I’ve decided to build high-end houses for sale in SL. After some research on house plans I’ve chosen a few houses with brick or stone construction and turrets. The first house is called The Devereaux. Here are pictures as it took shape in Max and now in SL.
The SLPrims for Max make this construction a dream as I hoped they would. The plans are laid out in Canvas and then imported into max. The plans then form a basis to layout the house using SLPrims. Textures are developed in max as well. This allows them to contain very complex textures as well as shadows and transparency – all rendered in Max. The textures can be tested in max, and then later applied to the prims in SL.
This house is about 130 prims and was imported in 5 separate files – each file can contain no more than 64 prims. There was only one failure, or lost prim, during the import process. As you can see, the roofs are one of the more challenging parts of the construction. Due to the constraints of SL Prims, roofs of any shape are not possible. But I’ve figured a way to make very interesting roofs with a small number of prims as you can see. The entire roof complex is about a dozen prims. The house is about 24 x 20 m and this may be the smallest house that I build. This one only has a 2 car garage. I think I should plan 3 car garages for the rest of the houses. But there are other simplifications. While a master bath is likely to be interesting, it seems unreasonable to waste space for multiple bathrooms since avatars don’t need such facilities. A master bath is likely to be a place for entertainment rather than anything else, and I will probably leave out any provision for sanitary plumbing. The space will be more likely used as water-born recreation, shall we say…
This is the front view of the house as it is taking shape in SL. The garage doors are not yet in, but are completed in max. The garage will be deleted in SL and re-imported, and since none of the house has been moved, the additions will fit together perfectly with the house as it is being developed. This allows failed attempts to be easily fixed in max and brought in, without bringing the entire house in again. Texturing work is only lost for the portions that are replaced.
Stairs are a problem for avatars. I’m considering how to build an elevator for the turret. I’ll be mocking that on up in the next couple of days.
As you can see, I’m building the house out over the water. This allows access to the underside, and provides the proper clearance for delivery. I’ll use one of the rezzers, Rez-Faux, to deliver the house. Rez-Faux and the other Rezzer scripts allow large collections to be delivered and positioned by the customer after purchase.
As I develop the market, I’m considering offering optional landscaping customized for each house design. So far the house has taken about 4 days work and I expect to finish it in another 4 days or so. It will eventually sell for about USD$20 or about L$5000 [Linden $, the currency of Second Life].
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