New upgrade makes horizontals glare!

New upgrade makes horizontals glare!

Help! All my lovely rugs for sale all glare in the new 'windlight' viewer, although none are 'full-bright'. Has anyone else noticed this new problem with horizontal images? I can't imagine anyone wanting to buy any, now they look like that. Is there a solution in the mysterious new 'glow' button please?

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

Are any of the marked "Shiny"?

A bug. Debug>RenderGlow>FALSE will turn it off.

Assuming the glare is glow: check a run and find the prim or prims that are glowing. Under the "texture" tab in edit, make sure glow is set at 0.00.

I've heard of some items goin' glow, an have seen it most on hair. I saw moren a few folks runnin around with glowy heads in the beta.

Try it an let us all know, kay?



For one person. That will not turn it off on her stock, which is where her problem lies.

Mari

Thanks, but as rugs, none are marked 'shiny', and 'glow' (being an untouched button by me), is all set at 0 anyway.

So next wave of ideas, please, and it is my stock i am worried about: anyone using the new viewer will be dazzled by the ugly glare, and it is on all horizontals including my lovely parquet floors, but particularly ugly on my rugs!

Any Lindens out there who can fix this new bug please? Should i file a ticket?

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

what texture have you used, are they 32 bit .tga files, that would make them transparent in context and might do something like this?

any scripts in them?

have you moved them around, viewed from different angles, any changes there?

have you tried rezzing new copies, are they the same?

How about a screenshot or two, so we can see what you're talking about? "Glare" could mean any number of things.

My first thought is glow. I do realize you already said all your prims have glow set to zero. But have you actually checked the numbers to confirm that? Just because a prim was created pre-windlight doesn't automatically mean it has a value of zero in the glow field. Sometimes older prims do end up glowing, even though you'd assume they shouldn't be. The only way to ensure a prim is not going to glow is to set its glow parameter to zero, which you couldn't do if you weren't using Windlight before.

Hurrah! Problem solved! Someone kindly guided me through the 'custom' (an unexplored tab on graphics/preferences) and I unchecked 'atmospheric shaders', and lo! Glare vanished and normality restored!

I would love to show you the snapshots illustrating the problem, but i can't figure out how to do that.... I can paste in the text but not the images... Advice welcomed.

Now how do I explain to all my customers how to do this, when i am offline....?

Some older graphics cards (as per our other computer) don't show the 'custom' tab, but then, nor do they have the glare problem...

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

Word of warning: this doesn't really stop the issue. It makes it so you dun see it yourself. If I walked into your store looking for rugs, they might still glare.

What I'm beinning to tink is dat it could be a time of day issue. How do the same rugs look on a wall, or perhaps as sunrise, sunset, or midnight? Sometimes the sun can be a bit "glarey" on objects, much like a bright RLs sunny day can wash out stuff.

Mari

As Marianne said,you didn't solve the problem; you merely blinded your computer from seeing it. All you did was turn off Windlight on your machine. Everyone else will still see whatever it was you were seeing before.


What is it you don't know how to do, take the screenshots themselves, or show them in the forum? I'll explain both quickly.

To take a screenshot, you can either use SL's built-in snapshot function, or you can copy your entire desktop to cilpboard (every OS has a way to do this), and paste the image into an editing program such as Photoshop. To do the former, simpy click on the word "File" at the top left of your SL window to open the File menu, and then click where it Snapshot. In the dialog that pops up, set the options for what size you want the image to be, where you want to save the file, etc. Then click OK. To do the latter, if you're using Windows, simply press ctrl-printscreen to capture the desktop to the clipboard. Then, in your favorite image editing program (even MS Paint will work for this), simply create a new image and click Edit -> Paste (or use the standard shortcut ctrl-V). From there, save the image in whatever format and location you want. (Note: For the Web, use a compressed format like JPEG or PNG.)

