Guide:Group Tutorial

Originally written by Gnu64

Introduction

It seems like a new command has snuck in and not many have noticed. I've experimented with it for a while, and I must say it's a pretty awesome command. In fact, if anything, it's an alternative to modeling. Sort of like Second Life's prim system, you can piece pieces together, group 'em and use them repeatedly. Now, everyone knows about AWG's of course. Selecting a few objects, grouping them and loadable for different places. Useful stuff.

However, this new command brings big advantages:

• No cell space is taken up
• The whole group can be easily rotated by rotating the 'root' piece, therefore much easier to adjust
• No encroachment issues! (Trust me, 'tis a good thing.)

A good use for this command is for repetitive pieces, such as palm trees!

The only drawbacks to this command/approach however is:

• AWG's need to be uploaded to the OP
• You can't edit the AWG pieces
• Inefficient compared to modelling (wasted polygons, for example)

But, continue on if you'd like to learn more about this command.

Making the AWG

First and foremost, make an AWG. You should know the methods by now. Keep in mind though the "center" of the AWG. When you select all the objects of your AWG, a bounding box is calculated. The center of this bounding box will determine where the whole AWG is positioned.

I strongly recommend reading up on SW City's guide on this topic, especially if you (in this example) want to make palm trees and have them centered at the base, not the middle, of the tree.

Object Path

AWG's go in a folder called "groups". It should be on the main OP folder, not in another folder like "models". They need to be zipped up like models and they can also be passworded (not that this is useful, considering the cache saves AWG's in their original form).

Command Usage

Now you can use the group in your world. To do so, get a good utility object like pole1m. Then simply apply the command:

create group <groupname>, visible no

The AWG will be downloaded and then it'll seed at the center of the pole (which, in pole1m's case, will be the bottom of the pole).

Voila! Instant palm tree, which you can rotate around easily.

You can also try this command out in AWTeen, as demo'd in the screenshot with the group name "gnpalm1". As this suggests, more are to come soon and I'm considering planning a system for the public to submit AWG's for AWTeen.

Caveats/Notes

• Bump/Activate/Astart works with this command.
• If it looks wrongly rotated, try resetting the rotation of the "root object" (the pole1m, in this case).
• The AWG is always stuck at the root object's original position. This means it won't rotate/move if the root object has a move/rotate command, nor if it's linked to a mover it will move along with it (which really sucks D: )
• Zones won't rotate based on the root's rotation. Bah.
• Sometimes, deleting the root object won't delete the AWG, but this is fixable by just moving out of visibility range, unless..
• There's a funny bug where if you have an AWG that seeds AWG's using create group, those sub-seeded AWG's won't disappear until you close AW. Not even bumping will clear it.

So yeah, a large introduction/tutorial to the "create group" command. Wonder if it'll take off Like I said, Imma allow people to submit AWG's to AWTeen for use with this command with some system in store.