Taking Avatar Photos - Background Issues
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Vikki Svenska
Registered User
Join date: 28 Jan 2008
Posts: 27
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03-25-2008 13:52
I saw recent posts about photo backgrounds and have seen comparisons between some of the available photography equipment in SL. I decided to just create a box and give it a color easily removed when editing photos. (its pink with full bright turned on)
I have a problem that I can't seem to find the answer too in these forums.
When I take photos of an avatar, the pink is easily removed everywhere *except* in between some of the prim hair. For some reason the color turns anywhere from pink to purple and getting between those prims is tedious work.
Is there a better way to assure that I won't have to touch up the background color? Maybe its my local lighting or another setting?
Thanks.
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Qie Niangao
Coin-operated
Join date: 24 May 2006
Posts: 7,138
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03-25-2008 14:01
Assuming it's a perfectly static pose, one trick is to toggle the background from full-bright white to black in two shots, then use your graphics editor to remove anything that's changed between the two images. (I've done this with the Gimp; there must be a way to do it in all the others, too.)
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Rhaorth Antonelli
Registered User
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 7,425
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03-25-2008 14:03
I use a full white background, mainly because my ad photo template has a very light background, which helps to hide the little bits of white left over...
I would love to know of a way to make it work perfectly
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From: someone Morpheus Linden: But then I change avs pretty often too, so often, I look nothing like my avatar.  They are taking away the forums... it could be worse, they could be taking away the forums AND Second Life...
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Bree Giffen
♥♣♦♠ Furrtune Hunter ♠♦♣♥
Join date: 22 Jun 2006
Posts: 2,715
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03-25-2008 14:18
I think you have to turn off anti-aliasing or you want to set SL to not shrink the image when the photo is taken. It could be your hair has some transparency. Perhaps an example of what's happening will be useful.
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Rhaorth Antonelli
Registered User
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 7,425
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03-25-2008 14:27
I know for me it is the hair has some transparency, that is the spots that the bleeding occurs if I use a background other than white
(my photo studio is pure and simple)
cube hollowed on it's side with a prim at the back
I just made a simple touch script to change it to full bright when I want to use it
I have 3 of these set up in my store upstairs, where I do my photowork each with a pose stand one with my fav poses, one with no copy poses and one for the kid poses
I could have put them all in one, but I hate scrolling through 80+ poses to find that right one hehe)
the touch script could be expanded to include different color backgrounds as well if one wanted to do that (or a menu with background color options, etc) I am rather proud of my script, I did it all by myself...
sure scripters are chuckling because it is such a simple script....but I am a scriptard, so for me it is a big step to make a script all by my self!!!
_____________________
From: someone Morpheus Linden: But then I change avs pretty often too, so often, I look nothing like my avatar.  They are taking away the forums... it could be worse, they could be taking away the forums AND Second Life...
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Qie Niangao
Coin-operated
Join date: 24 May 2006
Posts: 7,138
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03-25-2008 14:27
From: Bree Giffen It could be your hair has some transparency. That's my theory too, and that's why I suggested making alpha the difference between full white and black backgrounds. That way you get to keep the partial transparency of the hair. But obviously, for action shots, this won't work, and one would have to use a perfectly fixed cam position and rotation. (I made a throw-away script for that at some point, but all the in-world photography things would be based on something like that. Oh, which reminds me: I think NyteRave Studios had a free-to-use photography thing set up... bet it's still there, if that would help at all.)
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Rhaorth Antonelli
Registered User
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 7,425
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03-25-2008 14:35
qie it sounds like you are a scripter... is it possible to have an item rezzed in world, that would position the cam in a specific place, that when touched moves your cam to that place?
I was thinking of prims to position my cam at different angles around my pose stands for photoshots so I do not always have to adjust my cam each time...
if this is possible to do... is it hard?
_____________________
From: someone Morpheus Linden: But then I change avs pretty often too, so often, I look nothing like my avatar.  They are taking away the forums... it could be worse, they could be taking away the forums AND Second Life...
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Namssor Daguerre
Imitates life
Join date: 18 Feb 2004
Posts: 1,423
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03-25-2008 15:00
If your prim hair is green, then pink makes a good background choice, otherwise fullbright white does just fine. The object mattes and depth mattes in SL really don't help. You will need to do post production work. In Photoshop quite a lot of things can be done with the image to separate hair and other stuff from the background. PS CS3 has some really nifty masking tools that are similar to a lot of the high end 3rd party plugins for PS. It's basically a matter of separating the hair color through a contrasting background color and generating a complex alpha channel for the prim hair and separating it on a new layer. Erroneous color can be removed through painting the correct color value on the separated and locked layer of the hair.
