External Flash in Second Life
March 5, 2007 12:40 pmI love shooting outdoors in first life as well in second. In both my worlds I also *heart* harsh shadows and contrast. A pity Second Life available light being shitty is a huge disappointment. Even if you mouselook-move-sun.
So you’ve found the perfect graphics card (and figured out you can’t afford it), the perfect location and a more-than- perfect model but because the lightning sucks, your picture looks terribly dull. Yes, you can use PS, but you can’t enhance shadows and highlights that don’t exist at all and dodging and burning is a rather boring job. Rezzing a box for lightning purposes, as the Watermelon God has taught us all to do, is a great solution, but to often beautiful land doesn’t allow you to rez objects.
You can of course wear the softbox lightning-box, but as you need to get out of sight/the way to get a good 300mm equivalent zoom in on your model and the distance you can move the objects from you is limited, that’s not very practical. Obviously, too, the focus is on your model, not you. Thus the idea of an ‘external flash wear on model’ was born.
At the moment the prototype looks like this, but still lacks all functionality. I can hardly build, let alone script. Luckily Icarus Ducasse is willing to help me out with that. If only it were a car, then it even would have gotten priority. ;)
Functionalities I’d love to see for the external flash unit:
- Listen on channel: autoposition at 0, 45, 90, … 270, 315 degrees on all three the boxes as a whole.
- Listen on channel: autoposition distance from model varying from 2 to 15 meters on all three the boxes as a whole.
- Listen on channel: no light / soft light / normal light / harsh light on each box seperate.
- Listen on channel: hide box on each box separate.
- The boxes should be accessible for more fine tuning using ‘edit’.
- Set to default position/reset.
What is still puzzling me about it:
- Where to attach it to? Spine works great. That is, as long as the model stands up strait, but are there parts in the body that allow stuff to be attached to it that move along with the poses less? And which are often used for attaching prim clothing and which are not?
- Permissions? Although the model is wearing it, the photographer will be the one moving the boxes around. Change owner permissions on sale maybe? But can you sell things for 0L$ in-world? Or does a SLboutique sale triggers that on-event (or whatever it’s called in l33t scripter’s language ;) too?
- I’m rather happy with the flash’ texture, it’s speedlite-genuine :D, but puzzled over the texture of the box that actually contains the flash. It doesn’t look very first-world-real (yet).
- I know for sure other problems will occur before the ‘external flash wear on model’ works, but I am puzzled about what kind of problems. Anything that I/we didn’t think about yet? It’s better to anticipate. :d
Yes, I can look into the puzzling thingies 1 to 3 myself, but it saves me time if someone else knows the answer already. *Points towards the comment linkie.*
PS. Yes, I always where silks when building.
PPS. The (quick) sketch I mailed to Icarus:
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12 Responses to “External Flash in Second Life”
> But can you sell things for 0L$ in-world?
Quick (drunk) answer: yes :D
Thank you. Does your more sober you has some answers on the other questions too? ;)
PS. Then why do all the so called ‘freebies’ cost 1L$? :D
You have to find some better freebee shops :-) The 1$ is for the owner of the shop to get some “extra” lindens. I might also thibk about helping you with the implemenation of the item. Sounds like a fun and usefull project, myck better that my small light ball i place on the ground.
Hey Vint, why not a classic 3-point lighting (key light, fill light and backlight) instead of 3 low frontal light sources?
I’m sure you know how it works but just in case, have a look here: http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point
Other then that, the hip is the part the whole avatar built around. It’s the position of the hip that will determin the position of the whole av. I would think attaching your flash to that will give you the least unexpected movements.
Because I find this a handy position to start with. (Like I said, I love really harsh shadows.) I don’t know if scripting a second starting position and all the #degree numbers is a lot of extra work, but I assume it is. One can always move the boxes manually. ;)
But silk stuff often hangs on hip! :(
PS. “subtle highlights around the subject’s outlines” => tend to be extreme jaggy in my snapshots.
I’ve built this, actually! well, almost all of it. I used a base freebie “personal light” attachment prim to put as a linked prim (controlled through llLinkMessage) in a multi-use er, necklace I always wear. It all sits on one attachment point- I use Spine, though Chest will work too. “Hip” (you mean Pelvis, Loki?) is a bad idea for many sit or lay animations and also gets knocked out by many prim skirts and silks. I call my necklace my “Fae Jewels” and it also has lots of other goodies - telepathy, a titler, some body jewelry, some um “remotely controllable animation scripts” (*cough*Amethyst Collar*cough) and other good stuff.
But the light! I have it scripted to change brightness and colour, and it moves various distances away from my av - when it’s off it hides in my spine so I don’t have any “dangling invisiprims” when it’s not in use. All I need to add is 2 more light prims that move around, one higher and one lower (head height and knee height) and a command to control the rotation.
Oh, one side effect of using the Amethyst collar scripts in the root? I can grant others control of my light and title and telepathy using secowner… :)
Contact me in-world and I can arrange to make you a custom one!
-Cala, “Super Calamari”
I stand corrected Cala :-) Pelvis is what I meant. I also didn’t think about the prim skirts and silks. Guess because I don’t wear them.
Sure sounds like you have Vint’s questions covered … I’m curious to see what you two will come up with!
I would think that it should be easy enough to make an object that listens to you (the owner) no matter who is wearing it. You just have to set the listener filter to be your name or UID instead of the owner (which many scripts do).
Cala, thank you for the help you offer. The idea is that it would be a freely distributed object, available to the whole SL community. Personally I don’t like wearing things I don’t use at that moment, and I think that goes for a lot of other Avies too, so it’s sole purpose would be lightning during model shoots. I’ll contact you in-world with the question to demonstrate your necklace. ;)
Alidar, it should not only listen to me, but to whomever wishes to use it. Be it another photographer or the model itself. But as I’ve seen on the N30 it should indeed be possible to add that function by adding the person’s first and last name somewhere in a notecard that’s inside the object. (But more then that, I don’t grasp from it. ;))
I wear a keylight, attached to my chin. I started wearing it to help with the lighting effects in a mahcinima, but I love the effect so much i never go anywhere without it now. I tried attaching it to many different spots, but overriders, poses and animations meant the light would move too much, and so after a lot of experimentation I discovered the chin works best. *laugh* Hope this is of some use! A
About your 2.Q. (Permission)
If your thinking of the idea of let the model wear the flash object the permissions will be no problem.
Because you want to let it work by giving commands on a private channel. So the script who is listening for those commands will be in the object it sell and have al the rights to move all linked prims.
You only have to make sure the scripts listen to everyone who is talking on that channel.
And you don’t have to sell the flash object, just make it copy/mod and give it to the model to wear.
Good luck with the project !
That all happened in march
Is this Flash available yet to try, play or aquire?
cos I would love one, vry mucho
Any chance?
Purty Pulease?
Archie
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