Help with Pictures and Lighting Please

Hi Everyone I'm in need of some help. I'm trying to take pictures for my vendors and of course with the new release (I have 1.19.1) the lighting has all changed. I downloaded the appleblossum light setting but still I can't get the sunrise/sunset bright light on the front and back of my Av. Either its still orange colored or if I put on a hair with the face light I look all lit up which looks just as bad. I have messed around with settings and still can't figure out what to do to get as close to how it used to be.

My question is has anyone firgured out the best settings to get decent pics that wouldn't mind shareing with me?

I would appreciate it. I just want to be able to light up the front and then turn my av around and light the back for my pics (the old way) without looking like my Av is about to spontaneous combust any minute.

I found a happy medium with those settings but not sure how to share them
look me up later I will show you some pics and you tellme if it is what you are looking for and then we can go about mimicing my settings (have to log at the moment though) sorry

What you may want to try is to rez a simple cube, give it a light property, and attach it to your av's chest or back. Once you've done that, move the cube around your av, playing with distance and positioning, and the cube's light intensity, until you find a satisfactory light condition. Apply a transparent texture to the cube, and you're all set!

A quick way I've found that works for me is to go to the environmental settings and choose sky. From there find the lighting and use SL's preset of 12:00 noon, then increase the gamma settings to a higher number ( I use 2, I think........just find a setting that brightens the picture to your liking).

That setting should make the lighting better for you. But if you want to get more involved you can do what I did. I rezzed a sphere and reduce the size to .07 x .07 x .07 and in features I checked light. Moved the sphere to about 1 meter in front of my avatar and adjusted the light intensity, fall off and color (I used light grey from the color picker in the edit) to reduce the shadows a little. I put it about eye level centered on my avie from the front, then duplicated it and placed one about chest level, duped again and put a little below waist level and one more to about knee level.......then duped each of those and moved to the back of my avie again about one meter behind me, centered. Then I linked them and named it "Body lights" and attached to my left pec (that was a handy attachment point for me.......any point that does not move with legs, head or arms will do (chest, stomach, pelvis, spine, etc). Then I drug my trusty 100% transparent texture I uploaded out of my inventory and put it on each sphere. It works for me.

Hope that helps.

There's no need to attach lights to your avatar. That's a wasteful, and potentially destructive, way to go about it. There's a much better and simpler way to solve the problem.

All you need to do is go into your environment editor, and click on Advanced Sky. Then on the Lighting tab, lower the intensity slider for the Sun/Moon (direct light), and raise the intensity slider for the ambient light (indirect light). To change the red/orange lighting of sunsets and sunrises to something more neutral, simply lower the red slider to bring it into closer alignment with the green and blue sliders.

This stuff isn't rocket science, guys. It's a simple matter of balance, and of understanding what you're looking at. We now have total control over the color and intensity of both direct and indirect lighting in SL. That means there's absolutely no reason you can't create any lighting scheme you could possibly desire. As with anything else, it just takes a little bit of initial learning of some basic concepts, and then a little practice. That's all.

Zazas, I'd encourage you not to wait for someone else to find the settings you want. Just play with the editor and find them yourself. Clearly you're creative, or you wouldn't have any products to be photographing for your vendors int he first place. Apply that same creativity to the environment editor, and learn to make it work for you. Your lighting schemes can and should do what YOU want them to do, not what anyone else thinks is best.

I'm glad you said this... attaching lights to your avatar just makes funky shadows anyhow.

Excuse me Chosen for asking for help. I guess just because I can make some clothes means I understand everything else about SL and the new viewer and because I have messed around with it for several days and am just not getting it means I'm ignorant for lack of better words. Here I am thinking ,"well I have been in SL for over 3 years and should feel apart of the community and comfortable posting here", but boy was I wrong!

Why is it that others can ask for help and they can get it but when I do it seems that I am either ignored or chastized for asking. I really hate to throw the illness card in there but I would love to see you on a breathing machine and 14 liters of 0xygen (a couple of my problems) barely able to even design anymore but trying just to have something to keep me fighting to be apart of the human race and my comphrension jacked because of all the meds and 02. I do not want to just lay here waiting to not exist anymore so if I can still try I will. But if I dont get something I should be able to ask just like anyone else without feeling ridiculed!