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Ty Gabe
Registered User
Join date: 1 Sep 2007
Posts: 217
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03-25-2008 16:20
I use a bright magenta background and select what I can easily as you are doing. As a final step in PS, Ido to the Hue/Saturation dialog, select magenta from the dropdown, then bottom out the saturation slider. Seems to get rid of those in-betweens quite nicely.
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Maggie McArdle
FIOS hates puppies
Join date: 8 May 2006
Posts: 2,855
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03-25-2008 16:23
writes the hints here down, thanks! i too have those issues with the hair in photos and other spots as well.
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Ty Gabe
Registered User
Join date: 1 Sep 2007
Posts: 217
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03-25-2008 16:39
Follow up to my original post, since I'm on the computer now and not my iPod. I do the saturation thing after I've selected and copied the item to a new background (for example). Then, selecting that layer, do the saturation thing.
Of course, if your person/item has magenta in them, you'll have to use a different background color (cyan or yellow, for example).
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Dana Hickman
Leather & Laceā¢
Join date: 10 Oct 2006
Posts: 1,515
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03-25-2008 17:11
From: Vikki Svenska When I take photos of an avatar, the pink is easily removed everywhere *except* in between some of the prim hair. For some reason the color turns anywhere from pink to purple and getting between those prims is tedious work.
Is there a better way to assure that I won't have to touch up the background color? Maybe its my local lighting or another setting?
Pink as a backdrop mutates too easily into shades of red and purple with transparencies. Try neon green. It seems to hold color a little better, and has the widest amount of tolerance of any color (except black/white) before it bleeds into another color. If there's no green on your AV, uncheck 'contiguous' and set the tolerance number just high enough to grab all the background, but nothing else. I don't use anti-alias when selecting for a cut because it likes to grab near-colors also, and can make halo's.
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Qie Niangao
Coin-operated
Join date: 24 May 2006
Posts: 7,138
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03-25-2008 17:31
From: Rhaorth Antonelli is it possible to have an item rezzed in world, that would position the cam in a specific place, that when touched moves your cam to that place? Very do-able, but with a slight tweak: The avatar cam can only be controlled from attachments or sat-upon objects. When I did a simple version of this, I made it just a prim to sit on, with a single cam position and focus, which can actually be just run on the prim and the script deleted and it will still work. But in theory one could also just sit in one spot and have an active script in the prim remember some cam positions and "look at" locations, accessible from a menu dialog or something--as always, it's figuring out how to make that user-friendly that would make it complicated. I've never actually used one of the in-world photography setups, but I always kinda supposed that was something they did. Anyway, when I get in-world later, I'll try to knock out the super-simple one-prim-per-cam-setting version and post the script here. Also, I'll give a Gimp step-by-step for the scheme I tried to describe above, once I get two images to play with again. [Edit follows] 1. Super-simple cam-controlling prim script: default { state_entry() { llSitTarget(<0,0,0.5>, ZERO_ROTATION); llSetCameraAtOffset(<3.0, 0.0, 0.0>); llSetCameraEyeOffset(<0.4, 0.0, 1.0>); } }
One can tweak the offsets to better fit the application, but at least every time one sits on the prim, the cam will look at the same point, from the same point (relative to the prim, that is... so one can move around the prim to get different locations, too). If a satisfactory setting is found, the script can be set not running or even removed from the prim, because it only changes prim properties. 2. Gimp step by step for removing background, given fullbright White background and Black background images: Open White image in Gimp Dialogs / Layers Layer / Duplicate layer Open Black image, select all (Control-A) and Copy (Control-C); close Black image. return to White image window, and Paste (Control-V); in Layers dialog, select Mode = Difference, right click on Floating Selection and Anchor Layer Layer / Colors / Invert (this will become the alpha image mask) Control-A Contol-C In the Layers dialog, select and Right click on the original white image layer, Add Layer Mask (any kind), Paste (Control-V) into that Mask and anchor pasted floating layer, then Apply Layer Mask Hide or delete the duplicate layer where the difference-pasting was done. Hopefully the result is what folks were trying to get. Surely there's a simpler way to get it, and undoubtedly a simpler way to explain it, but... I just use Gimp, I'm no expert.