To show the image on the forum, again you have a couple of choices. You can either attach it directly to a post, or you can upload it to a third party website, and link it. To attach, simply reply to the thread as you normally would, and then click the Manage Attachments button, located in the Additional Options box, below the typing area. In the dialog that pops up, navigate to wherever you've got your file stored and then click the Upload button.

If you'd rather link the image from a third party site, there are many sites to chose from. I usually use ImageShack, but literally any website will do. Follow whatever instructions your site of choice requires for upload, and then simply copy the URL (address) of the image from the site, and paste it in your post. If you want the image to be displayed within your post, instead of just showing up as linked text, put the URL between IMG tags. That means put "[/img]" after it, and "[img]" before it (without the quotes, but with the brackets).



You don't.

The last thing you want to do is tell your customers they have to cripple their graphics in order to enjoy your products. I certainly would never ever buy anything from someone who wants me to change my settings. I'm sure most people wouldn't either.

Trust me; you want to solve this problem, not just handicap your viewer so you can ignore it. Think of it this way. If you had a knife stuck arm, would you just load up on painkillers so you don't have to feel it, or would it make more sense to pull that thing out of there, and actually treat the wound?

Solve the problem itself. Don't just close your eyes (or in this case, your computer's eyes) and pretend it's not still there.

Chosen Few kindly suggested (about taking snapshots to show the problem):
"You can either attach it directly to a post, or you can upload it to a third party website, and link it. To attach, simply reply to the thread as you normally would, and then click the Manage Attachments button, located in the Additional Options box, below the typing area. In the dialog that pops up, navigate to wherever you've got your file stored and then click the Upload button."

I took a series of illustrative snapshots showing the glare problem. Sadly, there is no 'Manage Attachments' button, located in the 'Additional Options' box, below the typing area on my computer. How is it that other people have this facility but I do not, please?

Chosen Few suggested that I: "Solve the problem itself. Don't just close your eyes (or in this case, your computer's eyes) and pretend it's not still there." , so I took the following actions;

With Windlight on, I looked at the rugs in all times of day: still glaring. The dawn and sunset have nauseating shades of pinks and purples, and my avatar moved jerkily. It is as though a downlit spotlight follows the avatar to the right side, and glares onto horizontals and staircases whenever the avatar is within 5 m. Staircase in question is a sculpty with tga and goes glaring, so 45 degrees as well as horizontals are glared.
I checked that the rugs were not fullbright, shiny, and had the new 'glow' set to 0.
I had friends look at the problem, they see the same glare if they have windlight on. They also move jerkily.
I remade the rugs most affected in different jpeg resolutions, and rezzed them (only lighter coloured rugs seem to be affected, and tga rugs don't have a problem.) at different angles on the floor = same glare, which bleaches out the lighter shades.
I tried with 'atmospheric shaders' off, no glare problem but jerky movements and ugly sunrises.
I tried on another computer, with the new update, no glare and still jerky, but that computer has a poorer graphics card. So some fuzziness and the grass looked like patchy velvet.
I uninstalled the new update, reloaded it, same problems.
I uninstalled, backdated the computer, all problems solved.

Obviously, I am still left with the fact that customers won't buy glaring rugs and I have no wish to get them to alter their computers, so I will have to remove the rugs for sale. To do this i would have to upload Windlight again to identify them, but i prefer to use the snapshots I took as references. No idea how i can fix the staircase glare. I can't even offer replacement rugs, as they will see the same glare once they add Windlight. I can spot the new Windlit customers, as their avatars hop across the floor in jerky bounds.

So I don't want Windlight.

I did ask in the Slexchange Forum, and overnight got some more interesting replies, including this one:

"A work around fix for this:
You need activate the debug mode on (Ctrl Alt D)
Go to Advance and open Debug Window
Look for RenderGlow Strength and click on default button.
LL screwed up the setting on install. It should be set for 0.350
To see more info, it has been JIRA'ed at https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-539"

So, my conclusion is, Windlight is rubbish. It will uglify rugs and make avatars jerk around like puppets. I am greatly relieved that this is a general problem, and not just mine, but it will affect my sales of rugs, which used to be quite popular. I hope that sunglasses for avatars are selling well, to avoid the glare and ugly sunrises and sickly sunsets on Windlight!

