Overview

This page contains the criteria required for a candidate to become certified in building for Second Life. The building certification levels are as follows:

• Basic - building competently and accurately with simpler primitives;
• Intermediate - building competently and accurately with more complex primitives;
• Advanced - building the best possible quality content at one or more chosen scales.

Audience

Pre-requisites

Basic familiarity with the Second Life platform and the viewer, including avatar and camera positioning.

Testing Criteria

At all levels the builder is expected to create builds which:

• follow established standards for accessibility;
• are free of usability defects;
• are free of defects which adversely impact simulator performance or the experience of avatars in the same region;
• are in accordance with their stated product descriptions or customer requirements;
• are clearly and comprehensibly documented where necessary.

At all levels the builder is expected to respond promptly and courteously to all customer comments and complaints.

SL Certification Basic Building

Preparing to build

• Know your position coordinates and orientation in the grid;
• Determine the coordinates of the boundaries of the parcel;
• Determine whether you have permission to build in the parcel;
• Determine how many prims you can rez in the parcel.

Prim basics

The candidate is expected to demonstrate the following without using third party scripts or tools:

• Position, rotate and size a prim precisely by numbers;
• Position, rotate and size a prim precisely using the grid;
• Place prims within the parcel and precisely on the edge of the parcel;
• Demonstrate complete understanding of prim parameters for box, cylinder, sphere and triangular prism;
• Demonstrate use of World versus Local ruler - discuss the differences and when to use one versus the other;
• Position and size a prim to exact multiples of its current size;
• Align prims precisely

Texturing basics

• Apply a texture to a prim, and to an individual face of a prim;
• Set textures to different repeats and offsets on different faces of a prim;
• Create and texture a hemisphere with 2 poles on the equator and another with one pole; discuss benefits of single pole hemisphere;
• Demonstrate how texture permissions affect permissions of the object being built
• State general principles for use of third party full permission textures, without going into the detail of specific vendor's licensing agreements

Building basics

• Link and unlink prims;
• Copy a prim;
• Use the camera controls to examine and modify a build from any angle without moving avatar position.