Anyone who has rezzed a prim has probably deleted part of their house or changed the texture or moved it some random amount straight up in the air and has no idea how to fix it.  At that point after you panic you frantically call someone to come and help you praying they have more skills than you.  I’ve done it many times and I wouldn’t call myself an in-experienced builder.  I learned by watching other people, by disecting what they created to see how it was done, by asking questions and literally by messing things up.  As with most things, practice will enhance your skills but when you don’t know what you can do how can you practice right?  Well I’m going to help with that.  I’m going to offer some building classes.  We aren’t going to make anything though.  We are going to destroy stuff and put it back together.  We are going to learn about how texturing works.  I’m going to show you how stuff is made, how to look for the root prim, how to resize stuff and how not to panic.

Interested?  Good.  Drop me an IM in world.  I’ll do the first class in the next couple of days.  It’ll be on Angel Square.  I’ll send a LM out to whoever is interested.

Ok, I’m going to start a series of tutorials.  I’ll group them all properly and tag them to make them easy to find.  By request, here is the next in the series… the A/O.

Let’s start at the beginning.  An A/O or Animation Override will animate your avatar through walking, sitting, standing, flying, falling, swimming, running, crawling, etc.   This means you will stop walking around like you have a stick up your butt and will be able to sit gracefully or manly anywhere you like.  The *new resident* look will be gone from personna.

There are 2 basic ways in which to get an A/O.  You can go and buy one already done for you or you can make your own using the Zhao basic hud(HUDs will be another topic   ).  Lets talking about buying one first.  There are many stores selling them.  You get a variety of stands/sits/walks/etc all packaged neatly into a hud that you simply attach and your off.  No muss no fuss.  Most of the time.  Occasionally something breaks or doesn’t quite work right but we’ll go with, no muss no fuss.   How on earth can you possibly pick one out though?  Sorry, can’t really help with that one.  It’s all rather subjective.  My suggestion though, go thru all the pose stands, sometimes twice.  Don’t go for the most expensive, or the cheapest.  Your looking for something that feels like you when you look at him/her.  There are loads of animation stores out there.  Currently I’m using one from Vista.  Their hud has the *sit anywhere* which I’m sure everyone has by now.  I simply like the transitions between animations.  It looked natural.  Price wasn’t bad either.  I can also edit it to add more poses if I so choose.  Which brings us to the build your own option.

Most A/Os are run off of notecards within a menu driven HUD.  The HUD reads the notecard and the script within plays the animations.  90% of them have instructions on how to *update and add* animations.  The script does all the work provided  you type the name of the animation correctly in the notecard.  Now there are lots of options here too.  You can buy a Huddle which will hold all your dances and your A/O as well as other stuff, or you can grab a free A/O huddle and use that or you can buy one.  For the most part, these are easy to do if you type the animation names correctly on the notecard.  You rezz the A/O, which is normally a round transparent prim that you’ll *wear*, on the ground, edit it, add your animations on the contents tab, edit the notecard, pull it back into your inventory, then wear it and off you go.  If you get script errors, check your spelling! 

So, there you have it.  A rather brief tutorial on the A/O.  My recommendation???  Buy one that you can add animations to.  That way you can swap animations and never really get bored with it.  Someone else has done all the scripting leaving you to simply enjoy it.  If your really really geeking, build your own.  Me, I’m happy with my new one from Vista.  kthxbai

P.S.  I’m not being paid in any way for recommending Vista.  There are other animation overrides out there:  SEMotion, Animazoo, Abranimations to name a few.

Per the request of my lovely friend Ahuva , this is the second in the series of land ownership – island/estates.

Ok, so you want to own land but you aren’t a premium member and you’ve heard the horror stories about mainland and want to avoid it.  You start looking to the islands/estates.

