fullbright or not?

I like full bright, it gives me control of what the build looks like no matter what the lighting conditions.

I've been reading about people who don't though, so I thought I'd have a go at non fullbrighting a build..

yes, some parts look lovely depending on the time of day - most of it looks either washed out or a variation of whatever colour is supposed to represent the time of day.. i.e. that orangey colour for sunrise and the purple for midnight.

my question is, how many people actually *like* non fullbright buildings? does anyone actually build them that way?

any advice? the best i can work out is to put a low shine on some surfaces to try to keep some of the texture showing, I also made a couple of prims light sources to try to even it up a little.

tbh though I can't see the point.

So, what am I doing wrong?

People make entire buildings fullbright?

It depends on what I am working on. For interiors I tend to full bright all the textures and photoshop in my own lighting. That way the SL sun cannot mess up the desired effect and everyone basically sees the same thing no matter what time of day they have their clients set to.

I despise full bright. Unless it's glowing, it should not look bright. If a light is on, the bulb can be full bright, but otherwise I quite simply will NOT use it unless I can mod it to no longer be full bright. I keep getting hair that's full bright, and I have to fix it so that when the sun sets my hair isn't still as bright as if the sun was on it.

When furniture or objects are full bright, and not mod-enabled, I can't use them anywhere. Why the hell would my sofa be glowing when nothing else is? If an entire build is full bright, then my avatar looks out of place. It just doesn't look right.

There are very, very few exceptions, mostly just including art (Which is intended to be seen under a specific light for proper colours and whatnot, since an art studio really would have lights set up to keep it bright) and lights.

It probably doesn't help that I've created my own environment settings, with lighting designed to make the world look right to me. My avatar looks smooth, things are bright where they should be and dark where not, and so on.

I don't build buildings, I essentially build furniture.

Although the very first house I had here I bought and absolutely hated the way the walls would change colour. at that stage I didn't know about fullbright and it drove me crazy trying to work out just what was happening.

I soon ditched that house and haven't owned one since, so I have no idea what people like or don't like or the current trends.

All I know is that my latest piece looks rubbish to me. Hence the question.

I use full bright quite a bit and it does not produce a glow or emit light. it just overrides the SL lighting engine. I have achieved quite natural looking results using full bright. Now if i make a picture full bright and hang it on a wall that is not, it will look silly and lit up.

Me personally, I do not like furniture that is full bright because most buildings do not use full bright so the furniture would appear lit up compared to the surroundings.

I only use fullbright for three things:

1. If I'm baking lighting into my textures, then they have to be fullbright, or the baked lighting effect will be ruined. For me, that means anything sculpted is always fullbrighted, since all my sculpties get full texture bakes. For things made of regular prims, I'll usually bake lighting for interiors, and use in-world lighting for exteriors (with faux shadows added where appropriate). In RL, interior lighting is controlled and usually static, while exterior lighting is chaotic and dynamic. I see no reason not to do the same in SL.

2. I almost always make signs fullbright, so they can be easily read at any time of day.

3. Anything that is itself a light source, such as a flame, a light bulb, a neon tube, etc., should always be fullbright.


That's really it. Fullbrighting a whole build without baking lighting/shading into it pretty much destroys the point of putting it in a 3D world environment in the first place.

If you don't care about realism, though, then do whatever you want.

it's interesting...

I just took it down to the ground and tried it out again (my workroom is around 4000m) and it looks completely different when it's outside and in its intended surroundings.

now i can see the attraction. up in the skybox though it was completely hideous

I didn't mean that it did. I mean that unless the object is glowing (Via windlight Glow) or emitting light (Via the light characteristic) it generally shouldn't look like it is.

Honestly, no. Turn fullbright off on all of your stuff. Really.

but surely in rl you don't stumble around in the dark? Pretty well everyone I know has lighting which illuminates their rooms and makes all walls and furniture appear very close to daylight. Unless of course they have dimmers to set a mood.

so are you talking about sl realism or real life realism here?

Lighting in SL illuminates objects, including furniture.

Well in fairness, there's really no stumbling around in the dark in SL either. It's not like your screen goes black when the sun goes down. The "moonlight" is awfully bright. All objects can be seen clearly.



Right. That's why I said I DO fullbright interiors, with faux lighting baked into the textures. Did I not make that clear in my earlier post?

Here are a couple of examples:





Those rooms look the same at all times of day. The exterior structures the are inside of, though, do not.




Both.

Is it on fire? Incandescent? Radioactive? Supposed to be a rear-illuminated sign? Then use fullbright.

Anything else, in a building, or furniture, or almost any sort of prim construct, is an instant NO SALE in my book. Buildings don't glow at night. Neither do book cases, Tansu Chests, rugs, prim plants... I have seen all of these set as Fullbright, and the effect is that at night, it looks dead wrong.

Fullbright is a give and take. If you're making furniture for sale for other people to use, basically, don't. Their homes won't be fullbright, they won't lock their clocks at a daylight setting to make everything match a fullbright item. So, mostly, they will not be satisfied with the product. (^_^)

Fullbright is the setting to place a rejection of all light and shadow. That way, bright textures appear to light up and dark textures appear to have the extreme of darkness. When handled properly, an entire fullbright build can look very attractive. But, this is only true if the textures were very carefully created and consistent from the largest building element to the smallest item of furniture. At the same time, the effect is best controlled when the sunlight setting is equally controlled. So building in an estate sim where you can lock the daylight setting would yield the best results. (^_^)

If anyone remembers Privateer Space... Aley used fullbright to simulate lit surfaces a lot in order to reduce rendering lag caused by dynamic lighting. Her texture art was perfectly suited to the effect. (^_^)

Really. Those are the controls that need to be in place for fullbright to look good. Otherwise, any items set with it will clash with their surroundings and create a considerably disappointing visual. (^_^)y

Yes this was exactly what i was talking about. I try to do the same with my interiors to achieve a controlled look that will not change with the position of the sun.

Very nice work btw Chosen.

I didn't think about this... with some sculpts, I will have them as fullbright due to baked textures, however, not all of them. I try not to bake true shadows into my objects, just ambient occlusion and loose shadows, so that I can leave them without fullbright and have them behave properly.

If it looks too dark, or bad, though, I will certainly make it full bright to fix it. I always leave my creations as mod/copy, though, so that others can change it if they like.

For me, there is only one thing worse than full bright building exteriors, and that is full bright trees. Either of these utterly ruin the night. Inside, it's a completely different matter.

Agreed! It astounds me that so many trees are full bright. What is the reason!?

Aside from a full bright Christmas tree I saw once, I don't think I've ever seen a glowing tree that I liked. Full bright on most things generally turns me off. It's like staring into headlights. On a tree it's obscene.

I agree with all the comments about full bright on building exteriors, but when the sim is midnight you cant see anything.. I have a nice shopping district that I think looks fine during the day but when the sim is night people cant see anything. I have made the interior walls full bright and they look good from outside looking through the doorways and windows.
For the exteriors I am planing to go full bright but to control it with some grey color tones over the textures to stop the washed out look.
I also noticed the direction the walls face effect the tone or shade effect of the texture on the prim.
Anyone have better solutions?

That's because it's actually working based off of sun/moon position, clouds, haze, ambient light, etc. Just like RL, things aren't solidly lit all the way around.

How about turning up your nighttime brightness setting? You should be able to see just fine at night.

Until LL improve the lighting sytem so you can have more than 6 lighbulbs on at a time, I find Full bright good for stuff like vendors etc, otherwise you have to pull out a torch or yank the sun into the midday position to see them properly.
I suppose the facelight 5000 brigade never have this problem