I was one of the first people who pulled out my store in support of you when I heard your skins were stolen and being sold in the malls I was in. I try my best to help anyway and anyone that needs it. Why is it so diferent for me??? It shouldn't matter that in your opinion what I should be able to do on my own. What should matter is that I asked for help and if you dont want to give it then dont respond at all. That old saying if you dont have anything nice to say dont say anything at all fits in my opinion. Thanks Chosen for your so encourageing words and help you really made my night!

Chosen if you didnt mean your direct quote towards me the way I took it then please excuse my sensitivity. But it seems everytime I have asked for help on something you respond and always come off on me like I should know better or learn myself unlike others whom most of the time you seem to go out of your way to help:/

Thank You Peggy, Dakota and Rhaorth for responding to my question I do appreciate it.

you are most welcome

(keep your chin up hon, not all will make you feel unwelcomed)

Actually I still prefer attaching a prim light when doing photos, because you can control the precise direction of your light source to a finer degree than with the environment editor, where your light source is the sun, and you can only control its position in a relatively limited way. Being able to control your light source's position is cool, especially when you've got a specific background you're trying to snap, and you don't want to have to turn your avatar or move the background (if you even can move it) in order to catch the light the right way.

Making your light cube larger will help eliminate any little unwanted shadows you might get.

Zazas, calm down. All I did in my post was three things. First, I offered a very brief introductory paragraph about how at least one piece of advice you'd previously received was a bad idea. Second, I provided a simple technical answer to your simple technical question. Third, in conclusion, I took a second to compliment you on being a creative person in SL, and I tried to offer you some encouragement toward becoming the master of lighting that I know every single creative in SL can be. Why you would feel you were somehow under attack because of that is beyond me. There's absolutely nothing wrong with anything I said. If you chose to misinterpret it, and assign your own emotionality into it, that's entirely your problem, not mine.

Look, I know you're frustrated that SL now works differently than what you're used to. Lots of people are. Some people are having an easier time adjusting than others, and that's probably another frustration in and of itself for some, as it can make some people feel like they're falling behind and possibly about to lose everything if they can't adjust quickly enough. And then I guess it could be pretty easy to misinterpret when someone, in an effort to help simplify the situation, makes a comment like "this isn't rocket science". And from there, it's just as easy to snap at that person since your emotions are now in control instead of your rationality.

But even though I understand all that, I do have to say I don't deserve to be snapped at like that. Don't take your frustrations out on me just because I'm having an easier time adapting than you are, and I don't mind pointing out that it doesn't have to be hard. The fact is I did go out of my way to help you here. If for whatever reasons, you can't bring yourself to muster up a thank you for that, at least do me the courtesy of not being so vocally hostile in reaction. Take a step back from your emotional reactionary mindset for a second, and think about the situation rationally and responsively. Do you really think I would take the time to reply here just to pick on you? Why would I ever do that? What could I possibly have to gain from that? I can assure you I have better things to do with my time than that. I don't volunteer to answer people's questions here every day just so I can single you out to deride. All that happened here was I saw someone in need of help, I knew I had the answer, and so I shared what I know. And that person happened to be you. That's it.

I certainly won't apologize for having tried to help. But I will say that I'm sorry for you that you can't recognize that that's what I was doing. Why you chose to react this way, I don't know. And frankly, I don't really care. I will ask that you don't do it again, though. As I said, I think I deserve better than that.

Also, I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but in all candor, Zasas, I must admit I have no recollection of the two of us ever having interacted before in any way. Perhaps I've responded to some of your posts before; perhaps I haven't. I sincerely have no idea. I respond to dozens if not hundreds of posts per week. I don't keep track of who said what. It's the questions I tend to remember, not the people who ask them.

So why you feel that I'm somehow taking a different tone with you than with everyone else, I can't imagine. All I know is it's your problem, not mine.

What I can say at this point, though, is that due to your reaction here, I probably will end up remembering your name from now on. Interpret that (or misinterpret it) however you want.

Zazas, check your PMs.

The reason I made my "body lights" is that I can control where the shadows will fall more easily instead of taking what LL gives me with their tools..........easier, that's the key. The constant dissing of someones method of doing anything in SL by a few is really sort of aggrevating. A person asked for a little help to get pictures of their clothes to sell and a couple of us offered what we do that works for us........we were not telling anyone to use our method, just a way to try to help. Facelights (or lights in general) may cause lag in a heavily populated sim or region.........though I doubt it's as much lag as implied. But, if I read the OP's question correctly, she wants pictures of her creations to show off the best parts or most detail.........and most likely would be in her private home while doing the pictures. Not in some crowded club or venue lagging everyone. Alone, by themselves, trying to get the best possible pictures.