Any more solutions welcome, especially to the problem of the missing 'Additional options ' button.

Many thanks for all your kind comments and advice, which is teaching me to use new buttons (if I have them!) LOL

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

Whoops, my mistake. I had forgotten that attachments are not allowed in all forums. I spend so much time in the content creation forums, where they are allowed.

Strangely, in Firefox, I still see that button in this forum. But if I fire up Internet Explorer, it's not there.

Anyway, Ainee, since you can't attach the snapshots here, just do the other option I mentioned. Go to to a third party hosting site like imageshack.us or photobucket.com, and upload your screenshots there (for free). Then, after each one has uploaded, copy its web address, and paste it here. Everyone else will then be able to use the links to see your images.



I'm not quite sure what you mean by that description. But are you sure you don't have any light-emitting objects attached to your avatar? Or perhaps some light-emitting objects in the room? If it's the latter, any given light could easily remain turned off until you get close to it, since OpenGL only allows for a total of 6 local lights in the scene. If there are seven in the room, the furthest one away from you will always appear to be turned off. Then as you get closer to number seven, it will suddenly switch on, and one of the others will turn off.


I'm not sure what the "with TGA" part has to do with anything in this context.


First, let me say that there's absolutely no way that either the resolution or the format of the source file for your textures could possibly affect what we've been talking about here. The ONLY difference between sourcing your texture from a JPEG and sourcing it from a TGA is that the one that came from the JPEG will look a little worse, since it ends up going through lossy compression twice instead of once. All images you upload are copied to JPEG2000 format as soon as you hit the OK button in the Upload Texture dialog. Your actual source file never leaves your own hard drive.

Second, I think I might be starting to understand what you mean by "glare". Are you just saying that lightly colored horizontal surfaces are looking more washed out than you would like when the sun is shining on them? If so, then that's just something you'll have to account for in your texturing. Part of being a good texture artist means always being mindful of the environment any given texture is going to be displayed in. In order for textues to be "Windlight friendly", they need to be made with a few things in mind. I'll explain.

SL's old lighting system was heavily reliant on ambient light. Direct illumination was almost non-existent. This was completely unrealistic, but was more uniform, so it was fairly easy to texture for. You put a texture on an upward facing surface, it didn't look much different than if it were on a downward facing one, just a little brighter. This made the whole world look quite flat and cartoonish. But since it was easy to work with, and since it had been that way for years, people got used to it, and some even came to accepted it as "realistic", even though it wasn't.

Now, enter Windlight. We've now got a much more realistic mix of both ambient light and direct light. No texture that was made to look good with just ambient light will continue to look good at all times with direct light shining on it as well. It will wash out. There's a whole new ballgame going on now, and texture artists will need to learn to adjust for it.

I often get yelled at when I say that, by people who find it easier to complain than to adapt. To those people, I wish the best of luck as they move out to live with dinosaurs and woolly mammoths and all the other creatures of the past who failed to adapt. To everyone else, I say let's have fun discovering all the best ways to use this new, more realistic, lighting behavior to our great advantage.

Anyway, to demonstrate what I mean by "more realistic", try the following RL experiment. You'll need to do this on a bright, sunny day, around noon time. Get yourself a bright white piece of paper (not notebook paper, bright white paper, like high quality inkjet paper or something), and a hard pencil. With the hard pencil, draw a picture on the paper, of anything you want. As you're sitting inside your house, looking at your picture, it's totally clear, right? You can see every detail. This is because everything inside your house is indirectly lit. There's little if any direct illumination inside a house on a sunny day. And without direct illumination, surfaces look very even-toned. The light gray lines of a hard pencil are clearly visible on a white piece of paper. Now, take your paper outside at high noon, and face it directly upward. Take a good look. Can you still see all those light gray details? Probably not. Chances are that most, if not all, of the lines are totally washed out by the bright white paper reflecting the direct sunlight into your eyes.

