full bright skin option as opposed to facelights

Hi

I was just wondering if it was feasibly possible for LL to introduce a "Full Bright" option for avatars/skins ( like we can do with prims ) as opposed to using face lights. Surely this option would put an end to complaints of light pollution in atmospheric areas. I still think Windlight makes our avatars look ugly because of the shadows it creates on the face and offering a "full bright" or "variable brightness" direct onto the avatar would result in the lighting being only localized to the avatar and no overspill of light into the surrounding environment.

Whoosh

While we wait for that, meanwhile, Ghosty Kips 'Polite Facelight' does the same thing. Since I got his I no longer light up the entire grid when I arrive and it does exactly the same job as the old one did.

You don't know how to use windlight to eliminate the shadows. You need to increase the ambient light, and possibly the scene gamma as well. I recommend Caliah Lyon's settings as a start point.

http://secondsoigne.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/optimising-windlight-for-avatars-20/

By going to Enviromental Editor you can change the settings to eliminate shadows.
I have used the Redgrave (skins) recommended settings which has worked fine. However these are only cosmetic changes...if you use one these customised settings, you can kiss goodbye to the natural SL day/night cycle.

Personally i prefer the natural changes (day/night) that occur in SL, so have chosen to wear a better-than-average facelight instead.

I think you're missing the point. People that wear face lights care about how other people see their avatar... so... how would windlight settings effect that?

I Just tried that preset and it does make a dramatic difference to the avatars appearance but as Rene pointed out you are stuck with constant daylight, if you change the time of day in the cycle you just end up with the old "monkey face" look again. Also this is localised only to what I am seeing on the screen and not how others see.

This is why i was thinking of LL possibly making an obtion that only adjusts the avatar/skins brightness alone to remove the shadows.

Whoosh

BS. Considering that anyone can turn off attached lights and attached particles, or simply not render local lights, there is no guarantee that anyone is actually seeing their face light at all and the only guarantee is that THEY see their own light. It's not for our benefit.

Well, all you need do is increase the ambient light or the scene gamma.

it's an option to wear the light prims..if it is a concern about you seeing them it's a matter of adjusting..if it is a concern about others seeing themselves with or without them they can just take them off or put them on..
full bright is just that..fully bright..

light is different thing than full bright and is adjustable in the features section..you would end up with the same thing you have now with face lights if you added that feature to the avatars..
only now everyone would be casting light.

full bright we would be walking light bulbs that only change tone with adding different shades of gray to the brightness

Not true.....the settings in windlight can be adjusted in so many different ways that there's never any need for those shadows....even in darker/night settings. Everything in those sliders interacts with everything else.....so it's a matter of starting with a pre-set....and then tweeking the sliders until you really see what each is affecting. One trick I use all the time (because I do photography in SL) is simply changing the east/west angle of the sun. You can place your sun in such a way as to have no shadows....and then simply adjust your gama/brightness and ambient lighting to an effect you like. (even night like settings)

I don't believe (and my knowledge here is limited so....) that there would be a way to apply any kind of 'light' effect to the skin....as it is a texture layer..... the shadows are playing off the avatars because SL is meant to be a 3d world....so the avatar mesh/shape interacts with the atmosphere as any other 3d object would. No matter what is done to the skin....it isn't going to change the fact that it's covering a 3d mesh body.

There are plenty of not so glaring face lights out there.....one I use often is from Detour.....another that has adjustments to the level of light is made by Pulse...... But really..... it's worth taking the time to learn windlight.....I've made over 100 of my own sky settings to use in photos....I never get tired of the amazing effects it can produce.

Welcome to the forums, Whooshy!

This is actually a pretty cool thought, but we need the opinion of a texture artist, I think. The idea as you expressed it wouldn't work - all your avatar layers are rendered locally by your card, then uploaded to SL as one baked model, so SL wouldn't be able to retroactively set a skin (or portion of it) to "full bright". Also, although I'm not sure, I think a "full bright" face might only be appropriate for avatars whose first name was "Messiah" (it'd be pretty bright). Now, whether LL could make available some sort of metadata that would allow skin designers to apply a veneer of subtle texture brightness on faces, I don't know.

