First, before I start, I hope all my readers on the East Coast are safe from Hurricane Sandy. I’ve been watching the coverage and it’s absolutely devastating. My heart goes out to you guys. <3
In the past year, since the release of Viewer 3, I have been getting a lot of questions regarding windlight settings and taking snapshots so I thought a quick video tutorial about all the questions I get about this viewer was definitely in order. I’m using the latest Second Life Viewer 3.4.0 and this tutorial’s main focus will be the photography aspects of this viewer. I will be sharing the video here, but I have also written out all of the information that’s in the video in this post as well.
I am embedding the video below, but you can also view it on my youtube channel at this link: http://youtu.be/zvOgkHeTrTo This video is better viewed at the highest HD quality in full screen mode.
This is what I have covered in the video:
Viewer 3 Sidebar:
I get a lot of questions from people asking where everything is and why they can’t find the snapshot button. You can actually set which buttons you want displayed in the sidebar by right-clicking on it and then selecting toolbar buttons. Once in there, you want to make sure the snapshot button is enabled so you can see it.
Windlight:
The next thing people always ask me about is windlight settings. They changed them around a while back but I know a lot of people still struggle with them. I’m one of those people actually but I am starting to get the hang of it. Luckily I have a lot of pre-made windlight presets from before and that helps me a lot. Basically what I do to play around with windlight is go to: World > Environment Settings > Sky Presets > Edit Presets once I’m in there I select a preset of my liking. I have filled up my folder with some of my favs from Torley, Annan Adored, Ely, Tanaquil and some of my own. (You can download and install any and all of these settings from my Windlight Settings Page). I usually pick one that I like best with the scene I’m trying to create and then play around with it more. There’s lots you can do once you’re in there. Play with the Atmosphere and Lighting tabs. You can change the colors of the Horizon, Density, sun/moon color and Ambient to change the mood of the lighting. I always play with the Sun/Moon Position and East Angle to get the shadows just right. Once you have the setting to your liking, don’t close the box or you will lose your settings. You can’t save the setting either because you had used one of the previous settings and it won’t let you overwrite it. I just usually minimize it so it’s out of my way.
Snapshots:
Once you have your windlight all setup, it’s time to take that image. Hit the Snapshot button and you will get a window with 4 options:
“Post to Profile Feed”
“Email”
“Save to my Inventory” and
“Save to My Computer”
I always use the “save to my computer” option because I love to play with my pictures in Photoshop. But one thing I also like doing sometimes is sharing the raw shot on my profile feed here. There’s a big community of people that use the profile feeds and they are all very encouraging. So many of them share their images on their profile feeds as well. You can see some of the people that have been commenting on my statuses and pictures and follow them if you’d like to socialize on the second life profile feeds more often.
Anyhow, back to snapshots, I usually go to “Save to my computer” and in this window is where you can finally set the resolution you want to take the image at. First I go to “custom” then I make sure “constrain proportions” is checked and then I type in 5760 because that is 3 times the size of my desktop resolution. Finally, I refresh and hit save to save my snapshots.
To save a picture to my profile feed, I usually like to save it as a square. Whenever I want to save it as a square I hit “post to profile feed” I go to custom, then I uncheck contrain proportions and I type in “1024×1024″ and I hit refresh and then I type in a caption and hit post.
Depth of Field (DoF):
I get this question so much regarding Depth of Field. The depth of field you see in my photos is usually photoshopped in. The only way you will get Depth of field to work in your final snapshot is if you take it at your desktop resolution and that’s something I don’t like doing because I feel the quality of the image is not the same when it’s done that way. When you hit snapshot, you’ll notice Depth of Field disappears right away and the only way to grab it in your images is to take your picture by pressing (CTRL and ~) together.
GridLines & Glitches:
One of the biggest complaints people have about taking snapshots are the gridlines they get on their images. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up to reduce the gridlines.
Take a snapshot that is the exact multiple of your resolution. My computer’s screen resolution is 1920×1080 so I take all my pictures at a resolution of 5760×3084. I rarely get lines and glitches in my images since I have started doing this.
Decrease your draw distance as much as you can. Go to: Me > Preferences > Graphics and then on the right hand side you will see Draw distance, bring that down as much as you can and you’ll notice a lot less glitches in your final snapshot.