And that environmental editor is NOT that intuitive as some say it is. Yeah, you can spend hours playing around with it and maybe finally get what you are wanting........or you can ask for help. I played with it and got it close but not really what I was after, so I made my "body lights" to get the rest........it works. So what if you don't think it's the best way.......maybe it's not the purest's way to do it. But, it gets the job done.

Peggy, my issue is not with the use of local lights in photography. It's with attaching them to the avatar, and even worse, walking around with them.

The reason I said it's wasteful is twofold. First, if all you're doing is still photography, then there's no need to attach the lights to to the body. That's a wasted action, since you can simply place them in the room, just as you would in RL, to provide whatever lighting scheme you're trying to achieve.

Second, you end up wasting a lot of time that way. The best and fastest thing to do is to set the environment editor properly first, and then, if you want added highlights, by all means add local lights into the scene until your heart's content. What does not make a whole lot of sense is to try to use local lights as a counter to bad environmental light settings. Not only is it a lot harder to make that work, it's also only half as effective. Set the environmental lighting well, and you'll find that most of those body lights are totally unnecessary. Set it badly, and you can spend hours tweaking all those local lights just to get a mediocre result.

Again, think of it like taking a photo in RL. If you take an outdoor picture on a bright sunny day, everything in it will look radically different than if you take one on an overcast day. If you don't like the lighting conditions on any given day you wouldn't try to outdo the sun by shining a bunch of spotlights on your subject. You'd simply wait for a better day to shoot. You'd of course use mirrors and spots and such to enhance the scene, but you would never use them to try to overpower the environmental lighting.

In SL, obviously, you don't have to wait for a better day; you can just create one. You can set the direct and indirect light any way you want for your base lighting conditions. And then, just as you would in RL, you can tweak the scene with well placed local lights.


The reason I said it's potentially destructive is because when people do go walking around with attached lights, it has two highly detrimental effects. First, it creates unnecessary lag. Second, since there can only be six local lights in a scene, the use of attached lights will have the effect of snuffing out other lights in a surrounding build, effectively destroying the look the creator of the build was trying to create. The Lindens have already said they plan on giving attached lights lowest rendering priority in the future in order to prevent both these things from happening. So in upcoming versions of SL, you can safely plan on saying goodbye (and good riddance) to facelights.

When they do change the rendering priority, which could happen any time now, then those attached body lights in your photography studio may well end up not working anymore. So that's a third reason they should remain unattached. Just set them up in the room, and move them wherever you need. There's nothing to be gained from attaching them.


As for the ease of use of the environment editor, I personally feel it's quite intuitive. As I said, all it takes is a little understanding of what you're looking at. The unfortunate fact of the situation is that so many people are so mad about the changes, they don't let themselves approach lighting tools with a clear and open mind. It's actually a very simple interface. People make it far more complicated than it really is by putting so many "dark side" emotions into it that don't need to be there.

You've got a set of sliders for direct light, and another for indirect light. If you want to replicate the conditions of the old system, simply cut out most of the direct light, and increase the value of the indirect light. It really is that simple.

And of course, the sky's the limit in terms of flexibility. You can create anything from the bizarre to the mundane. But unless you take the time to learn a little bit about the subject of lighting itself, it's probably always going to feel foreign and awkward to you.

There are plenty of people more than happy to share our knowledge about lighting. Some people are listening, learning, and prospering. Others chose to remain frustrated, closed minded, and reactionary, which is unfortunate. I'd invite you to become one of the former, not one of the latter.

Lights don't cause lag as-is (there's very few places in SL that don't have 6 lights somewhere around you), but we only get 6 nearby lights and that's it.

"Facelights" get a bad name not because it's wrong to make yourself look a certain way to yourself, but because you're hogging a limited resource and forcing others to put up with it since there's currently no way to "mute" light attachments. I also don't enjoy being lit up like a rainbow because someone nearby thinks that having 6 bright different coloured spotlights is "pretty".

I really do hope that the Windlight team will push through and raise the priority of ambient lights and make facelights a non-issue.

Did I say or imply that walking around with the body lights I made is the thing to do?

