photography

Optimizing Second Life Snapshots: Alchemy Viewer & Reshade Guide

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I don’t write often these days. A couple of things have inspired me. One is ValKalAstra posting an interesting image. You can see it here on the Second Life Forum or on Flickr. For me this was a ‘how did she do that?’

The Second Life viewers, the Lab’s and third-party viewers, have filters for the Snapshots. Those are easy to use. To change the active render one has to get into tweaking a huge set of settings. Not so easy. And the sort of wireframe look in Val’s image was something I know I could not do in Firestorm or Black Dragon.

For whatever reason I though this was done in the Alchemy Viewer. I didn’t know about Reshade. Reshade is an add-on app for video games. It used to add image filters to a game that does not have them. So, the wireframe looks of the image intrigued me. I though Alchemy had some new twist on wireframe mode. So… I got the viewer.

ReShade Image from Alchemy
Playing with ReShade in Alchemy Viewer

Alchemy Viewer for Second Life

Alchemy is a third-party viewer. You’ll find it listed in the SL Wiki’s list of Third-Party Viewers. See the Details.

I downloaded and am running Alchemy Beta 7.1.9.2492 (64bit).

Alchemy supports RLVa and uses version RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.5.0.2492.

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Second Life: Paying for It

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No… not for SL, for “it”. For those with the standard perverted mind that generally lives in the gutter the intent for “it” is obvious, SEX.

I write when I think something is interesting (sex qualifies), surprises me (I didn’t know that), or is a happening thing for SL residents (oh, there are people here). I recently came across Bar No.5 (map URL) in an area labeled Street Whores in the region Hoogenach. The region qualifies on all three. While the bar isn’t all that busy it is notorious… well… to some. I hadn’t heard of it.

Waiting in an empty bar…

For some reason, I had gone over to Caroline’s Second Life Adventures (NSFW URL) and saw a couple of posts on Bar No.5. Hmmm… so what is this place? Candy, the girl in the post, was having fun. Curiosity. I decided to check it out.

I had to do some searching using the viewer’s search to find the bar. One has to enter Bar No.5 with the period and no spaces between the ‘No’, period, and ‘5’. You find the region Hoogenach, which Google Translate thinks is Dutch but the translation makes no sense.

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Firestorm 6.4.12 Shadows for Photography

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I recently saw a video about getting Firestorm Viewer’s shadows to look as good as Black Dragon’s shadows. Huh? What?

The thing they were doing is getting hair shadows to render well on the avatar face. The video (4 min) I found has horrible audio. Luca The Guide, the author, was ill the day she made the video. So, I can’t complain too much. I don’t even try to make video tutorials when I am sick.

The video did get me looking and comparing Black Dragon and Firestorm.  I launched Black Dragon (BD) and took a couple of pictures, see below. Then Launched Firestorm (FS) and took a couple.

Black Dragon – My typical environment
Firestorm – Again my typical environment

With both, I used the same projector attached to the Center of Gravity attachment point aimed at my nose and in front and above my head. Both viewers were set to use the default environment in the Bellisseria region. Both viewers were using their default shadow settings.

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Photoshop 2020 June Update & Tips

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Adobe has released a new set of updates. For those of us in Second Life, there isn’t a lot to get excited about in this update. There is enough to be interesting.

I suspect the most useful update in Photoshop is to the Select Subject feature. Jesús thinks its better. The example used in the video… leaves me undecided. I’ll have to get some experience with it before I decide. I suspect he is right. And the Adobe examples do make it look better than Jesús’ example.

On to the updates…

Lens Blur – They have improved this feature too. I often use it. The viewer’s Depth of Field does some nice blurring on its own. While the viewer’s DoF is simple and more than adequate, Photoshop’s Lens Blur is awesome… and complex offering many controls.

If I think I want to blur a background, foreground, or combination of the two in a photo I’ll snap both a Color and Depth image. Then I use Lens Blur to get the look I want.

It will let you blur just background, just foreground, or some combination of both. One uses the Set Focal Point in the tool to select what is in focus. That selects a shade of gray in the depth map to consider in focus and progressively blurs other levels of gray as they go darker or lighter.

Watch this video to see a comparison between the old and new Select Subject and some other features.

Select Object– This is now a tool in the tool’s pallet. It is different than the Select Subject tool. Adobe explains the difference this way:

The Object Selection tool is useful when you only need to select one of the objects or part of an object within an image that contains multiple objects. While the Select Subject command is designed to select all the main subjects in the image.

From Adobe Make Quick Selections

I was annoyed that it was often hard to find Select Subject when working in an image. I had to select some specific selection tool to get access to Select Subject. The first thing I find when I go looking for this ‘Object’ tool is that I don’t have it. So, off to find out why. Adobe explains how to find it here.

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Second Life: Moving/Positioning Avatars

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In 2013 Strawberry Singh posted a couple of articles (here & here) about positioning and moving avatars when setting up snapshots. This was needed for those areas where you do NOT have rez rights. Over time viewer upgrades broke those processes.

Avatar Positioning with Black Dragon

Every so often I would check to see if the problems with those processes had been fixed. With Firestorm 6.3.9 (May 2020 release date) I can move the avatar again sort of with her process.

Strawberry explained the process for moving your avatar. (Ref)

  • Open the Develop menu. Top menu, press Ctrl-Alt-Q to reveal it.
  • Then enable Develop->Avatar->Character Tests->Allow select avatar.
  • Press Ctrl-3 to open the Build Panel.
  • Right-click the avatar. Move arrows appear. Move.

Here is a video showing how it used to work. If you have a mesh avatar, right-clicking the avatar likely is not going to work. Instead, you have to right-click on your name tag. Then it works.

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