Even if they did, skin artists would probably package a skin with both a (let's call it) facebright and a normal version of the skin, since many folks prefer to let the 'natural' windlight play over their features at will, as you've seen in posts above.
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That's about as valid as saying all the overtly tall avatars choose their height out of consideration for child avatars in order to maintain the effect. (T_T)

"Full bright" doesn't refer to casting or emitting any sort of light as was suggested. It refers to global and local lighting NOT having any diffusing or shadowing effects ON that particular surface... ie- lights and sun/moon don't affect it, so it just displays at default brightness without any lighting calculations being run on it. Full bright and "unlit" are the same thing.
Eli's reply is on the mark. The point about adjusting environment settings is moot because only that one person would see the intended effect. Facelights are about vanity, and minimizing those nasty shadows in other peoples view, not just your own. Fixing the view for ones self only fixes half of the OPs dilemma.
If a full bright setting WAS applied to the AV, it would indeed display brightly just like most full bright jewelry does. It would have no real shadows on it from anything inworld, only just the painted ones that are part of the texture itself. I tend to think that unless there was a way to set the default brightness of that texture, setting full bright on a skin would wash it out badly and make it stand out so much it would not look good at all. You would also have to have clothes that were full bright when worn because it would be impossible to render those triangles who's surface shared a clothing edge and bare skin if they had different render requirements. Lighting calculations are tied to the SURFACE the texture is on, not the texture itself.. so each little flat triangular subdivide of the AV's mesh surface can only be one setting or the other.

fullbright lambert is hardly a substitute for a nice facelight

the reason that the skin is at the brightness it is is because there isnt a way to them to make it 'less fullbright' at night. this was one of the discussions during windlight betas, and the av skin brightness was problematic. the current brightness is supposedly a compromise that fits between night and day.

i will be sure to parrot this line of logic when confronted with the old argument about 'build ambiance'.
ta

I'm still one of those that believe light shouldn't have an effect on attachments, only rezzed prims.

People see you because they have to, when you are in their field of view. If I could turn off certain avatars, I would. However, a build's ambiance is usually something that people want to see, which is why they go there at all. Having someone kill the experience because they expect me to see them as they see themselves is largely unappreciated. Thank goodness for the option to not render attached lights.

I think the AVs look good in the light as is . The facelights make them look like they are practicing for halloween. The FL are fine when taking pics but not for walking about with so come on do you really need to be noticed that much ?

if you don't like the way they look adjust your viewer the best you can..
a lot don't even realize they have these lights on..a lot of them come with products..like hair and jewelry..
do we really need our hair or the clothes we buy or the shoes or swords or whatever we like for our avatar that are prims causing a lot more problems than lighting??
it's all vanity..
one persons vanity is no more important than the next..

i know more wear them for hiding the crappy mesh than anything..
still it's no reason to label people as shallow because of a light when others are doing the vanity dance with most of the things we buy..

I actually don't come across many facelights, or they're much more subtle ones if I do. I have seen a couple of the horrible uber-glow ones though. I hated them. Btw in RL people don't exactly look stunning in twilight or the middle of the night or half the other times of day either so it's not just the fault of Windlight settings.

It's interesting how much effort people put into detail and realism then stick flashlights on themselves because they don't like the reality that shadows exist and don't always make you look good. It's their choice of course, I just find it amusingly ironic.

blah blah blah

wearing my noselamp to spite you all

That's a very subtle noselamp, ya don't mind me sayin.

I figger most folks here is complainin' bout them nookleer-parr'd halogen lights ya see round th' place.

That doesn't change the way other people see you.

Half of my non-human avatars are painful to wear these days, the way Windlight turns them into "michelin man". And I much prefer the old low-contrast avatar skins than the ones these days that emphasize every defect in the avatar mesh.

When Windlight was introduced Linden Labs talked about introducing "Materials", so you could define the contrast and highlighting of surfaces and avatars to a much greater degree than just "full bright" or "shiny", but as usual they left the job half-finished.
I wish they would fix that. Another job half-finished.

* It should still render lights attached to our own avatar. I can't use it because I want to wear a lantern or flashlight in dark places.

* The suppressed lights are still counted in the closest local lights, so local scene lighting still competes with them.

It's not that shadows don't make you look good, it's that the avatar mesh is unrealistic, and the degree of contrast that Windlight produces is unrealistic... it's like Windlight is trying to reproduce the defects of the photographic process instead of trying to reproduce what you would actually see if you were there.