Second Life: A Guide to Your Virtual World [Paperback]

Live your Second Life to the fullest!

• Get started and get comfortable fast

• Understand the culture, and avoid beginner’s mistakes

• Create the right look for your avatar

• Master Second Life’s building and texturing tools

• Learn how to terraform, build, and landscape your first plot

• Create your own Second Life “objects” and clothing

• Attend the best Second Life virtual events

Create Your Virtual Life in an Incredible Online World...Right Now! 

Imagine a virtual landscape where everything is created and owned entirely by residents like you. Imagine a place where you can enjoy sunsets, ride a jet ski, buy land, plant a garden, get a tattoo, go sky diving, spend an evening dancing the night away, or relax at home by the fire. Picture a world vividly developed, socially dynamic, and strikingly real where you can bring previously unimaginable things to life with friends from around the globe. This is Second Life®, the hottest Internet phenomenon in years…maybe ever!

Now, there’s a totally real, totally independent guide to Second Life. This full-color book is as rich as Second Life itself! It’s packed with insider tips, easy step-by-step techniques, and interviews with dozens of SL residents telling you what they wished they knew when they started! Brian White pulls no punches: You’ll learn exactly what’s great and not so great about SL...how to thrive in its unique culture, and how to create your dreams!

The more time you spend in Second Life, the more useful this book will become...teaching you more advanced skills; everything from vehicle construction, Linden Scripting Language, particle systems, to creating custom animations and the new sculpted prims!

Visit the companion site in Second Life to find all the textures and objects from this book as well as the contributor’s gallery and other goodies: http://slurl.com/secondlife/humuli/222/123/29

Contents

                        Preface  xvi

Chapter 1          Welcome to Second Life  3

Chapter 2          Exploring the New Frontier  27

Chapter 3          Communication and Social Networking  47

Chapter 4          Your Avatar–Your Virtual Self  67

Chapter 5          Second Life Culture and Relationships  93

Chapter 6          Building Basics  119

Chapter 7          Advanced Textures and Clothing  171

Chapter 8          Making the Magic: Scripting Basics  229

Chapter 9          Land Ownership, Terraforming, and Landscaping  253

Chapter 10        Particles, Vehicles, Animations, and Sculpted Prims  283

Chapter 11        Photography, Music, and Movies  333

Chapter 12        Practical Matters: Under the Hood of the Metaverse  347

                        Index  366

In “Real Life (RL)” Brian A. White has more than 15 years of experience in defining, developing, marketing, and selling enterprise software solutions. He has worked for successful startups and companies such as IBM, Microsoft, and Rational Software. He is currently Vice President of Product Management for Opsware Inc. He is familiar both with the technologies driving Second Life as well as the real-life tools that perform similar modeling/texturing jobs, such as LightWave, Poser, Bryce, and Photoshop. He lives with his wife and two sons in Seattle, Washington.

In “Second Life (SL), he is Ansel Gasparini, host of Ansel Gasparini on Second Life, (http://anselgasparini.blogspot.com/), organizer of the first Seattle/Pacific Northwest Meetup for Second Life residents, and SL Instructor/Mentor.