blur effect

Hi all!

I'm working on the blur effect in second life. I know that we cannot work directly on the picture which comes from the second world so we cannot apply filters such photoshops' ones. I'm working on a particular superposition of textures with a special alpha layer and other effects but the result isn't good. Do you have any ideas of how to make an "as realistic as possible" blur effect into SL ? Thank you !!

I'm not sure I quite understand the challenge. Most of us use the full array of filters and whatnot in Photoshop (or GIMP or whatever)to create textures and then upload them to SL. Are you looking for something different?

Are you trying to fake a motion blur for an in-world snapshot?

Or trying to change depth of field in a snapshot, so the distant items are more blurred than items up close?

It's generally a lot easier just to export the snapshot and touch it up in Photoshop.

Nothing you do in-world will be that likely to make a motion-blur effect that can be seen in real-time by others in-world.

I want to make kind of glasses or sight which shows an inworld evolutive effect depending on the avatars around.. the blur effect is shown sometimes with this stuff when it is worn. So in order to be well anderstood : i don't want to add a blur effect on a freezed picture which would be got with a snapshot but with the direct view of the client, adding superposition of textures on the hud or something..

Cool idea! The first suggestion that comes to my mind is probably not going to be perfect, but it may point you in a fruitful direction. You can't create a lens or anything that actually distorts what a person sees on her monitor, but you can certainly create an overlay that behaves as a filter. As a simple example, you could color a prim uniformly red, give it a 90% transparency, and wear it as a HUD that's centered and stretched to fill the entire screen. That might simulate a color perception defect (or maybe a bad sunburn). You could do the same for snow blindness, macular degeneration, or other conditions that don't distort the field of vision as much as mask it. You're probably better at imagining ways to do this than I am, but it's a start.......

So, sort of like making you see an "aura" around avatars, but not around other prims? I do not think that would be possible. Sorry. The client can't tell any difference between a person and a palm tree, when it comes to what you see. Any visual changes would affect the whole scene. And there is extremely little, if anything at all, that you can do to create an optical distortion on what the Camera sees.

As Rolig says, you could do a full-screen HUD to 'filter' he whole scene. But not to affect only the avatars. And a full-screen HUD would almost certainly prevent you from being able to click on anything in-world.

I anderstand all what you said the only interaction with avatars will be the calcul of the distance between them and me, for example image a simple sniper rifle, all is important is at the center of the screen ! This is like that, i will work on "in front of me" avatars. The effect will change with those datas. Well, im actually working on the different "filters" to superpose on the HUD as you have proposed and i thank you for that but at the moment it looks like electronic sight with colored moving snow on my screen, its a good effect for this but not for my "old school" sight .. :/
I was thinking of a kind of alpha layer which a certain way to draw full alpha and no alpha areas, like on a Chessboard or a spiral, any ideas ?

A HUD is merely one or more prims, attached to your screen instead of to your avatar. They exist on your line of sight, between your mouse and what you see. So if, for example, you had a prim that was clear in the center (100% alpha) fading to translucent at the edges, and if you positioned that as a HUD to cover the screen, then whatever was at the center of your camera focus while in Mouselook would be sharp and clear, getting more blurry as it gets closer to the edges.

But I can't concieve of any way to make that clear spot track a given point in space within your vision, such as highlighting a rifle in the upper right of your field of view, and remaining centered on that as you changed camera angle to look at it.

Also, your 'filter' would really only look right in mouselook, where it would move as you change your central point for viewing. If not in mouselook, it would just stay centered on the screen.

Either way, if you try to click on something, like to open a door, your full-screen HUD would get the click action, and not the door.

For that reason, most HUD's only take up part of the screen, like the mini-map does. You may have more luck scripting a small display to put in one corner of the screen, that places aiming crosshairs or other symbols over dots representing threats.

I'll recommend looking into what various types of scanner scripts do, and how they work, as a starting point.

Hmmm... I thought I understood you before, but now I'm not sure. I thought you were interested in recreating optical aberrations.

You want to put cross-hairs on the screen? That's easy. Just draw them in Photoshop, create an alpha channel image that leaves the cross-hairs themselves opaque and everything else transparent, and upload it. Wear it centered as a HUD. I'm not sure what the rest of your note means, though, probably because I have never had any reason to look into a "simple sniper rifle" to see what's there.

EDIT: Oh, and you can manage to keep the cross-hairs centered on an avatar if you ALT-Left Click on the avatar so that he's centered on your screen, where the cross-hair HUD is. If the avatar moves, then he still stays centered on the screen because you have made him your focal point. That WON'T work if you center on anything else, or if you mess with your camera after doing the ALT-Left Click.

Ok i see i need to explain a very clear example of what i want to make ! eheh

I will choose a very simple example the sniper rifle view : black every where with a whole in the middle, there you can see your targets etc.. if the avatar at the middle is at the right distance the view is o.k. else the blur effect takes place ! ^_^

All is in mouselook, i don't need to click on something. the blur effect, as we said, needs to be a texturing effect on the screen, i mean an HUD part. Im following the Roliq ideas and it gives good effects, like eletronic or bionic view but it's isn't yet a blur effect at all

I know that i cannot distord the picture seen but i want to make kind of visual effect that is looks like as much as possible. Maybe with special alpha layers combined on the HUD with rotated textures and other kind of effects, i don't know.

thats all i want atm

I created a blur effect HUD some time ago but LL broke it.

If you want to create a blur effect, do this:

Texture=blank
Color=black
Transparency=10%
Glow=1.0

Look through it.

Each 0.1 glow applies a 100% "bloom".

So if you first attenuate the light 10x then amplify 1000%, you only see the glow effect, but it's the same overall brightness as the original objects.

Voila, blur!

But it won't work on a HUD.

OK, we're at the limits of my experience here, because I really don't know what it looks like in a rifle sight. From what you said, though, it seems as if you can make a passable HUD by doing some variation on my original suggestion. In Photoshop, try applying a radial gradient (white at the middle, grading to black toward the edges) and then adding a grainy noise filter followed by a Lens blur. Then cut a hole in the middle of that layer and draw your cross-hairs in it. Make the alpha channel image so that the cross-hairs and the area outside the "hole" are opaque and everything else is clear. Upload that texture and use it as your HUD, centered and stretched as I described earlier.

Something like this, maybe ... http://www.flickr.com/photos/rolig/3237468996/

Ceera's right that once the HUD is in place, you won't be able to click on anything except the HUD itself, because it will fill the entire screen. One way around that is to make a second texture that has ONLY the cross-hairs in it. Put both textures in the HUD, and add a script that toggles between them AND changes the size of the HUD. When the big texture (the more complicated one) fills the screen you can click it to change to the other, smaller and simpler texture. When the smaller one is visible, you can click normally anywhere outside of it or you can click on the texture itself to change to the big texture.

Hummm.

You could use a prim with a hole in it for the round sight picture area, and use prim crosshairs across that. This would allow clicking in the "scope view" area, as long as not exactly on the cross hairs.

And if a translucent prim for "blurring" was across that opening when "out of focus", but was NOT across that opening when "in-focus", that might work...

Ok im going to try your ideas: i ll make the hud in world and this will follow the cam so i will be able to use glow effect and the user will see trough. Your ideas helped me i thank you all ! I will need to get control and track camera perms and rez allowed to make it work fine