This is precisely how Windlight behaves. Direct illumination will wash out low-contrast details on surfaces that face the sun. If you want to prevent that from happening, you need to give your textures more contrast. But beyond that, you also need to let your mind adjust to accept the fact that at noon, things are going to look very different than at, say, 4 p.m. In SL, we're used to "noon" meaning "everything's evenly lit and easy to see". Why anyone defines that as "realistic" is beyond me. At noon on a sunny day in RL, upward facing, lightly colored, surfaces are washed out and glaring. That's what happens at noon in Windlight, too. People can argue all day about whether or not that looks "good", but it can't be denied that it's a hell of a lot more "realistic" than the way it was before.

All that said, there is one hole in the experiment. Currently in SL, Windlight or no Windlight, there is no difference between "indoors" and "outdoors". Objects do not block direct light, so the indoor part of the experiment cannot be replcated in SL right now. But there is good news. According to what the Windlight team had to say on the subject at their townhall meeting the other day (transcript at http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/11/1191-office-hours-4-hours-of-fun/) the code for that is already written, and will be added into the system soon. Shadows are on the way! Indoor and outdoor conditions will be able to be simulated realistically, side by side. I, for one, am really excited about that.

OK, so with all that in mind, what if you don't like the intensity of the sunlight? Well, it's totally adjustable. Simply open up your Environment Editor (World -> Environment Settings -> Environment Editor), click on Advanced Sky, and then click on the Lighting tab. See where it says Sun/Moon color? See the 4 sliders under it. The bottom one has an I next to it. That stands for Intensity. Crank that down all the way, and crank the Ambient I slider up a bit, and your back to ambient-only lighting, exactly the way SL used to be (except you've still got the pretty Windlight sky above you).

But remember, this is only happening locally on your end. It's not happening for everyone around you. Eventually, LL will make Windlight settings into tradeable assets, at which time you could distribute an abmient-only lighting scheme along with your rugs if you really wanted to. I wouldn't recommend it, but you could. The better solution is to create more robust textures that will look good under a wide range of lighting conditions.



I can't see how turning off atmospheric shaders would make your movements any jerkier. If anything, it should get smoother, since there's less information for the video card to have to worry about. When you switch between the two modes, FPS does drop severely for a few seconds, but it recovers right afterwards. At least it does on my machine. If it doesn't on yours, maybe relogging between switches would be in order.


Of course.


No, all problems ignored, not solved.


Ainee, as I said, just learn to create more robust textures. Don't just pack up your toys and go home because you don't like the new rules of the playground. Learn to work WITH the new system. It going to be a bit of a learning curve, but the rewards will be great for those who persevere. As I said earlier, you either adapt or you perish. It's saddening to hear that you're opting for the latter so quickly. I'd encourage you to change your outlook on this. You've got an opportunity to learn a lot from the problem you've been having, and to benefit greatly. Why not use this experience to become one of the world's experts on what does and doesn't work for texturing in Windlight?


Don't be so quick to assume everybody lags in Windlight. First of all, if you set it to emulate the exact conditions of the older viewer, you'll get higher FPS, not lower. Second, those with newer graphics cards have no problem at all.


As I said, don't give up so easily. All it takes is some learning.


That's the same band-aid cover-up advice you got before, authored by people who have not taken the time to understand the system.



It's not "rubbish". It's frankly the best thing that's happened to SL in the last four years. Instead of panicking just because it's different, learn to use it.

As I said, Windlight is more than capable of creating the EXACT same lighting conditions we had before if that's what you really want. But I'd encourage you to embrace the idea of becoming a more versatile texture artist. You should always be prepared for the fact that any platform can change or disappear over night. If you become so specialized that you can only be successful under one narrow set of conditions, then like the mammoth and the saber toothed tiger before you, you won't be able to cope with change, and you'll disappear. Develop your skills so you can texture for any lighting scheme any platform could throw at you, and you'll always succeed.

Crikey!

Thank you for this amazing reply, i will print it out and study it at length! It certainly throws a whole new light on my glaring problem!

