God is in the Details

As with all things in life attention to details is one of the factors that makes something go from ordinary to special, this is very true when building in SL. One of the complements I do enjoy receiving from individuals about my builds is how well the textures look, the details are great. Well I do spend a lot of time when doing textures and I do love the look and feel they give when done correctly, so this is one compliment I will most graciously accept. For I do know the amount of time and effort I place into making, covering and tweaking a texture across a prim and on a build.

The Quote at the Blog heading "God is in the Details" is from Mies van der Rohe who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of Modern architecture. He is also known for his use of the aphorisms "less is more" Both of these might as well been written with SL architecture builds in mind. For there may be no other creative medium more beholding to these to principals than Building in SL.

Often you will come come across a build be it an art piece or an architectural build and it looks good at first glance, then you start to look at it in much closer detail. Here is where the great builders set them selves apart from an adequate journeyman when it comes to building in Second Life.

The most common mistakes novice builders have are glimmer and bleed through from textures and improper prim alignment. A more competent builder will have corrected this defect but may have any one of the following texture issues not properly addressed. Bare prims on sides of a prim not facing outward, incorrect settings, alignments or stretch of a texture on a prim. Or possible even a prim size not correct causing the textures to be off when viewed as a set.

Its the small things, the attention to details that sets a great builder apart from an OK one. Ever notice how steps may not be stretched right on the horizontal or vertical face of a prim. When looking at a large expanse of prims on a wall, floor, ceiling or even steps and they look repetitive to the point it looks not natural. This is from a builder not tweaking the textures correctly. Just applying a texture to a prim face and then copying it over and over is just novice approach when building.

I remember when I was commissioned to do a re texture job of a build by a prefab company in Second Life, the thing that truly amazed the owner of the prefab company was the amount of time and effort that my partner Caren and I took when selecting and matching and applying textures correctly to their build. Then when they thought we where done we informed them that now we would tweak the build textures completely.

This is when we went through the build and corrected any small errors and changed the alignments and application of textures on multiple same facing prims to make it have a more life like look and not the same repetitive texture look every other prim or so, that is prevalent in allot of SL builds. When we where done the owner of the company had his builders come and look at a copy of the build we had textured and an original one on a side by side comparison. The look between the two builds was profound, the build that had the time spent on tweaking and apply textures in an applied random feel had a very real life look to it. Months later I spoke with the owner of the prefab company and they had adapted the same approach to texturing that they learned from us that day. She mentioned her sales of prefabs went up and she had gone back and re textured many of her prefab models to a better level than she had before.

So a simple step of looking at the details and applying a less of the same approach to texturing can make a marked difference in your builds and your bottom line.

Good Building

Nyx