I was talking about using them for photography only. And Chosen, I'll say it again...........I do things in SL that are easiest for me. I could not care less if you think it's wasted effort. It took me 10 mins to make my lights..........after a couple hours messing with that "intuitive" editor. Attaching the lights ot my avatar is also for my convenience........I don't have to stop my photo session to adjust a prim light placed out of camera range when I turn my avatar around......it's already in place and adjusted to my liking. Talk about time wasted. Anyone want to use my methods, fine.........glad I could help. If you have what you consider a better way go ahead and offer it...........don't put down someone elses method. That is what is so aggrivating.........."experts" telling us amatuers we are ignorant or stupid. You stated your method and reasons for using your way......but, to point out that someone elses way is silly or wasteful was entirely unnecessary (and it comes across as condensending.......I know it does to me).

I know you are the resident "expert" here on SL creation.......but, you know, some of the things you say or tell us about does not help us at all. We don't all have the same background as you......we may not even want that background. We just want to have fun doing what we want to do. We find ways to do that and want to share it with others......without some "expert" piping in with "that's BS.....do it this way" crap. You do that often.

Local lighting increases the rendering work for the client, which is why it's an option that can be turned off. Landscape and house lighting is fixed in place, and often you don't even get close to the light's range. But if lights are attached to an avatar, they're constantly moving around with your avatar, with other avs and objects moving into or out of their range.

I don't know whether this means attached lighting contributes to client side lag, but it certainly seems plausible to me.

With all due respect, you should have accepted Zazas's next to last paragraph, which acknowledges that the reaction might be misplaced, rather than responding like this. Sometimes people let off steam, and we need to let it go, not add more fuel.

So let's just set this friction aside, and get back to the fun of helping and learning.

I never said you did. All I said was it's POTENTIALLY destructive to attach lights to the body, because walking around with them is one of the things people tend to do after they've attached them. That says nothing about what you did or didn't suggest. You'd do well to quit thinking this is all about you.


If you don't care, don't respond to what I say. It's that simple. The fact that you've chosen to keep going with suggests that you very much do care.


I'm sorry you had so much trouble with the editor. I'm guessing there's something simple and foundational that you're simply missing in your approach to it. It shouldn't take more than a minute or so to make any lighting condition you want. I'd be happy to help you work out the problem, assuming of course it's not true that you really "couldn't care less".


There's never any need to work that way, Peggy. As I said, you're making things a lot harder on yourself than they need to be. Simply park your avatar on a posing stand (which you can easily make transparent if you don't want it in the shot), and then place your lights wherever they need to be. That process should be significantly faster than doing all those attachments, plus it gives you a lot more flexibility.


Look, no one put anyone else down. No one said anyone else is ignorant or stupid. You're making that up all by yourself.

All I did was offer reasons why certain methods are more practical than others. You can choose to agree or disagree with that all you want. You want to tell me you disagree with my methodology, fine. I promise I'll never accuse you of insulting me if that's all you're doing. I can't imagine why you feel it's not the same the other way around.


Peggy, this part of your post is downright disturbing. All I've done here is freely offer to share my knowledge. When a method is posted which I think is less than ideal, I'll say so. And when I think someone is misunderstanding something with they and others would benefit from if it were properly explained, I'll say that too. There's nothing wrong with that.

As for the "expert" part, look, I have no need or desire to be thought of as an "expert" in any way. I'm learning every day, just like everyone else. I just happen to enjoy sharing what I've learned a bit more vocally than most people seem to. Again, there's nothing wrong with that.

Regarding whether or not anyone else has a similar background to mine, that has no relevance whatsoever. I just happen to be someone who has some experience in certain matters, I'm willing to share what I've learned from that experience. You can choose to benefit from that or not. That's up to you. But why on Earth you would choose to feel threatened or insulted by it, I have no idea.

Bottom line, if my posts bother you, I invite you not to read them. Heck, mute me if you want. But you're not going to sell me on ceasing my efforts to help people just because you feel the need to accuse me of having said and and done things I never actually have, and never would. I don't know what your motivations are in that regard, and I really don't care. I just wish you'd live and let live.

I say that not for my own sake, by the way, since I've got a thick enough skin to let whatever you can throw at me simply roll off. My concern is for the people who could potentially benefit from reading everyone's posts (including yours), but who get so disgusted with this kind of forced negativity, they stop reading.

I have people approach me in-world with questions all the time, specifically to avoid the negativity certain people insist on injecting into the forums. I wish I had time to help those people, but I don't. I volunteer here because this where I feel there's the best chance of helping the most people in the least amount of time, despite the frequent negativity. I do feel badly for the people who don't want to come here because they don't want to deal with exactly the kind of crap that you just threw into the thread. But such is beyond my control. All I can do is ask people not to do that. If you choose to do it anyway, that's your own problem to live with.