First, a little bit of terminology.  An island is also referred to as a region or sim.  All are valid descriptions.  Each island is it’s own region and each region is a sim.  For purposes of this post, we’ll use island.  Now, estate refers to the group of islands owned by own person.  In my case, Angel Square Estate incorporates Angel Square(the island), BaileysReach(an island) and Crown and Pearl(an island).  There are much larger estates than mine and I’m sure some smaller.  So, you have the estate, then the islands within the estate.  With me so far?  Ok moving along.

Estate owners can(and most do) have a covenant that lists the *rules* for living on their islands.  The theme(snow, tropical, commercial, residential etc), the types of builds allowed, how payments are made, how much tier is per month, who to contact if there is a  problem and various other items that are important to them.  It’s important to read this. For instance, most covenants say that there are no refunds on tier and that if you don’t pay on time or notify the owner your land can be reclaimed.  So, read the covenant.  All of it.

Estate land can be rented or purchased.  Again, depends on the owner.  Some perfer to rent some to sell.  In either case you will pay them a monthly tier.  Check the covenant for how you pay whether it’s paypal or lindens or some other method.  So, your paying the owner a fee to use the land.  Think of it as a mortgage payment or rental payment. 

Ok so you want to buy the land.  What do you get for this?  In most cases you get full rights to do whatever you want, within the boundaries of the covenant.  This means building, terraforming, most security measures etc.  Stay within the covenant and your all set.  Your name will be listed as the owner of the land and you are free to sell it should you wish to move.  Now if you rent the land, you will not get all of those rights in most cases.  Some owners will give them, most don’t.  I do.

Now you’ve bought or rented the land, moved in, been paying tier for a couple of months and you start to get a bad feeling.  I will say this now, there are unethical estate owners and ethical ones.  Just as in RL.  Yes, the estate owner can kick everyone off the island, return your stuff and not say a word, no warning, nothing.  Chances are, they don’t have to refund any tier either.  Stinks huh.  Yep, it does.  That’s why I always suggest getting recommendations from friends about going to an estate. 

The estate owner can really do whatever they want and the residents have little recourse.  That’s the worst case and I don’t hear about it happening often.  Most of us(estate owners) are good people and will go out of our way for our residents.  Just talk to us.  Now keep in mind, we still have to pay tier to the Lindens so we’ll be as accomodating as possible.

So, that’s the story with estate/island land.  Need clarification or more info then IM me in world or leave a comment here.  I’ll be happy to help.  Oh and I do have some land available on Angel Square to buy or rent if anyone is interested? 

With all the hoopla about open spaces and questions about who owns what, here is a little primer on owning land.

Mainland:  If you buy a parcel of land on what is known as mainland you pay the lindens a monthly tier fee above the actual purchase price you paid.  You don’t have any estate rights, there is no covenant(land rules), and your limited in how much you can terraform.  Now if you rent a parcel on mainland, there is no initial purchase price other than the first month of tier(generally) which is paid to someone other than the lindens and your rights are further limited.  I won’t go into all the details in this post of how this works, these are just the  basics.  One rule when dealing with buying land on mainland, you have to be a premium member.

Private estates/Islands:  You can buy land on private estates.  You pay a purchase price and get rights to the land you purchased.  Most islands have covenants though that set the tone and rules for the island.  Make sure you read this before you buy.  Some are vague and badly written, others well written and clear.  You will still pay a monthly tier fee to the owner of the estate/island.  You do not have to be a premium member.  Many islands also let you rent land where you pay a monthly fee, no upfront purchase price.  Again, you pay the estate owner. 

There are many different types of estate owners.  Some ethical, some not so ethical.  Some easy to deal with, some absolute jerks.  If your going to buy land on an estate, ask around.  Get recommendations from your friends.  If someone has been living on the same estate for quite awhile, chances are they are happy with the tier fees and the estate owner.

I’ve owned Angel Square for about 9 months now and I’d like to think I’m a good landlord.   I have land up for rent or sale, IM me in world or leave me a note here if your interested.

If you  have questions about land ownership/renting/prim allowances/tier fees/etc.. give me a holler, I’ll do my best to help you.

I hope this helped a few of you.