lighting on avatars is ugly

yep, very true.

someone had picked out a skin maker by name though. I have skins by several well respected designers and they all do the same thing. I just wanted to point that out.

People should be careful before they say negative things things about any particular designer. Especially when its not researched.

BTW in response to that comment Munch's skins are VERY forgiving in the facial area, since i have a need to use Many different shapes often (occupational hazard) hers are amoung the easiest to deal with in the nose, eyes and lips area.

I think certain lighting warps pretty much everyone at least in my view. I am seeing so many dented smooshie wrinkled prune faces since the update ! But I love that I can light everything PINK yay... even my flexi cape!

Be sure to UNcheck Avatar Vertex Program in Preferences, and also restart Second Life. I didn't notice the change back until restarting.

Regards,

-Flip

A before and after set of screenshots. Sunlighting is ugly? I think not.



Both shots were taken with noontime sun.

Now is the time to refine the sliders on your avatar because the sizes of all those bumps and valleys (particularly in the face) now matter very much.

Just a few small problems. (Also the second picture looks a little "wrong". If you notice, you have these bright contrasting shadows on your avatar, but your background doesn't with its soft shadows.)

1. One, the avatar mesh for both males and females simply lack the detail that is included in a skin with baked shadows. If you are going for a more cartoonier look with the default skin, then this isn't a problem.
   
2. Two, the LL avatar mesh has issues in some areas. Most noticeably is the nose, where the arms meet the torso, the shoulders (front and back), breasts for women, etc. Of course, we are dealing with the limitations of a simple avatar mesh.
   
3. Three, exaggerating those features on our mesh to make up for a lack of baked shadows is going to look weird in of itself. Guys become even more muscle-bound, etc.
   
4. Four, the lighting system in SL is already quirky. Making avatar appearance dependent on it is an interesting move.
   
5. Five, you may have clothing where you want to mask the topology of your body. Formal business clothing is an example.
   

When you look at all the open feature requests and then look at this. It does seem a little odd that this was added. Was there a huge demand for it? It doesn't bother me much after all I only have several tens of thousands in L$ of skins that are now of questionable worth.

This going to be a fun transitional period for skin (and clothing too) designers. If you have avatar vertex program enabled, people with old skins will look weird. If you have avatar vertex program disabled, people with skins for 1.10+ will look weird. So basically you have to take your current skin textures, leave in the baked shadows that the AVP can't do and dilute the ones that it can without the whole thing looking to weird to people that can't use AVP or have it disabled.

I really like the new lighting myself. Everyone looks so much nicer on my side.

Colette, I wasn't picking on Munch, she will always be my favorite skin designer. However, as Noel just pointed out, the skin trade of SL is going to have to change as a result of the lighting change. This is not unlike the problems that High Definition TV is creating for entertainment makeup artists; the entire industry has been turned on its collective head because the High Def shows facial flaws that were previously easy to cover up with makeup. Making stars like Cameron Diaz or Britney Spears look good under HDTV is a huge problem that is requiring whole new lines of makeup and new techniques.

biggest problem spot on the avatar with the new lighting, the corners of the upper lip. If you look with the sun high, you'll notice that the polys at the corners of the mouth don't follow the right contour. Might actually be fixable without ruining everyones avs.