shadows on avatar faces

Moost avatars, mine included, look terrible in certain lights, mainly the Noon setting. In Sunset or Sunrise, i look fine, at Noon i look about 100. CAn anyone suggest a remedy? Is it because i have just the basic skin? If i buy a skin will it change my features?

I've seen for sale a light-source attachment to the eye that shines a mild light onto the face, eliminating the harsh, angular shadows at noon which you describe. I seem to remember the product name as "Ultimate Eyes" or something like that, though I also remember their actual vendor signs misspelled it as "Ulitmate Eyes," so you might try searching on both.

Yes.

Skin choice is probably the most critical influence on your avatar's appearance. Buying a good skin (or finding a decent feebie) is highly recommended! Just be sure to try on a demo of any commercial skin and compare several different designer lines. They effect will be different in every one.

I actually just made this same thing myself, a small sphere about a foot in front of my face, a light source. For some reason I can only get it to 90% transparency, so I'm not sure the trick to make it altogether invisible. Hope that helps.

Use a pure alpha texture. There are several free ones around.

Sweet, look for a freebie texture called "alpha" or "clear" or "transparent". Use that to color your prim light source. It will make it 100% invisible (except when "see transparent" is on)

A

A little eye makeup can mitigate some of the effects of harsh light, especially the area below the eyeballs. It's tricky to make a skin that solves the problem without looking "made up," especially without making the whole skin opaque. I'd look for a skin that lets you try a demo before dropping a lot of linden for it. Skins are truly valuable because they represent a lot of hard work, and good ones aren't cheap, generally speaking.

Skins can add shadows (to provide a look of more depth to the face), but there is not much you can do with a skin to mitigate shadows. One of the light sources that have been mentioned are probably your best bet.

the absolute highest quality skins out there do this same thing.

Sun rise/ sunset are best

follwed by midnight

noon looks terrible.


There facial shadows.

And some body shadows.

on a vividly painted skin (less realisitc) its less noticable.

I'm not adding much at this point, but I agree with those who suggested using an invisible prim as a light source. I actually made a three-prim system for my avie in order to more fully light my face. Though I don't always wear it around, I generally put it on before taking snapshots to remove shadows.

I think this problem of unfortunate lighting is similar to what we get in RL under mid day lighting!

I agree with Conifer. If you pay attention to a picture taken outside, on a bright sunny day, at noon, you'll notice the face is full of ugly shadows. The human eye is selective, we simply don't "see" the bad lighting (and ugly backgrounds, etc) in real world. we just notice it when it's on a bidimesional representation, like a photography or a computer screen. People usually blame their cameras for the bad pictures lol!

I really hate the way the noon lighting works, so I usually spend my time in Sunrise. Thank goodness for force sun!

I'd really love to see LL uncouple avatar rendering from the sunlight system. They'd look a lot better rendered with self-illumination that varied depending on time of day. The shadows generated by the sunlight system are really unflattering.

keep in mind some places might not allow this kind of devices as they can ruin the ambience of the place you are in (like running around with an acetylen torch)