How to Become a Content Creator in Second Life
I get this question so often from many of my readers and youtube subscribers that I figured I would write up a quick post about it directing you to some links and information that can assist you in starting your content creating adventure in Second Life.
The following links were provided to me from my friends on plurk, feel free to add links to more resources in the comments of this post:
- Learn 3D Modelling – The Complete Blender Creator Course – This course is not specific to Second Life but it teaches blender thoroughly and can assist you in creating beautiful mesh creations in Second Life.
- Avastar – Avastar is a Blender Addon for creating & animating Characters for Second Life and other worlds.
- Machinimatrix – Gaia Clary does tutorials specific to Second Life, Avastar and Blender.
- Blender Cycles for Second Life and Opensim – Chic Aeon has a playlist full of tutorials for Second Life and Blender.
- Create Mesh – Online Mesh Courses – This course covers mesh creation using Maya for Second Life. Please note, I have been told that this course may be a bit outdated now because it does not cover Second Life mesh bodies so if you are looking to create clothing, you may need to look for more assistance on fitting the popular mesh bodies in Second Life.
- MayaStar Plugin System for Maya – Cathy Foil makes the Mayastar plugin for Maya, which makes it easier to get the Second Life body into Maya, and rig and animate it. She also has a lot of tutorials on her youtube channel.
- Metaverse Tutorials – A tutorial aggregator site which has a wide range of tutorials for building, photography, fashion and more for lots of different programs.
- More suggestions in my plurk – If you have more suggestions for new and upcoming content creators, please do link them in the comments of this post so we can have more content to play around with in Second Life.
- Designer Kits: If you are planning to create clothing, don’t forget to apply to get the designer kits for different mesh bodies so you can make your clothing fit them perfectly. Here a few links to some of the popular bodies that I know of: Maitreya, SLink, Signature, Belleza, Nardcotix. please feel free to share more links to other designer developer kits in the comments.
- Purchase or Rent Land in Second Life: Once you’ve got some items created, you can look for some commercial land to rent or purchase for a store inworld. I am not familiar with land owners that offer commercial places for rent, etc… but you can check out the Land Forum on the Second Life community forums or feel free to leave a link to your land rentals in the comments of this post.
- Sell your content on the Second Life Marketplace: The fastest and easiest way to sell your content in Second Life is to upload it to the Second Life marketplace. Many merchants, like myself, only have a marketplace store and no store inworld. I do that to save money on land rentals since I only sell my shapes for a small price. To learn how to create a store on the Second Life marketplace and upload your items there, check out the detailed written tutorial on the Second Life community forums by Jeremy Linden. Alicia Chenaux also did a fantastic video tutorial on her youtube channel that you can follow as well.
- SL Creators Studio on Discord: SL Creators Studio is a server on Discord. If you are not familiar with Discord and how it works, you can read my Discord tutorial at this link. The SL Creators Studio is a server that was created by Second Life content creators to provide support to other content creators that need assistance. You can also join to just chat and interact with other creators on there. In order to join, you must click on the invite link to join and fill out their Google Form. After filling that out, just message one of the moderators listed in the welcome_lobby so they can give you your tag for the server.
I hope this list of resources helps you start creating for Second Life and for those veteran creators, please do add any links that you think will also be beneficial to those just starting out. Thank you.
My style details can be found at this link: The Bloggies
I’ve also done this post in Vlog format: https://youtu.be/f1yTdX6L0Zc
Tonic Fine and Curvy body. Developer kit is on the wall by the bods. 100L For the mesh kit and 1L for the applier kit.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Tonic%20Water/220/202/24
Great list! When it comes to creating your own SL content (especially mesh), there’s so much to learn that it can often feel hard to know where to begin. Will have to go through these more when I have time.
I would also add Medhue’s tutorial videos on Blender, Bento, and Second Life as well as Night Cat’s phenomenal video series about LSL, the “Linden Scripting Language” that helps SL come alive.
Maitreya have gated their mesh body kit.
They pick and choose who gets it and who doesn’t and use undisclosed criteria for doing so. You have to complete a request for the kit and they do not reply to you so you wait, and wait, and wait until you realise they will not be providing the kit to you.
I would also add that it is important not to become a content creator just because you feel like making some money or you’ve heard some rumours about rich designers. They do exist but chasing Linden dollars for their own sake never really works. What should be an inspiring and creative process quickly becomes a drudge.
If you are new to SL I would suggest that you immerse yourself in the world for a while to understand how it operates and what people really want to buy. Better still identify a gap in the market. But above all create what you love and what you have a real passion for as that will drive you to learn the intricacies of mesh (which isn’t easy) and to ride through the fallow times. If you do that you can be assured that abundant times will definitely arrive and they will be even sweeter when they do.
I love design, architecture and creating houses and without that passion, I know that I would have left Second Life a long, long time ago….
http://www.mocoscribe.com
A very good point, @Moco scribe!
About the question of finding land for an inworld shop:
Most of the big rental enterprises do already sort their offers in categories like “non commercial, light commercial and fully commercial”.
If they don’t, or the person searching finds a land where it is not clear to see, just read the covenant. Normally it will be written down there which purposes the land is for.
The link for Avastar is bad.
The Create Mesh content was really handy! But the other problem with it is Maya has changed drastically in recent version leaving some of Leviathan steps obsolete. 🙁
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Thanks for the info very helpful links, Recommended place for inworld stores, 1st Chapter Plaza @ Angel Falls or @ Midnight River very reasonable prices with special deals contact myself sharma sahara(Mrs Sharms Monroe) inworld for assistance.
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Thank you so much for this post. I have been in world long enough that I am bored most of the time but don’t want to quit. I’ve been considering content creation for a while and I can make a concrete decision after watching these.
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Bento Buddy for Blender has matured into an irreplaceable creator tool, complete with Character manipulation features and an unmatchable animation and retargeting system with support for broken Blender Devkits.