Officially Sanctioned Megaprim Use!

The new Welcome Islands and Discovery Islands for new Residents are nicely designed and executed. This fresh approach may also indicate a policy change recognizable to more experienced Residents, though: Officially sanctioned use of megaprims, those building blocks larger than users can normally create in-world. As you can see from this picture taken at Discovery Island Public 3 (SLurl), Governor Linden owns a 100x100x30 prim in the shell of the island's "shopping mall" section. It was created by Day Oh and last owned by Ryker Beck.

Miss Beck is part of the ILL Clan, the group that created the new regions (Web), and has been in-world for over three years so I imagine she has heard that The Lab doesn't permit the use of megaprims in their builds or in Resident-created builds for official Linden activities such as Burning Life and the Second Life Birthdays. Does her use of this huge prim here mark a sea change?

Building in SL: Finding Megaprims

Building in Second Life® is a lot like sex. The act itself is the ultimate, but I love playing with the various toys and finding special materials, too. One controversial material for SL building is the Megaprim (AKA Huge Prim; Web), any "block" larger than the 10m³ that the system can generate. Claims of added lag, their use by Griefers and misuse by n00bies, and the need for good building skills makes them controversial. Since any plot of land can have just so many prims, skillful use of Megaprims to replace several individual pieces is very useful. However, I have yet to find a convenient way to to store and retrieve them.

So when my friend Peter Stindberg announced on Plurk and on his Blog about a new tool created by the genius Katharine Berry (Web) to search for Megaprims via the Web (here) and have them delivered to you in-world I was ecstatic! Normally I keep a folder of frequently used sizes but mostly I keep a barrel (really, a barrel) filled with boxes of Megaprims sorted by the Z dimension. I'll probably keep the folder, but now I can skip rolling out the barrel, waiting for contents to load, dragging out the box I think I need .... you get the idea. With Kathrine's site I just type in the dimensions I want and it will search for the nearest size available within the variables I specify. If you are a builder you need to try this then give Katharine a hug when you see her in-world.

How To: #73589 in a Series - Measuring

How do you find a building's footprint when the signs don't include that information? Measure it! This could be tricky in a No Build area so here is what I did:
I attached a 20x20x0.50 Megaprim to my stomach and walked inside the building. This was good enough but I could have added a grid texture to be fancy. Be careful doing this, though. Megaprims attached to avies can be considered griefing (Web; Web).

I rather liked this small castle from Lapin Feu Prefab Castles & Fish (SLurl). One of this company's gazebos is a centerpiece at my home. Texturing is awesome and there are some clever tricks in the builds.