Big frustration: Local lights and photography

Please delete this message.

The bigger the light object, the more light will shine. That's the biggest thing to remember.

If you are going this route I think you will find that most SL photos will need some amount of post-production work (i.e. Photoshop/PSP/GIMP tweaking). This is coming from a RL photographic silly purist who believes that unretouched images are somehow "better". The big reason is that the SL "camera" is optimized for in-game viewing and "not" photography. All sorts of things that a a good snapshot camera can adjust (aperture, shutter speed, film speed) just don't exist in SL.

That said, I'm not sure what you mean about lights changing from shoot to shoot, so I'll answer what I think your question might be. First of all, light sources near you will affect the "portrait" lighting and are not blocked by prims (walls, etc.). So, if a neighbor puts up a big light, it may well bleed into your image.

Mol was right about the size of lights being proportional to their emmission and, just like photographic lights, diminish in intensity rapidly across distance. The sun also provides very strong lighting effects, is not stopped by walls. To position the sun for photographic purposes, press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D to get the debug menu, press Alt-M to turn on "mouse moves sun", press M for mouselook, look at where you want the sun to be (including down beneath the horizon), press ESC to end mouselook and Alt-M to turn off mouse moves sun.

When setting up lighting for in game photography, I find building a white, textureless "snow avatar" allows me to position lights without bothering someone else (and with more clarity). You should also know that you can make your lights both invisible - by texturing with a pure alpha texture - and easy to sit between by making them phantom. This allows you to get light sources much closer to your subject without them mucking up the image.

And *never* turn on the "glows around lights" display preference.

Malachi and Moleculor: Thanks for your suggestions, but everything you mention I already know.

Malachi: Regarding post processing... I am aware of that, and do much post processing in AfterEffects, Photoshop and Elastic Reality. Very often painting in highlights and shadows, replacing backgrounds, adjusting colors, changing contrast and sharpness etc.

My problem is getting local lights to work every single time I attempt. That is what makes me so frustrated. Not size of lights, not prims failing to block lights etc. I just want to be able to use my own prims as lights, and I want them to shine on avatars each and every time I use and adjust my lights. That is what SL fails to do - most of the time.

Yesterday I again wasted hours trying to get local lights to work (shining on avatars when moving the lights or avatar), and again only two of my lights worked (not the same as last time).

I think there's actually a limit of two lights per avatar, to cut down on lag.

I would strongly suspect your graphics card or drivers as I've not seen the "long time before lights render properly". I've seen it take a few seconds for the lights to "stablize" but nothing more than that. Have you explored the hardware avenue? In principle, even a bad AGP bridge could cause your issue.

could it be the time of day?

I noticed that the sunrise etc. seem to affect the lighting, even indoors.

Thanks again for trying to help me - appreciate it much


Ewan: Not since I both force daylight and move sun below horizon.

Malachi: No graphics card problems. And it doesn't take long for the local lights to shine. Problem is when I move the light who shines, sometimes that new light position changes the light shining on the avatar, sometimes not. New pc, new graphics card, latest drivers, correct configuration, latest Windows patch, latest DirectX. Have same problems on both my old pc and my laptop too.

Moleculor: That makes sense, and seems to be the case. Two local lights per avatar. Well, today it worked fairly good with just two local lights and the sun I just have to live with that limit. But I can swear I've got more local lights working at once with avatars earlier (berofore the famous 1.5 patch).

Yesterday, I went to a class held by Ariel Roentgen on SL / Photoshop photography that could have answered all the questions presented here. I highly recommend it.

I do not know if Ariel will have it again, but she is very nice and I am sure she will not mind you asking.

I've read over and over again that modern graphics cards can render no more than 8 light sources at a time. It seems like our problems in the world though are because we are getting a lot more than 8 most of the time thanks to improper use of the feature. Is SL getting around this 8-light limit somehow?

A graphics card can only directly handle 8 lights at a time. SL gets around this by doing most of the lighting calculations itself, which is why local lighting is such a drag on performance. However, SL hands off the lighting to the graphics card if the lightsource is being moved via editing, and possibly for other reasons. The calculation method used by the video card is slightly different from SL's own, which can cause trouble when setting up lighting.

(As a side note, most games get around the limit by "pre-baking" all non-moving lights into the textures, and reserving the eight hardware lights for moving sources. This is why many games won't let you shoot out the lights.)

On the latter part, are you sure?

I'd like to see numbers from LL to support doing this over offloading this to the client. It would seem to me that the bottleneck is processing on the sim, not the client. But perhaps there's another thing to consider.