Basic Building Tips

Having a few basic building skills can be quite useful in your interaction with virtual real objects. 

In order to build or rez items you need to be in an area that allows you to create objects like a public sandbox. Rez in Second Life means to create or to make an object appear. 

To Start

Familiarise yourself with the system edit menu which you can call up by right clicking onto a ground surface

















1) Highlights the different kinds of tools that you can select in order to zoom, move, select, create and sculpt terrain.

2) Highlights the different tab menus that help you navigate object properties and options. These tab menus are :
  • General - Shows general info about the object
  • Object - Shows the properties of the object such as physical dimensions, location and rotation of the object
  • Features - Describes what type of object it is and how it may be interacted with.

The other two tabs which are Texture and Content will be discussed later.

3) Highlights the various properties of each corresponding Tab Menu which is different in each.

Rezzing an object/prim can be done by dragging it from a resident's inventory
Or by creating a new one via the edit window

  1. Use the creation tool (this looks like a magic wand)
  2. Select any shape to be created from the prim shape menu
  3. Note that the default texture for any in-world created prim is plywood
  4. Clicking on the texture window opens up your inventory from the edit menu. Any texture that you select from your inventory via this method will be applied to the selected face of your prim

1) Texture or Re-texture a Mesh or Prim Face

The Texture Menu Tab is one that you will frequently use when you want to modify objects with your own textures or change other visual properties of your object such as the brightness, shininess, glow and so on.
One method of texturing a prim is the drag and drop method. Locate the texture in your inventory first and apply it to a face on your prim by dragging the file onto the face you wish to texture.






You can also texture the prim by navigating your inventory from the edit menu itself by clicking on the texture window. After locating and selecting your choice of texture, it will be applied to your prim. This method is more precise and you are less likely to accidentally texture other things that you might do with the drag and drop method.

To rez a mesh model, locate it in your inventory and drag it onto the ground
Check the following :

  • You are using the selection tool (square with an arrow icon NOT the magic wand)
  • Make a note of the radio buttons. Ticking Select Face highlights the surfaces of the object you will be selecting
  • Information about which face you are selecting is displayed. In this illustration the faces are displayed as ALL_SIDES - meaning all the object's surfaces have been selected.
Click on the texture window to call up your inventory and locate the texture you wish to apply to your mesh object. Also make sure to select only the face that you wish to texture.


  • Select the selection tool
  • Tick the Select Face radio button and touch the face that you wish to apply the texture to (In this example it is Faces: 2 )
With an alpha texture, select Alpha Masking from the Alpha Mode drop down menu and adjust the Mask cutoff for your purposes. The higher the number, the sharper the edges of your image will be, but you may loose finer details in your texture.

2) Placing a script in your object's inventory

Using the same method as rezzing the mesh object, locate the script you want to use.

Click on the Contents Tab of your editor menu and drag the script from your inventory into the Contents window of your rezzed object.

You have now scripted your object.









Other relevant resources

What is Rez?

How to build in Second Life

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