Innsmouth Gambrel-Roofed Cottage -FREE-

Innsmouth Gambrel-Roofed Cottage (AKA "The House That Pheeby Built")

This was the first thing I ever built in Second Life that was large enough for someone to walk around in, or qualified in any way as what I would consider genuine architecture. This is the house I rezz whenever I get tired of building stuff for everyone but myself while basically being homeless on the sim I live on. I made it to fit in with Innsmouth's overall look, which is a bit grungy-moldy.

I'm a really short person, but I did try to be conscientious enough to make my house navigable for taller people. An adult-height avatar can walk through without scraping the ceiling, at least if you're not like, "2009 tall". It's 6 meters in height, 12 meters wide, and 5 meters deep from front to back.

I did a lot of experimenting, trying to keep the Land Impact (relatively) low while still making it detailed enough to look more like a cottage than just some boxes stuck together. I was pretty happy with how it came out in the end, considering the fact that everything I'd done up until then kinda looked like it was made out of old plywood and cardboard scraps. Most of this was modeled based on actual photographs of a cute little house that actually exists somewhere in the woods of New England.

If you want to edit any of the textures, I did try to make it as simple as possible, such as making all of the window frames texture simultaneously, and making opposite walls texture to scale, so as to keep myself from having to adjust each and every wall to look right compared to the others.

That being said, you should know that this house has two main components, and they are very different from one another. The visible mesh part was made in Blender, and is basically phantom cake frosting, made for visual purposes only. Large uploaded meshes tend to have soft spots, and aren't always good as solid structures, anyway. It's really just there to hang the textures on.

The physical part of the house, the part that keeps you from walking through the walls or flying through the ceiling, is a simple, invisible structure that would look like crap if it was visible. If I recall correctly, this invisible skeletal structure is made up of something like 7 or 8 big, clunky prims.

By combining these two unlikely partners, I ended up with a house that's mesh, walkable and solid. It also kept the Land Impact manageable for where I live, while still being detailed enough that people say, "aww, cute" and not, "eww, it looks like boxes glued together" when they see it.

Knowing this secret of the house's construction, if you want to retexture the walls, roof, etc., you are going to need to tick Edit Linked in the editor, and scoot the invisible parts out of the way while texturing the mesh. I'm sorry that it makes a little extra work, but it improves the build in many ways, and the rest of the texturing is easy enough to make up for it, I hope. It was relatively easy for me, at least.

If the invisiprims are difficult to work with because they're invisible, well, with Edit Linked ticked, just slap a blank texture on one and it becomes visible. To make it invisible again after editing stuff, just stick the transparent texture back on it. It's all way simpler than it reads, I promise.

I've included a copy of the free, full-perms door script, so you can read the instructional section if you need to edit anything to the extent of having to program the doors. It's way simpler than it all reads, too. I had to learn how it worked myself, but it's easy enough to deal with if you're skilled enough to be linking things to the house in the first place. To avoid even having to use it, just don't link anything to the house or unlink anything from it.

I've rezzed this little cottage several times and used it as my home, without ever having to edit anything at all, aside from scooting it into position, or rotating it on the Z axis to make it face the right way. Moving/rotating the house is super-simple, because I made the foundation stone the root prim. I tried to make it all as painless as possible for my own use, and hopefully you'll find it just as easy to use for your own purposes.

I hope you get lots of enjoyment out of my little house, and it's full perms, so do feel free to share it. I didn't make it for money, I made it for myself and my friends to enjoy, but people kept saying I should make it available for others to share, so I did. I hope you like it!

As always, yours most truly,
Pheeby ^-^

P.S.: The doorsteps in the images are not part of the original build. I took the pictures while setting up a copy of the house to live in. Realizing this, I've included a copy of my doorstep, just in case you need one. Almost sent you a house with missing steps! ^-^;