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Vikki Svenska
Registered User
Join date: 28 Jan 2008
Posts: 27
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03-25-2008 18:51
From: Dana Hickman Pink as a backdrop mutates too easily into shades of red and purple with transparencies. Try neon green. It seems to hold color a little better, and has the widest amount of tolerance of any color (except black/white) before it bleeds into another color. If there's no green on your AV, uncheck 'contiguous' and set the tolerance number just high enough to grab all the background, but nothing else. I don't use anti-alias when selecting for a cut because it likes to grab near-colors also, and can make halo's. All great suggestions, thanks everyone! I think a combo of a touch scipt to change the background and going with something like green for most would help. The pink was horrible with one or two avatars, but the last 3 have been just fine. Does anyone bother with lighting controls, or do you just set the world light setting to what you need? I see all these studio lighting things and wonder if they are more trouble than they are worth perhaps.
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Rhaorth Antonelli
Registered User
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 7,425
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03-25-2008 22:44
I use a face light, and face the sunset and force the sun to sunset qie thanks not quite what I was looking for but gives me some ideas  Did not know that the item has to be either an attachment or a prim to sit on
_____________________
From: someone Morpheus Linden: But then I change avs pretty often too, so often, I look nothing like my avatar.  They are taking away the forums... it could be worse, they could be taking away the forums AND Second Life...
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Qie Niangao
Coin-operated
Join date: 24 May 2006
Posts: 7,138
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03-26-2008 05:31
From: Rhaorth Antonelli qie thanks not quite what I was looking for but gives me some ideas  Actually, Rha, thanks for asking... it gave me some ideas, too, because I was already pondering an attachment with some special cam functions. If I can get some backlog worked down, this could be fun, and maybe even useful.
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Cherry Czervik
Came To Her Senses
Join date: 18 Feb 2006
Posts: 3,680
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03-26-2008 06:01
Bright pink? The OP is in game dev? *smiles*
Guys this thread is really really useful, thanks for your contributions. I might even get some decent pictures going finally!
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Yosef Okelly
Mostly Harmless
Join date: 26 Aug 2007
Posts: 2,692
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03-26-2008 07:43
My photo booth is a hollow cylinder on top of a hollow hemisphere. Think pill shaped standing on end. All white most of the time. Set to full bright with 4 light sources positioned near the opening; two wide and low, to close and high. This gives me no shadows and no lines.
You can get carried away when you start building a photo booth. I added a control panel where I could select textures or colors, turn the individual lights on and off and I even put a door that would rotate/slide open. I never set it up again after I moved my shop. I can throw up the white pill in 5 minutes and just toss it when I'm done. Saves on prims that way.
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Marianne McCann
Feted Inner Child
Join date: 23 Feb 2006
Posts: 7,145
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03-26-2008 08:29
From: Yosef Okelly My photo booth is a hollow cylinder on top of a hollow hemisphere. Think pill shaped standing on end. All white most of the time. Set to full bright with 4 light sources positioned near the opening; two wide and low, to close and high. This gives me no shadows and no lines.
You can get carried away when you start building a photo booth. I added a control panel where I could select textures or colors, turn the individual lights on and off and I even put a door that would rotate/slide open. I never set it up again after I moved my shop. I can throw up the white pill in 5 minutes and just toss it when I'm done. Saves on prims that way. I have a basic N30 set up that I almost never use: it's in a full bright cylinder in my workshop. I did orient it for sunset lighting, though I find myself using 2:00 p.m. or so on Windlight. I tend to be more "shoot-on-the-fly" though, and tend to use locations for my background: If I need some "fill light" I use my Mystitool's light feature or, for some special effects, I'll rez a cube and set it to light. I carry many of my poses with me, instead of in a stand, etc. Likewise, much of the time if I need a plain background, I bould a sphere, hollow it, make it 10 x 10 x 10 (give or take) white, fullbright, and dimple a side. Then I walk into it and turn around. Quick and dirty, but it works. I also have the same hair issue as the OP, but tend to use solid color backgrounds in tones that approximate what I intend to put in there. Less clean-up that way. Mari
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  "There's nothing objectionable nor illegal in having a child-like avatar in itself and we must assume innocence until proof of the contrary." - Lewis PR Linden "If you find children offensive, you're gonna have trouble in this world  " - Prospero Linden
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