So Ainee Kohime is now resolving to rise to your challenge and learn more!

Best wishes to Chosen and everyone else too!

Ainee

This reminds me of what I see with a lot of badly designed face lights, and is caused by the overspill of the light. Just a thought, though, as Chosen, IMO, might have things under control.

I know I'd love to see the rugs in question, though.

Thank you, Marianne, please all of you visit inworld, as I am very proud of all my hard work, and that would be the most agreeable way for you all to come and look at the problem!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hermetic%20Palaces/118/119/26

The rugs are in the large new Ainee's Low-prim Antiques Gallery close to the Palace Gates arrival point, on the upper floor. There is a lot of lighting (chandeliers, candlarbras, all the classic pictures) and the stairs are very bright in Windlight. There are more rugs on the floors in the Palace Arcade shops, through the gates and up the staircase into the Ballroom.

If you get exhausted by the dazzle, you can always switch off 'Atmospheric Shaders' and see how they should be!

BTW, on a point raised by Chosen, I try to use as few TGAs on textures as i can, as they conflict, especially with tga chair legs and skirts on circular rugs, so i prefer to use JPegs for images as much as is feasible. I suspect that TGAs cause lag, too. What do you all think about this?

Looking forward to seeing you all inworld.

Best wishes from Ainee Kohime

Ainee, let me help you out on your understanding of how this works. As I said earlier, your source image for your textures never leaves your own hard drive. When you "upload" an image, you are not uploading the TGA file or the JPEG file itself. What you are actually doing is copying the image to JPEG2000 format (not to be confused with JPEG), and then that copy is uploaded to the SL servers. So when you view the image in-world, what you're looking at is the JPEG2000, not the TGA, not the JPEG, not anything else. Everything in-world is JPEG2000. See the sticky on file formats at the top of the texturing form for more information on this.

The "conflict" you describe is most likely the alpha sorting glitch. When two or more 32-bit textures overlap in close proximity, the renderer has trouble determining which one to draw as "in front" and "in back". "Trouble" is actually not the best word, since the behavior is entirely predictable if you understand the mechanics of what's happening, but for our purposes here, that word is as good of a simplification as any.

So, what does this have to do with your TGA vs. JPEG question? The answer is TGA gives you the option to save as 24-bit or 32-bit, while JPEG is 24-bit only. And the bit depth survives the conversion to JPEG2000. So, if you've been saving your TGA's as 32-bit when they should be 24, and it sounds like you have, then the problems you've been seeing are due to a simple case of user error, not a problem with any particular format. Had those same images been 24-bit like they were supposed to be, there would be no "conflict".

It's not uncommon for those new to graphics to assume, mistakenly, that "more bits" must somehow be better than "less bits", so they save all their TGA's as 32-bit until they learn the hard way why that's a really bad thing to do, just as you now have. Never ever ever save an image as 32-bit unless you absolutely need part or all of it to be transparent. If your intention is for the image to be opaque, ALWAYS save it as 24-bit.

For more information on what bit depth is, and how to give your images the correct options, see the transparency guide, stickied at the top of the texturing forum.

As for the lag quesiton, that answer could go in one of three directions:

1. If you've been saving your images as 32-bit when they only needed 24, then you're making them 33% larger than they should be. In that case, you would be causing more client side lag because your images would be consuming more video memory than they should. This has nothing to do with the TGA format, though. This is purely due to user error.

2. Again, if you've been unnecessarily saving your images as 32-bit, then you're also causing unnecessary lag due to the fact that images with transparency require an extra render pass. If an image is meant to be opaque, but you've saved it as 32-bit, it is treated by the renderer as if it is transparent. The extra 8 bits constitute the image's alpha channel, which is its transparency data map. If those bits are present, the image has to be sorted, just like every other transparent item in the scene. That takes more time, so your frame rate slows down. But again, this has nothing to do with the TGA format. It's entirely an issue of user error.

