Can I Take 4 Photos At Once?

I have finished creating several skins and now comes the time to photograph them to make my advertising boards...

I already have the basic standing pose, NO animation, so each skin will be worn on the AV while the AV remains motionless in the same position.

I want to take four photos - front full body, back full body, closeup face, and closeup angled face.

Is there a poseball specifically for camera positions, or some kind of posable stationary HUD camera product?

With quite a few skins, and four images to be taken per skin as it's being worn, I'm thinking I cannot be the only one who has had this issue come up before.

Google is not helping me.

Many thanks!

- Lenny Looming

Do you have photoshop? Splice in all four poses into one texture.

No, that wasn't my question. I have no issues with the photos once they have been taken. I am great with putting them together to make a single advertising image.

I'm talking about IN Second Life - taking the actual pictures themselves.

As it is, I've had to use alt-left mouse button to sway and turn the camera position around to snap the images in-world.

I want to be able to pose the avatar (which I've done) then position the camera shots as if the camera was on pose balls - one ball for each position the image is to be taken.

Is this possible?

Thanks!

I may have just answered part of my own question...

Why not have a static camera position, then change the avatar position using 4 different pose balls...

But that still leaves the basic question - can I insure that every time I do this, the camers can be placed in the precise same position?

Ok...

This time I Googled, but using a different question - "static camera in second life" and this link came up, WITH a great free script for making a stationary camera position.

http://moriash.blogspot.com/2006/12/camera-lock.html

Thanks Lenny Looming for solving my problem! - Lenny Looming

You're welcome Lenny. Any time! - Lenny Looming



- LL

I think you mean you're looking for a fixed camera angle, so the model is shot from exactly the same angle every time for each skin, right?
I'm pretty sure there are some gadgets and maybe even photostudios that do this for you, scripting camera positions isn't that hard, so it should be possible to define some default camera position(s) with each pose, if the posing stand and the camera are somehow connected to eachother.

get a be-bar.
thats one of those multi purpose utility huds, costs 99L$ at a little shop somewhere next door to xcite main store, does a kind of Cool Things(tm), and for you it saves up to 5 different camera positions.
so you'd get on your pose, adjust camera, save the camera, repeat.

If you get four pose-balls you like set up in a group, you can take a photo with your av on each in turn. If you do this without moving the camera between shots you can keep the background unchanged. As long as you can get all 4 pose-balls in view at once, you don't need anything clever to keep the camera from moving. Take photo, stand up, sit on the new pose-ball; lather, rinse, repeat.

I've done this for double poses and it worked well. Drop all your pics into the same window as layers, and erase through from one to the other. It's easy to match up because the backgrounds are identical.

If you want the poses to overlap, it can be more difficult. What Clarissa mentioned might be easier for this. Photograph each pose separately over a neutral background (fullbright green is good, for exactly the reason sfx uses 'green screen'). You can then crop out the green and arrange the poses over each other with a new background. A little drop shadow helps give the image 'depth'. I used this method here:

Yes, and it works even better if you just change skin/shape whatever on each ball before moving.
However, this has the drawback that it's not repeatable for future releases. So if you want to take the exact same shots (for consistency) on a next time that you release a skin or clothing or whatever, you'll basically want some "saved camera and pose positioning" gadget. Especially skin and shape makers seem to like this system, of keeping all aspects of their advertisements the same, except for the skin/shape of their models.
For clothes, it seems like this works counter productive though. Featuring every outfit by the exact same model in the exact same pose under the exact same lighting makes the clothes become "too similar". Sort of suggesting that every new release is more of the same old same. People might buy 1 or 2 outfits on their first visit, and another outfit on their next, but by the time they visit a third time, they get the feeling that they've already seen it, and leave. New things just won't stand out anymore.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I do want to offer a slight clarification here as far as the final result...

This is going to eventually be for a site I'm currently working on for tutorials as well as a section that I'm already populating with many different textures - including those of skins.

While buying such "copy/mod/xfer" inworld is great and all, being able to browse and download them on a website so you may get the actual original TGA's or the transparent PNG's, as in flowers and trees, would be far more helpful for content creators to work their magic outside of SL.

So the poses and such in this case are preferable to be identical in each and every photo because on a web page there will be many of themside by side to scroll through. I therefore prefer each image to be precisely identical in every respect except for the skin so that it may be used as a reference point for them all. The avatar will have the same shape, same lighting, same background, and same pose/camera angle - so there won't be any discrepancy on quality due to the possibility the lighting was a bit off, the pose as slightly twisted, etc...

I'll be selling (and giving many away) directly through my website via Second Life - you'd "purchase" links that are one-time-use-only for access to the original template/textures from my website.

I've already acquired an entire full private region for use in-world and right now it's closed to outsiders while I tweak my skins, clothing, and countless hundreds of flowers, shrubs, trees, etc that will all be available as original textures on the website.

I plan to take photos of the flowers, plants and trees, rocks, etc - the same way - so all images will be the same on the site - just the subject of the composition will be different.

Thanks!

Will definitely look for that shortly! Right now inworld I'm naked and flipping through about 30 skins I've made.

I'll throw on some clothes ina little bit and go grab one of those if it's as you describe it. Sound like exactly what I want/need.

Will save me from having to do the scripting myself.

And if it saves multi camera angles, great - then I can just use a single pose, making it easier.

Thanks!

I make a camera lock that will let you name and store as many camera angles as you want:

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1091186

So create one named "body", another "back", another "face" and another "face2" (or whatever).

The instructions step you through it:

http://www.vengeancestudio.com/sl/docs/cameralock/CameraLockOp.html

As one other purchaser said - it does exactly what I need it to do.

I just bought it. So far I'm thrilled with my initial tests.

THANKS (see, offering self-promo ads on the forums is fine - when they relate directly to the post). I do not mind this kind of advertising at all.

Thanks again!

- Lenny Looming