Use a WindLight setting that does not have clouds scrolling or lock them if it does. You will see the “clouds” tab in the environment editor when you are setting up Windlight, just take a peek in there and lock the clouds and that will also help with glitches in your final image.
Finally, even after doing all this, you can still get gridlines in your images, so here’s a great video tutorial by Elysium Eilde showing you how to get rid of them quickly and easily using photoshop: http://youtu.be/7JnzYTHaCAw
Debug settings:
I’ve done a full tutorial on Debug Settings and the ones that help me the most with photography so I’m not going to go too much into this since I’ve already covered it in this post here: http://strawberrysingh.com/2012/08/16/debug-me
However, I know some people don’t have the best shadows in viewer 3 as they do in other 3rd party viewers so I thought I would recommend that you guys go to this debug settings page on the sl wiki and then hit (ctrl-F) and search “shadow” and play around with some of the settings that pop up for that. I also asked my friends on plurk and they also had a few helpful suggestions which you can read in this plurk here: http://www.plurk.com/p/hkb8tf
I think that about covers what I know about Second Life Viewer 3. If you have anymore helpful suggestions or tips for photography then please do share them in the comments, I’m always looking to improve my photography!
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
- Oscar Wilde
I kind of cheated on this outfit a bit. I fell in love with the sexy devil costume from Cracked Mirror. However I decided to wear it with red leather to pump up the sex appeal even more. Who doesn’t want to be a sexy devil? I thought the new mesh jacket from Erratic worked really well with this outfit. I absolutely love the way Erratic does their leather texture and of course they always have the high quality original mesh. This jacket is amazing and a must buy in all 12 normal and glossy colors. The best thing about the jacket is the hud, which lets you change the metals from gold, silver or dark silver. I decided to stick with gold for this look because it matched the gold zipper on my leather pants and my gold Mandala piercings.
I’ve definitely found my outfit for Halloween, what are you wearing?
Credits:
*Skin: -Glam Affair- Roza – The Arcade Gacha Events 03 by Aida Ewing
*Eyes: FATEeyes by Damien Fate
*Hair: >TRUTH< Dawson – night by Truth Hawks
*Tail, Horns & Pitchfork: (Cracked Mirror) Sexy Devil Costume MESH by Cracked Mirror (@ The Costume Ball) (slurl)
*Jacket: erratic / tory – cropped biker jacket / glossy red (XS) by Erratic Rain
*Pants: erratic / zoey – leather pants / red (S) by Erratic Rain
Tongue: Sculpted Snake Tongue by Paulien Saunders
*Mesh Hands: Slink Mesh Hand Casual & Bag by Siddean Munro
Earrings: [MANDALA]*FEMALE*T,Piercing/Gold by Kikunosuke Eel
1st Pose: Diesel Works by Rogan Diesel
2nd Pose: aDORKable Poses: Dynamic Pack by Adorkable Peapod (@ Zodiac Scorpio)
Location: Silversmith Haunted Graveyard
I had the honor of being interviewed by Bare. Bare is a project started by Adorkable Peapod and TrinityBelle Meriman where they interview different SLers around the grid. They just recently started it but have a few interviews up already. They’ve started with approaching regular plurkers, so if you guys are on plurk make sure to add Adorkable Peopod to keep up to date with all the Bare posts.
I’ve really enjoyed reading the interviews they’ve done so far and am honored to be included. I know I’ve been interviewed several times before, but I did get a bit more personal and intimate in this one. Hope you guys read it and comment! <3
Thank you again Adorkable and Trinity for this opportunity to share a little more of myself. <3
I decided I wanted to take pictures in this outfit in a somewhat exotic place and I came across Birch Island on Koinup Places. When I landed I realized it was a Gorean RP sim and I always try to respect the rules so I quickly looked for an observer tag. It wasn’t labeled so after clicking about 30 things in the entrance I finally got one and wore it and then took the teleporter down to the RP area. I started exploring and walked along this sandy desert area which was beautifully done. Then I came across this village, which I really wanted to enter; however, they had disabled flying on the sim and the big massive gate was locked. I cammed in and tried to sit on something so I could get in there but that didn’t work either.