3. Now let's compare apples to apples. Assuming we're talking about 24-bit images across the board, then in most cases a JPEG-sourced texture will actually take slightly longer to load than a TGA-sourced one. That may sound bass ackwards if you're thinking of it in terms of source image file size. Obviously TGA files are much larger than JPEG files. But remember, the source files are not what are in-world. It's their JPEG2000 copies. And a JPEG2000 sourced from a JPEG will almost always come out slightly larger than one sourced from a TGA. How can this be? Well, remember what I said earlier about lossy compression? JPEG compression is lossy, so JPEG images contain artifacts (little mistakes here and there, visible as blurs or splotches, or smudges, or spots). When the image is copied to JPEG2000, the system has no way of knowing that those artifacts aren't supposed to be there, so it does its best to preserve them. The result is a JPEG2000 file that comes out slightly larger than it otherwise would. Larger files take longer to deliver, so the texture loads a little more slowly.


In summary, for best results, use 24-bit TGA for opaque images, and 32-bit TGA for transparent ones. Never use 32-bit TGA for images that don't require transparency. And it's generally best to stay away from JPEG altogether. JPEG is good for Web pages, the last place where file size is still more important than image quality, but it's the last thing you should ever use for texturing. It's lossy, low quality, and feature-poor. TGA is pretty much the industry standard format of choice for texturing, for good reason.

Again, for more on all of the above, as well as additional need-to-know information, read the stickies at the top of the texturing forum.

Well I checked out the store. I would say it's the chandeliers and candles that are partly to blame. Each chandelier has 6 or more light sources in them. The problem with SL light sources is that their brightness and intensity add up to easily create a very bright and harsh light. Also, light colored textures on prims tend to reflect light much more than darker colors. I notice that a lot of my light colored dresses look awful now as the prim skirts are all brightly lit and the avatar dress textures are not.

I just went there, too. The problem is definitely the local lights.

All I can said, Ainee, is wow, you've got an unbelievable amount of lights in your place. No wonder everything is washing out. Your problem has nothing to do with Windlight, and nothing to do with the textures on the rugs. It's all about use vs. misuse of local light. This, like the TGA issues I talked about in my last post, is a simple case of user error.

For example, on your "PM Old oak wheel candlabra 10 prims" object, you've got six candles, each of which is casting high intensity light for what looks to be a 10 meter radius. Add up all six, and that's enough to wash out ANYTHING. Your "PM T Tall bracket for sconce with candles" object has three such lights on it. That is also enough to wash out all textures in the vicinity.

On each object, turn off all lights except for one. One is all you need. Never ever have more than one prim on a single object emitting light, at least not when all the parts fall within the light radius, as they do on your candelabras. It's total overkill. Not only does it wash out all textures within the light radius, as we've been discussing, but it also severely limits your ability to see the effects of multiple light sources within the room. Remember, six lights is all you get to play with. Spend all six on a single object, like you did on your wheel candelabra, and you've blown your whole wad right there. This is why your rugs don't appear to wash out until you get very close to them. When you're further away, you're still within range of other lights, so the effects are more spread out, more dissipated. But when you get close enough that one candelabra switches fully on, BAM, total washout.

Now, let's talk about why you thought this was a Windlight problem. Quite simply, it's because before you had Windlight installed, you weren't seeing the cumulative effects of local light. You were blinded from seeing the problem you'd already caused, so of course you didn't know it was there. Then when you installed Windlight, and your (computer's) eyes were opened, your first instinct (naturally) was to blame the system for the problem, instead of realizing that the error was yours.

Fix your lights properly, and the problem will go away.

....Ainee dashes off to blow out almost all of her candles... and will report back on the results soon!

Thank you, thank you, btw did you like what i have been making? I can see that there is room for improvement, but i am remaking older items and some new ones with which i am really quite chuffed! I am adding scripts too, which is another steep learning curve for me...
By joining SL, i have been compelled to learn more about computers than in my previous life put together.... And it is not even my first SL birthday yet...

...Blowing out candles....

Best wishes from Ainee