Ivory Tower Library Introduction

Welcome to the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives (ITLP)!

I'd better put two disclaimers up front.  I'm not a Linden and any comments, off-handed remarks or opinions I might have written into the text of this library are not the comments, off-handed remarks or opinions of Linden Labs.  I've done my best to research all of the information in here, some of it actually comes from Linden Lab engineers, some I've learned from experience, and many things I've learned from friends and former 'students' of the Ivory Tower over it the project's long history (in virtual terms, it's quite old indeed).  Also...any mistakes or miscomprehensions presented in the tower are entirely my own and are my fault and all of that.  If your avatar loses any teeth or fingernails as a result of any errors contained herein, it's all my fault.

I made the Ivory Tower Tutorials in the hopes that it would give you a substantial headstart on your arrival in Second Life.  It contains a lot of tips and tricks of the building system that have taken a good while to develop and collect.  Over time I'll add modules on sound, prim animations, avatar customization and attachment building.  That's in planning for the forseeable future...maybe a month or twelve away.  

What the tutorials are:  The tutorials are a thorough grounding in the properties of the different primitive types (building blocks), and the editing tools that are used on those primitives.  Several techniques to make building with prims more easily are described in detail.  Scripting is not currently covered in the tower.  I know a lot of people are disappointed about that, but....I'm going with what I know here!  If you saw how much I struggle with scrpting you wouldn't want me to teach you anyway...I'll likely collaborate with master scripters if and when I do put up a scripting library.

What the tutorials are not:  While I use a lot of examples of how things in general can be made, I have avoided showing how to make specific things like toothbrushes, toilet seats, and rocket ships .   I do show how to make an ugly, basic chair, and a few other things, but these are only meant as illustrations of building techniques.  I used familiar objects as examples because I had to choose some subject to show you the techniques. I hope you will try making them, but only once.  None of them is very nice, and you should be able to make much better ones by the time you finish this tutorial.  Please don't get stuck always making chairs in the way I demonstrate, they are "Mary Had a Little Lambs" compared to what I hope will be your Beethoven symphonies and your Bach fuges of building.

This can't be a tutorial about how to specifically make everything, I don't have the prims to do it!  Very often I get comments from users that read something like complaints and go along these lines:  "I need to make an "S" curve for the fender of a car I'm making, and your tutorial doesn't cover how to do that."  Of course it doesn't!  It can't tell you how to make the exact shape you need for your car's fender because it can't cover every specific thing on Earth.  I need you to give yourself permissioin to go beyond this tutorial and realize that you can make an "S" curve using two cut and hollowed cylinders tubes or tori (or all three) that are rotated in opposition to each other.  Don't leave it to me to tell you that, use your ingenuity to solve the many problems in building that you will come across.  Sometimes this takes a great deal of persistence, especially when you're making replicas of real life objects.

I hope you find this useful.  Pace yourself, no need to go through it all in a day.  Thanks to the Lindens, it WILL be here tomorrow!

Yours Always,

Lumiere Noir