Snapshot changes

Does the ability to specify resolutions for snapshots have any bearing on the email postcard feature? Is anything being changed with it?

Yes Ano, while not all's in place, play with it for yourself. You can make bigger-size postcards and change JPG compression. Don't think you can send out from SIVA but good to explore the interface.

I'll tag this thread and post back after I get more info--more developments to come.

Does this cry out to be someone's new sig quote --or what!?

clicking SNAPSHOT and then moving the cam to an avatar who was in the distance at the time you clicked SNAPSHOT reveals distant AV's to be very angular, low detailed and sometimes without eyes. Lol. You can see the LOD that was applied to distance AVs.

I've noticed LOD problems with SL and Hi-Res snapshots (personaly i'd like it if they cranked up the LOD to match the increased size, i'd wait).

On an unrelated note, SL and full screen SLI do not mix well. (I have duel 7900 GT's)

Using the SLI video cards to do SLI8x AA results in a ghost pointer (how SLI8x AA works is to do 4x AA on each card then then blend them). The pointer apparently only gets moved on one screen. I suspect this is a driver bug.

I set a bunch of options, including the snapshot size and "save to disk", and it defaulted to "send postcard" and screen size on the next shot.

1. It shouldn't default to "send postcard" at all, how often do you want to do that?
2. It shouldn't lose the settings when you take another snapshot!

Argent, you are 100% right.

On top of the isses you mention...

I filed a couple of bug reports, the biggest of which is:

> the new snapshot function basically doesn't have the functionality of the old one at all.

You can't save snapshots to your library! You can only make up to 512X512 textures, or email them, or save them to a HD.

That's a pretty glaring omission. We have to email our snapshots to ourselves and then upload them as textures now? It needs a "save to library" or "upload to library" choice too.

Otherwise, the interface -is- very, very cool, and will allow for some much more creative work.

Aye. I observed this too, naturally after much "Woohoo!"ing for the new snapshot floater.

feature_context: I'm really happy we can change JPEG compression now; some of my own background behind why is here.

Bethanee, can you please tell me more about what you mean by "your library"? I'm not sure what you mean there, but I'd certainly like to learn more.

Thats wrong basically. In 1.10 the direct upload of a snapshot with the "Save as Texture" button does compared to 1.11 also only 512x512... and the snapshots shows still up in the Photo Album folder with an image icon ( and the menu upload image option does it vice versa... it says it uploads images but puts all in the texture folder with a texture icon)
For the largest preset it is the behaviour as in 1.10. The option for custom size doesnt really work... values larger than 512 seem to get shrunk back to 512.

My main use of "Upload as texture" is to put the photo directly into sl and hand the photo over to someone or put it into a private photobook. Therefore I am not that lucky with the rescritions for photos to the strict textures sizes and aspect ratios. And with the upcoming mozilla stuff a question might be where the pictures that can be free displayed as a part of a in-world webpage by the gecko engine come from... either external from a website or in-world. Are there any decisions made yet?

In-world photos now are afaik restricted to the standard width/height for textures as now everything has to be displayed on a prim anyways.
Mozilla might give more freedom for in-world photos if it gets in-world image access. Under this aspect it could be considerable to allow in-world photo upload with more freedom in the image size and aspect-ratio. These photos should then not be allowed to use as texture (as they would need to converted to the standard texture sizes and take then up twice the data space).
So keeping photos and textures really seperate and not mix them as it is in 1.10 now.... or finding another good solution on how to deal with in-world photos.

Regards,
Leff.

Bottom line, in the current version when I take a snapshot I can save it to disk or upload it to my library as a snapshot in the photo album.

In the new version I can't. I have to email it to myself, or save it as a texture into my inventory which is limited to a max of 512X512.

Maybe a better option is "upload to inventory" instead of "upload to library" as I suggested.

In other words, keep snapshots uploaded to your inventory and textures uploaded to your inventory separate, as snapshots don't always have the same limitations as textures reize.

Does that make sense?

-Beth

P.S. I have to test more.. Leffard says that textures uploaded via snapshot actually show up as snapshots in the photo album. I may have missed that. In any case, it is wrong...

Option : Email : that is obvious and it works well, allowing customization of compression quality, aspect ratio, etc.

Option : Save to HD : also obvious and works well, with same options as email

Option: Texture: 512X512 limit on size: is present but should only upload to the texture portion of your inventory

Option: Snapshot to Inventory (or Photo Library) : does not exist (but basically does exist in current release version's snapshot functionality) : should be present with same options as email re: size, aspect ratio, quality, etc.

Something I noticed, you can't adjust the image quality unless it is set on "postcard". If you switch to "as texture" or "save to hard drive" the image quality slider greys out. Thankfully, whatever you set it on in "postcard" seems still be valid in the other two. I also noticed that the "show HUD's in snapshot" option does not make any difference. No matter what you do, you still see the HUD's in the snapshot. The only way not to have them is to turn off the HUD's as we currently do in 1.10.....via the view menu and turn off "show HUD's" (or detach them). Yes lots of bugs, but hey better to see them in the preview then on the main grid

-DB

I'm finding the new snapshot interface hard to get used to. Is there a way to make the preview smaller than full-screen? Also was having trouble moving the camera while the preview shot was up. Personally I'd like to have the option to turn off this interface and use the current one.

Can't save snapshots to the HD, at least not yet, I've tried and tried but the snapshots don't save, I'm guessing its supposed to work that way until the feature actually goes live.

Also, be careful clicking the refresh button, I've got some weird effects from doing that alot. Trippy.

Thank you for the continued feedback!

A few of these issues, involving usage complications, are already known about--I checked eXtreme Bug Hunter Milo Linden's recent reports... he's been at it like crazy! (A good thing.)

