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 Please note, I have been told that this course may be a bit outdated now because it does not cover Second Life mesh bodies so if you are looking to create clothing, you may need to look for more assistance on fitting the popular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.
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