Perhaps I should have. But that was one sentence out of the whole post. There were dozens of others that I felt warranted a response. People can blow off steam without reacting so unjustly toward those who are trying to help them.

If it were my job to post here, I'd happily turn the other cheek. I might even enjoy the challenge of turning insults into fodder for good humor, as I know certain Lindens do.

But the fact is this is not my job. I volunteer to help of my own free will. No one ever asked me to do that, and most people never even say thank you. That's OK; they don't have to. But I do expect at the very least to be treated with decency. When I feel I'm being abused, I speak up. Again, there's nothing wrong with that.

I read all your posts, Chosen, on threads that interest me...........I use what I can if I can and I understand what you are saying. I'm not going to mute you...........but I wish you didn't come across as a "know it all" on almost everything. And, you do come across that way too.

Thanks for "correcting" though

"Closed minded". Interesting choice of words - but the only person I see here insisting that his way is the only real choice is...well, you. Seems a few people here have used attached lights, and they don't all seem "frustrated".

They certainly seem frustrated with environment editor, Dakota.

And I'm not "insisting" on anything. I'm simply offering the facts. Each individual is free to decide whether or not he/she wants to accept them.

As I've said about a thousand times now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out the drawbacks of any particular method, while at the same time offering a more advantageous solution. That's all I did here.

Look, Windlight happens to be a hot button topic right now. On the forums, the ratio is about 1000:1 in favor of those who don't yet know how to use it properly, relative to the rest of us who do. And a good portion of that thousand are extremely pissed off about it. So those of us who are trying to explain the facts of it, and to offer actual solutions, rather than just blindly jumping on the panic-mongers' bandwagons, are taking a little bit of a beating for our resolve. Some people just find it easier to complain than to learn, and for whatever reason, this is where they come to do it.

These kinds of unfortunate arguments have ensued in practically every thread on lighting that has come up since Windlight hit the main viewer. I wish it weren't so, but it is.

I'm fully aware that many of the "questions" about lighting are not questions at all, but rather invitations to commiserate. And nothing makes a miserable person more angry than when they encounter someone whom they cannot bring down to their level. So of course some of those people would rather jump on me and make wild accusations about bizarre interpretations of alleged meaning than just listen and learn. But it's not for them that I do this.

For every one person who asks a question, I know there are hundreds of others who have the same question but don't bother to ask. My concern is to make sure there's enough factual information out there that everyone who wants it can find it. If that means I get a little mud thrown at me from time to time by the chronic complainers, so be it.

I won't question your sense of martyrdom; I am curious, though...which of the "chronic complainers" have you had to deal with in this thread?

"Martyrdom" has nothing to do with it. For me to be "martyred", the insults would actually have to hurt me. They don't.

Look, when there's an honest misunderstanding, I'm happy to do whatever I can to clear things up. I do feel bad if I do or say something that inadvertently hurts someone else. But when it's just over-emotionalism in reaction to a currently sensitive topic, it's a totally different story. The blame for that falls squarely on the shoulders of the people doing the reacting. And since that's their problem, not mine, it really doesn't affect me.

So, no, I'm not suffering my way through this post. As I said, my only intent was to make sure the right information is out there for whomever wants it. Once I'd been accused of things I didn't actually do or say, though, I did feel it important to mount a defense.


You really want to go there? If it's all the same to you, I'd much rather just let this end peaceably if at all possible.

So a small handful of people are getting some enjoyment out this little "let's see if we can rattle Chosen because we're bored on a Saturday" game, great. I hope it's been worth it. I will not cross the line myself by returning the favor, so kindly don't ask me to.

As I understood it, the "trouble" in this particular thread started because somebody misinterpreted your remarks as condescending. Evidently those ruffled feathers have been plucked; however, one's having difficulty with the Environment Editor doesn't necessarily mean they're anti-Windlight, nor does it mean this discussion had to be part of some bigger campaign. I think that's an inference that you made, that isn't necessarily supported by facts.



Fair enough; I suppose the names don't matter. I'm just trying to figure out why someone disagreeing with or taking exception to your comments has to equate to them being a part of some larger issue. It's as though you saw a "help me with lighting please" thread and immediately thought, "There they go again". That veiled contemptuous attitude can show itself in what you write, whether that's your intention or not, and that's what the people who responded less-enthusiastically to your suggestions picked up on. I don't think there's any reason to think anybody in this thread necessarily had a bone to pick with Windlight.