Few points I'll mention:


* Bethanee brings up a very good point which leads to being confused between "What's the difference between what goes in 'Photo Album' and 'Textures' folders?" which is something I've heard numerous times. Apart from different icons, in 1.10, an uploaded "snapshot" and an uploaded "texture" are the same, and only differ insofar as how they're uploaded into your Inventory. Obviously, the former comes from the current Snapshot process, and the latter is via File menu > Upload Texture. Seems kind of redundant when they are just different names for the same type of item. This'll be discussed further.

* Yes, larger texture upload sizes don't appear to work yet. They'll come out as 512x512.

* Some, myself included, have requested a mode to revert to the simpler "old way" with a thumbnail preview, as opposed to full-screen-and-freeze mode.

* Some have also asked that the ability to save JPEGs direct to your hard drive be added. Specifically, by way of having the Image Quality present in "Save snapshot to hard drive" and anything under "100" using the lossy, space-saving compression which JPEG provides.

* The "Show HUD objects in snapshot" checkbox is non-functional... and will be fixed soon! *So* close to being out of the water on this one, I know how many folks it's terrorized for so long.

* FireFox, could you please supply a specific repro for that? I'm able to save to disk fine using the following:

- Click Snapshot
- Select "Save snapshot to hard drive"
- Click "Save" button
- Select any directory and click the "Save" button in the file explorer.

Yes! Yes! Please! BMPs are horrible, bloated, fluffy things. Right now, I use an Automator action (Mac OS X only) to add time and date, then convert to JPEG. Saves huge gobs of space, quality is high (enough) and the dates really help to keep my archives organised (as I take quite a few photos). So, another vote for:

- JPEG as an option for snapshot to disk, with a quality slider
- Date and time as optional prefixes on snapshots

Really like most of the new interface, will be back with more feedback when I have a chance. Thanks for the hard work!

I also would like a option with a preview window rather than the way of "freeze whole screen" that is currently in use. It can be handy I suppose but I would rather have the preview window. Makes it much easier to keep track of what is going on while you try to move the camera and get the right angle for a good snapshot.

Also the idea of saving as a JPG when saved to HD is a good one. But PLEASE if you do impliment this, give us a option to turn it off. Many of us that do post editing don't want the file saved to JPG as too much loss ocurrs when saved to JPG then resaved to JPG when uploaded. Time and date is another good option. Better still is the option to select the name for each snapshot if you want. But I can do without those if need be. Just a little more having to rename the files manually....but it works. The automatic renaming as it is currently is nice, but the problem I run into is that it only lets me set where and what to name the snapshots once per session. I have to relog to change the name or put newsnapshots in a new location. I have got around this by renaming afterwords but as I said that can be anoying if you have taken a lot of them.

-DB

and liking the new promising snapshot features; really spiffyriffic!!

here's what i thought while handling the the snapshot window: rename it 'snapshot preferences'; tab it for 'snaps to server'/'disk' with i guess pretty much all the same available values (so you can set your own lower-rez 'server' settings, and separate higher-rez 'to disk' settings... then have two separate menu entries (w/shortcuts) for the actions 'snaps to server/disk'.

cuz really if it's all working right, we don't need to fiddle the settings over and over. (which i think is kinda the definition of 'prefs' whaddaya think??

p.s. prrrrr... oh the tingly feeling i got when i first tore off the 'attach/detach' menus... i really can't wait to have that available all the time.

I've used the same steps and it doesn't save the snapshot to my HD at all.

- Clicked snapshot
- Selected "Save snapshot to hard drive"
- Clicked "save" button
- Chose the MyDocuments/MyPictures directory and clicked "Save" in the explorer

- Check Directory for snapshot...Nada....not even a JPG.
- checked default Siva directory...no dice.
- Used "Find" on start menu to search entire computer for "Snapshot"...the only thing I got was the snapshots that I took on the live grid, no snapshots from the preview showed up.

Edit>
Ok, it looks like whats happening, as far as I can tell is it doesn't want to save in a directory that already has Snapshots with the names Snapshot_001, Snapshot_002, snapshot_003, etc, etc.
Basicly it doesn't want to overwrite the snapshots so it doesn't save, what I would like is if SL could at least alert me to his and ask me to use a different name for the snapshot. Or at least continue down the numerical order, e.g. Snapshot_006, snapshot_007, you get the idea.

I'm going to keep playing with this and see if it that is the case.

Edit2>
Confirmed, that's exactly whats happening, I cleared out my old snapshots from MyDocuments/MyPictures and it works correctly now.

Ah that explains why I have not run into this. I always rename my snapshots slightly when I am saving to HD to something like snapshot-preview for example. And generally don't use the same name twice.

-DB

And what about location? I use a date prefix and a location postfix to keep control over my snapshots and its very useful to know where all the snaps have been.

It's not tricking me - I know there is no flashbulb involved in the picture taking process.

I don't care if other people get an indicator that I am taking a picture but I don't want to have to see a white flash on the screen.

It's just stupid.

(Please tell me there is an option to turn this off I have missed.)

Also - can it be made such that it is not sending any extra frame files?

So we could email just the picture as an attachment to Flickr, Photobucket, Imageshack, etc.?

That would let me take my aggravation relieving gray loading texture pictures and put them in Photobucket and send the good pictures to Snapzilla.

How about allowing download (and uploads) as PNG?

When saving a snapshot to disk, I would love to be able to pick whether to use .bmp, .jpg, .png or .tga from the dropdown in the save file dialog window. I guess an option to save a jpeg at different quality settings (default to 75%) would be nice, too. I'm primarily interested in a web-friendly format that isn't lossy.

I agree that is VERY anoying. I am glad I am not the only one this being driven crazy with this.

-DB