Finally, I discovered that if I clicked on the gate itself, a menu popped up with a bunch of options to enter and one of them was “pick the lock.” Now I’m usually not one for breaking and entering but my curiosity got the better of me and I ended up picking the lock. I started walking around looking for places to shoot and I saw some very beautiful textures but then I was stopped. All of a sudden a bunch of people approached me and started asking me what I was doing there. However, I didn’t know what they were saying since they were all speaking French! LOL Luckily one of them could speak English and I felt bad, explained myself saying I didn’t mean to intrude I just wanted to take pictures for my blog, etc… gave the necessary links and then I was allowed to stay. They were very kind and asked if I needed any assistance. One of them even sent me a link to this youtube video which shows the sim and all those that RP there so beautifully.
I’m going to embed the video below but you can also view it on youtube at this link: http://youtu.be/ySzn0vXiRsc
As you can see from the video, there’s lots more to the sim than what you see in my pictures. I definitely had quite the fun adventure today. This is what I love about Second Life. I can meet new people and discover beautiful places with just a click of a button. <3
Credits:
*Skin: Al Vulo – julia * peacock bronze by Hlin Bluebird
Eyes: Mayfly – Deep Sky Mesh Eye (Deepening Spring, w4) by Arkesh Baral
*Eyeliner: -Glam Affair- Couture Eyeliner no.03 (MESH) by Aida Ewing
*Eyelashes: Maitreya V.I.P. Group Gift – Mesh EyeLashes by Onyx LeShelle
*Hair: >TRUTH< Alessandra – cocoa by Truth Hawks
*Outfit: Bilo Anarkali Churidar Kameez by Mayaa Thistle (@ Cinema 2012)
*Jewels: Zaara : Nizam *color* by Zaara Kohime
Mesh Feet: Slink Barefeet Mesh Flat by Siddean Munro
*Mesh Hands: Slink Mesh Hand Casual by Siddean Munro
*Poses: Bilo Bollywood & Sari Poses by Chandra Masala
Location: Oasis of Four Palms – Tahari Desert – Gorean RP – Birch Island
The 1st of October is almost here and FaMESHed is starting up again in just a couple of hours. This month Erratic has joined the fabulous FaMESHed lineup with these sexy oversized and off the shoulder sweaters. I love all of the different color combinations they are available in. I am wearing the colorblock on myself on the left and the duo on my alt on the right. They are also available in plain and striped print. You will not want to miss these so make sure to head out to FaMESHed later today and pick them up!
I’m really enjoying using my twin alt in my posts with a drastically different skin. It’s kind of neat seeing how different skins look on the exact same shape side by side. I did however completely fall in love with the al vulo skin I’m wearing on myself. I also took a closeup of it that I wanted to share. The hair is photoshopped in.
Now that October is here, I am looking forward to blogging some costumes for Halloween. If any of you know of a store that has made some awesome mesh costumes, please drop me a line and let me know. I’m on the hunt for some amazing mesh costumes. Thank you! <3
Credits: On Me: (girl on the left)
*Skin: al vulo- Julia * mauve dark brow cacoa by Hlin Bluebird
Eyes: Mayfly – Deep Sky Mesh Eye (Deepening Spring, w4) by Arkesh Baral
Hair: [LeLutka]-SALOME hair – Bournville by Thora Charron
*Sweater: erratic / cory – oversized sweater / color block 3 (S) by Erratic Rain (@ FaMESHed October)
*Shorts: erratic / jessy – studded shorts / hot pink (S) by Erratic Rain
Leggings: erratic / leggings group gift 01 by Erratic Rain
Necklace: Maxi Gossamer – Necklace – Tea + Cupcakes – GOLD by Maxi Gossamer (@ Fair)
*Pose: Exposeur by RubyStarlight Writer
On my Alt: (girl on the right)
Skin: Akeruka Twiggy Mk For Dressing Room by Agony Helse
Hair: >TRUTH< Bunny w/Roots - auburn by Truth Hawks
*Sweater: erratic / cory - oversized sweater / duo lime (S) by Erratic Rain (@ FaMESHed October)
*Jeans: Maitreya Flare Jeans (for flats) * M #2 by Onyx LeShelle
Necklace: *YS&YS* Pearl Necklace Choco by Monyka Benelli
Bag: :pesca:old shoulder bag/rudder-black by Tsugu Nirvana (@ The Arcade for September)
Ring: Shakeup! Vintage Ring [06] by Carrie Janick (@ The Arcade for September)
*Pose: Exposeur by RubyStarlight Writer
