Taking Better Snapshots- Part 1

Trinitee and I were chatting today over AIM while pretending to work and the topic of bad SL snapshots came up. Now, I said "I smell a blog post" and she said "You get on top of that" which is pretty much equivalent of calling "not it" or "Shotgun" thus hosing me into making a blog post about taking snapshots. She's a lazy crafty one.

Now, this is not rocket science and I really don't mean to talk down to anyone, but lets cover some basics of the 4 time settings that you can force the sun at. You find "FORCE SUN" Under world in the upper toolbar.

1. Sun rises in the East


2. Sun sets in the West.


3. At Noon, the sun is at it's apex (and your shadow is the smallest)


4. At midnight there is no sun

The pictures included in this post are of an avatar facing a certain direction during these 4 times of day. Note that I said avatar and not camera. Your camera will face the opposite way if you are looking head on at your avatar. (I just noticed I misspelled Sunrise on the image... damn it!)

Now you can see the shifts in shadows depending on where you face and what time of day it is. Sometimes it comes off as awesome mood lighting and other times it comes off as what I like to call "low contrast fugly." When the sun is set at noon you can see a lot of the L.C.F.s especially on the face.

There is a cure for the LCFs, and it is known as a face light. These you can find all over SL, infact it's becoming pretty common that skin makers give out face lights with their skins. The effect is a light source evenly on the face to get rid of any weird shadows the sun may cast.
Now if you can't find one, and are capable of building, it's incredibly easy to make your own. You will need an alpha-clear texture and nothing else. Make 3 small prims and position them around your face. Link them together and activate the lighting option on the prims. If you have the alpha on the prim you can activate highlight transparent (Under View on the top toolbar) and view the prims. Here is what my face light looks like and the light values I used.
Ignore the massive amount of fleas on my ear... I have a hygiene issue. Anyway, you can see how far this one is spaced from my face and the kinds of prims used to give an even light source. The settings I have mine at might not be the best for you, so play around with it. I found many face lights in my inventory ranging from "light up the whole damn sim" to "subtle glow." it's up to you, but I recommend not to make them too bright that people near by might mistake you for an angel or alien... or other things that glow. Glow worms... those were great...


On Noam with breasts:
Hair- Cupcake: Nerd Swept
Shirt- Decollage: Camera T-shirt
Neko ears- Wynx Whiplash + lots of customization
Skin- Geisha Dreams: Keiko Nude Beauty
Necklace and bracelettes- Gritty Kitty


Part 2... I will talk Trinitee into making a little something about using PS.