SL Tutorials & New User Info

I put together many links that are helpful or informative sites related to Second Life. A new user to SL would not immediately find any of these. There are many, many more sites out there related to SL. I only picked out the few that stood out or have been around for a few years. I hope they will help people out that are having a hard time getting used to SL, or just need something more to do there.

Please note: This page is constantly being updated. (Yup, I’m still trying to keep this page up to date. 2/10/10)

Guides for Second Life:

Second Life Answers – It’s part of the official SL Blog, where SL residents can ask questions for other residents to answer.

SL for Nowt Newbie guide – SL for Nowt made a very good list for newbies. Just about everything a new person needs to know just starting out.

Second Life in Education – This site for educators has wonderful step-by-step guide for someone interested in signing up for SL for the first time.

Second Life Quickstart Guide – Linden Lab’s official pdf file for people that are brand new to SL.

Avatar Etiquette article – Etiquette in SL that isn’t necessarily obvious to a new person.

Second Life: The Official Guide – Link to the SL guide book, not a site.

Second Life: Knowledge Base – Good info for whatever about the game.

JIRA Tutorial – This much needed tutorial was put together by Kala Bijoux. JIRA is not a user friendly site, but it does consolidate all the voting and bug reports to one area. I’m not crazy about the voting on bugs part though. Official LL post on “How to report a bug.”

Wired Guide

Torley’s Video Tutorials – Linden wiki tutorial list, there is also a VodPod channel for all the official Linden Lab showcase videos. Also at Torley’s personal website.

How to Make Money in SL – This list was put together by Cindy Claveau. A big thank you Cindy!

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Tutorial sites:

Olila’s Second Life – Tutorials for skin making and prim hair building! She also has some good tutorials for newbies.

VintFalken – She has a wonderful blog with a variety of topics for creative people. Her tutorial page is awesome! She has detailed blog entries for each link also.

Ryker Beck dot COM – She has many tutorials and resource guides on here!

Taunt – He has many tutorials on different subjects. Great site to take a look at!

Seshat Czeret – She has a great tutorial site for SL.

Mermaid Diaries – She has a lot of very useful prim building tutorials, from hair to fur trim to shoes.

SLTutorials.net – Tutorials, tipps and tricks resources.

Live Gig in SL – How to play a live gig in Second Life. This site also has all sorts of how-to information for anything IRL.

Instructables: Second Life – Instructables is a site with all sorts of how-to information for anything IRL. They also have a small section for SL that a few residents started.

House of Tutorials – Tutorials for many different programs. All his tutorial videos are now on Veoh.

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Textures:

Robin Wood Ent. – She’s a RL artist. She has great tutorials also. Most of her tutorials are found on the SL Forums. The sticky links at the top are a great resource, if you want to fiddle around in Gimp or Photoshop.

Texture Lovers – A collection of textures, most of them are free.

Texture Tools – Torley Linden put together a good list of texture making tools.

Clothing Tutorials – This is a link list in the SL Forums from several people. Defunct link until the old forum archives are up.

Fabric folds – Brushes and a tutorial for Photoshop created by Ceres Eilde

SL Anim Creator v0.2.1 – Animated Gif convertor to SL texture.

Another Blog! – Eloh Eliot is being extremely generous and innovative by giving away her PSP files for skins. Please read her blog for license usage requirements, etc.

3D Game Textures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop – Not a site but an excellent book on how to do 3d textures using Photoshop. I’m very impressed with this book so far. It’s a must have for anyone wanting to learn more about texturing.

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3d programs or SL prims:

Fun Sculptie Tutorials – Taunt put together a nice list of scupltie tutorials for different 3rd party programs.

Ultimate Guide to Prim Twisting – Ayumi Cassini created an extremely useful guide for prim shaping and twisting!

Best Building Freebies in SL – Not all texture related but Caliandris gives a list of great places to learn how to build things out of prims and where to get tools or textures for $0L or $1L.

Prim Twisting Guide – Ayumi Cassini has created a great guide on prim editing! Now you too, can make all sorts of items!

Blender Sculptie Tutorial – Very nice blender tutorial by Lex Zhaoying.

How to Make Sculpted Prims – Amanda Levitsky made a tutorial site on how to make sculpted prims using Blender. (Which is a free 3d modeling program.)

Sculptypaint – Free sculpted prim maker which is much easier to use than Blender.

Sculpties From Meshes in 3ds Max – Chip Midnight explains how he made his wonderful sculptie sculptures!

SL Scupted Wiki Page – Official wiki on scupted prims.

Essential Blender – Step by step book on Blender. Including chapters on lighting and texturing.

SculptGenMax for 3ds Max 9 – Shack Dougall created a 3ds Max script imported and a wonderful thread for 3ds Max users.

SculptGenMax Wiki – Wiki for 3ds Max importer scripts.

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Scripting sources:

Ordinalmalaprop.com – She’s a script writing, very funny and witty. Some of her scripts are available on her site.

LSL Portal – Official Second Life scripting Wiki portal, explaining how to use the scripts.

LSL 101 – Beginner’s tutorial on LSL.

LSL Wiki – LSL wiki site by Catherine Omega.

Scratch for Second Life – It’s a program that will build scripts for interactive pets or objects.

Script Me! – A great site that custom codes simple scripts for you.

Free Game Development Kit – Just in case you don’t already read New World Notes, Wagner James Au, posted a wonderful find. Check out his post for more information.

Free SL Scripts – Adalace Jewell is being extremely generous by giving away many useful scripts for free. You can see them on this site or on sale for free on Xstreet.

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SL Wikis:

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Second Life Wiki – Official SL wiki site.

Second Life Wikia – It’s not all about the history of SL. It has some other programming facts and mechanics in there.

Land Answers for Second Life – Wiki page with a FAQ on land and accounts in SL.

Second Life Education Wiki – RL educator site. Might be of interest.

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Newsletter-ish sites:

The Metaverse Messenger – Unofficial weekly newspaper for SL.

New World Notes – Journalist’s Blog on SL.

Alphavillle Herald – Unofficial tabloid newspaper for SL. (Formerly know as Second Life Herald.

Second Life Insider – SL news blog part of Massively now, an MMO blog.

Second Style Magazine – Fashion magazine.

Men’s Second Style – For mens wear.

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Blogs, many many many many blogs:

Fashion World of SL – Blog roll, so I don’t have to list them. =P

World of SL – Another blog roll, but for non-fashion sites.

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Search Sites & Web Markets:

SecondPages – Metaverse directory & teleportal site

Virtual Worlds Directory – Rezzable’s SL directory. It’s user driven and rated.

The Loop – Another SL directory for anything related to SL. A bit defunct now since it was part of OnRez, it’s still a good source to look things up on.

Second Life Search – This is a custom, and unofficial interface to Linden Lab’s new Search interface allowing you to get results on the web. Here is the Official Second Life Search on the SL web site.

metaLife – A grid wide market place via a HUD, they also have a free vendor system for merchants. Plus it’s web market! They have a lot to offer to shoppers and merchants as an alternative market.

Slapt.me – A web based SL market alternative to Xstreet. They have a free vendor system for merchants.

Xstreet SL (formerly SL Exchange) – Official web based market for SL.

Apez.biz – Similar to Xstreet SL but they also have a free vendor system for merchants. They also have a currency exchange and leasing management.

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