Let's cover the basics of that right now, it's easy.  Create two or more prims, then select them all at the same time (you need to be in edit mode for this to work).  Press down the shift button on your keyboard then left click your prims one at a time, they should all glow yellow in edit mode.  Hold down the CTRL and the L buttons on your keyboard (CTRL-L   Hold down the CTRL button first).  You can also click the tools menu at the top of your screen and choose link.  The CTRL-L method is just quicker and easier.   To unlink your linked set of prims, hold down CTRL - SHIFT then L on your keyboard (start with the CTRL key).  Try both of these now.   I will cover linking in much more detail later in this module, there's a lot more to it than this, but these are the basics.

A semi-infinite  number of shapes are available when  you position, rotate, distort, cut, scale and combine these basic forms.  It's a good idea to become very familiar with what tools you have available to you and what shapes they can produce.  As you build projects, you'll find you need a particular shape, and the more shapes you know how to make, the more versatile a builder you will be.  Module 2 of the Ivory Tower deals with editing single prims in a good deal of depth.  Module 4 discusses combining them to form more complicated shapes.  Module 3 is sort of ad hoc, I put things there that don't fit into the other modules.