Changing Windlight & HDR in the Second Life Viewer

In the Designing Worlds how (previous post) Honour McMillan explains a problem solution for photographers using the SL Viewer. The idea is we often just want to just tweak a region’s settings. In Firestorm that is easy. You just do it. In the SL Viewer it doesn’t work. The settings are grayed out until you select a preset, which changes everything. The region’s settings are effectively hidden. But, there is a work-around. (Lindens: don’t break this!)

HDR vs No Adjustment

HDR vs No Adjustment

Honour explains in the Designing Worlds video:

  • Open the environment Sky Preset editor and select any preset. World->Environmental Editor->Sky Presets->Edit Presets…->select any preset.
  • Next open the Water Preset editor, select any water preset, X it out or cancel.

You’ll see the region switch back from the Sky Lighting Preset you selected to the region’s settings when you cancel the Water editor. Now your Sky Presets editor is using the region’s settings and settings in the editor are still enabled. Good work-around. Continue reading

Second Life Photography Tips

Prim Perfect has done a couple of shows with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont that are about SL Photography. The first is here: Designing Worlds looks at Second Life Photography with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont. (Video is here: Part 1)

Designing Worlds Logo

Designing Worlds Logo

The second is here: Second Life Photography Part 2 – After you’ve taken your picture: A Designing Worlds exploration with Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan and Wildstar Beaumont. (Video is in post)

If you are looking to improve your photographic work check out these two shows/videos. The first is about taking images and the second about processing them.

One of the things Strawberry points out is that over the last year she has started showing people she is photographing a screen shot of their self before starting. She has found it is the only way to know if everything they are wearing has rez’d. Too many times she had to redo shoots because something was not rendering. This is a more recent problem and over the last month seems worse.

Honour gets into more tech and details about what she is doing. I cover that in a separate article. It will publish about noon today. I haven’t figured out how to link to an unpublished post… and have it work once posted. I’ll add a link here later… sorry.

Second Life Bits & News 2015-06

Second Life Photography

PrimPerfect has an article up on photography. It talks about Strawberry Singh, Honour McMillan, and Wildstar Beaumount being interviewed in a ‘first’ show on Second Life Photography. They say a second show will look at post-processing of Second Life images.

The first show was this past Monday at 2 PM in Garden of Dreams at the Designing Worlds studio. Next Monday they will air the second show. You can catch the replay of the shows at the Treet.tv web site, on the SLArtist.com channel, the Aview TV Designing Worlds channel or on the Designing Worlds blog.

AvaStar’s Sparkles

Gaia Clary of Machinimatrix is aware some people are having problems getting Sparkles 50% discount. To help them out she has posted: Troubles getting Sparkles Discount.

Servers

This week the main channel gets an update. It is the Experience Tools permission fix update. Release NotesContinue reading

Second Life Photography 2015-05

Seems everyone is blogging something about photography in Second Life and how wonderful it is with SL Go. I’ve used SL Go and it is a great way to go, if…

If your computer is old, under powered, has a weak video card, or you need to be mobile then SL Go is the solution. You can get faster rendering and run on Ultra graphics settings. But, if you have a good desktop, SL Go offers faster scene rendering and that is about it. Textures load quickly and while I was using SL Go I never saw a texture fail to render leaving me with a gray something in the scene. These are big pluses and I am certain improve the SL experience for many.

However, there are two things that have made my photographic experience in Second Life more enjoyable and neither of those are available for SL Go users… well, actually one. The Firestorm Photo-Tools and SpaceNavigator are the two things that make my photography easier and better. Firestorm is available for SL Go (reference – Dec 2014). So, the Photo-Tools are available for SL Go users.  Continue reading

Second Life Photography

One of the features added to Second Life some time ago is projectors, lights that shine on things. Bryn Oh used a headlamp thing for use by those visiting his latest exhibit, which is a projector. But, we see little use of projectors as lights in SL. Or maybe we just don’t notice them.

There is the problem of many people probably not having Sun/Moon + Projectors enabled in their graphics preferences for performance reasons. That is a problem for those building places. They want the majority of visitors to see their creation as built. So, they often skip using Projectors for lighting. But, for photography performance is generally not a primary issue and what the camera sees is up to the photographer. Everyone will see the photograph as captured as in general everyone’s computer settings are similar. So, there is no reason not to use Sun/Moon + Projectors. We just want to light our scene to create the image we want.

In RL photography lighting is a big part of it. For portrait photography it is somewhere between a science and an art. Lighting is used in capturing most all commercial images too.

The first I’ve heard of people using lights in SL photography is in the article Bloody Gorgeous in the PrimDolls blog. Notice the link there to Deoridhe’s Flickr images: Bloody Gorgeous.

Blender Cookie Tutorial: Composition

I found the new tutorial interesting because it is more about photographic composition than about using Blender. That means whether you are into Blender, virtual world photography, or Machinima you’ll probably find some handy ideas for composing your images.

Part 1 of 4 is here: 28 min

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The full series is here: Improving Blender Renders with Photography Techniques. They are free.

Various viewers make it easier to get to the viewer’s camera settings. In the SL Viewer most of the settings are in the SL Viewer Debug Settings. Third party viewers often have a photographer’s panel that exposes all the camera settings in an easy to access way.