Creating your own items in SL is so much fun and can also be quite lucrative.  All it takes is patience and a willingness to learn skills that you have may have previously been unfamiliar with.  Before I joined SL, I did have some knowledge of photoshop and graphics but since then, I’ve learned so many new things.  Whether you’d like to create your own clothing, poses & animations..etc..  There is a cure out there for what ails ya! In other words, there is a tool somewhere out in cyberspace that can help you along your creative path…and the best part of it is that you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on accquiring these tools..in fact, you don’t have to spend anything at all but a little of your time in getting to know them. 

I’ve been looking around and I’ve put together a list of some great free applications to maybe enhance your SL creativity.  Most of these I’ve tried so if you’ve any questions…really really simple questions that is…..please feel free to ask.  There are also a few that I’ve only gotten to the stage of downloading and haven’t really tried them out in any depth yet.  

GIMP

A free edit-imaging package that can be used to create clothing and textures etc for SL.  A bit difficult to come to grips with at first, especially for Photoshop users such as myself, but well worth sticking with it… (wish I could follow my own advice!)

SL Clothes Previewer 

Created by Johan Durant, this is a fantastic application that allows you to ‘preview’ your designs before you spend that hefty 10L$ on upload fees..lol

Blender 

This is a ‘content creation suite’… and it’s so jam-packed with features, it’s hard to know where to start.  I’ve been so busy with Photoshop lately, that I haven’t really had time to look at Blender at any in-depth level, but the site is very interesting and informative and there are loads of tutorials and fantastic examples on how to create with blender.  

Daz

A 3D modelling software programe …again, this one falls into the catagory of ‘just downloaded’ so I haven’t used it as of yet, but I did browse through the various examples of the possibilites of it and I have to say, this is one I’m looking forward to getting to grips with.  

Qavimator 

Have a go at creating your own SL animations and poses..

Audacity 

A free sound editing software package. Here you can edit and manipulate sound files and upload them to SL.  Very useful if you’d like to have you own custom sounds to accompany your animations. Of course, it can be used for a myriad of things, explore it and have fun..

As promised, here are some links where you can download some alternatives to the official SL viewer.

 Nicholaz Viewer

 OnRez Viewer (CSI style)

Able Viewer 

Dale Viewer 

Sculptypaint 

Using sculpted textures in SL can be a great way to reduce your prim usage.  With a basic 512sqm plot of land there is a limitation of 117 prims.  You can make the most of your prim allowance by using sculpties in your builds… Of course there are the ‘temp-rezzers’ that people use to kind of ‘cheat’ the prim system to allow them to have more prims than is allowed.  It may sound like a great and wonderful thing, but I personally wouldn’t advocate their usage as they can cause absolutely crippling lag.

Well, this should be enough to give you some food for thought.  The best thing is that all of these tools are free…. but you know what, there is another tool, and it’s probably the most powerful of them all, unlimited usage and potential, and you’ve already got it in your inventory…

YOUR IMAGINATION……..so go use it and make some SL magic!!