Miscellaneous Pictures

Been cleaning out my folders, and I ran across a ton of pics.
Here's the first batch- we decided it would be fun to play with our guns.

Those look absolutely Fabulous! You did a great job, you wouldnt want an apprentice would you? hehe

OMG! Those look so real! Were those taken mostly in game? If so, I want that graphics card

neph those are awesome!! 1 question, how do u make everyone have a glow to them and look so natural?

I think its the 'Neph is awesome' filter.

Yowzer, nicely done.

LOL Maxx! Thank you, I know what to name all my photoshop actions now!

Thankies everyone who's responded!!!
The soft glow and color changes I do in photoshop.
Here's a quick rundown of how I do it
Caveat: Results may vary. A lot of the final look is just experimenting for a while on an image and trying different things until I have the look I want.

Copy and paste the snapshot from the background layer into a new layer, so that you have two layers of the same image.

Go to Image/adjustments/ hue saturation and bring down the saturation slider about 75% towards desaturation (black and white). What you should end up with is the snapshot in ALMOST black and white- there should be a little color left, but not much.

Now go to Image/Adjustments/ Levels. Under the histogram, there is a set of arrows that adjust the levels of black and white in the image. Grab the middle arrow under the histogram and drag it towards the right. You'll see the darks in your image increase, but some white/grey will remain- you'll also see the small bit of color you left in the image deepen and become more prominent. You'll also see a lot of detail that isnt apparent in the avatar's skin in the snapshot come out.

Back at your Layers window, look for the dropdown at the top of the window that says "Normal". With your darkened layer selected, click that dropdown and play with those blending modes- Screen works well on dark snapshots, Soft Light works well on light ones.
Other modes give subtly different effects- experiment and see what you like.

Last step is, Select the topmost layer, and go to filter/blur/gaussian blur. do a gaussian blur (radial and motion blur can also look interesting) of about 2-5 pixels to get that fuzzy glowy look. More blur= bigger glow

You can also repeat the above steps to add more layers of different blending modes- some of my images ended up with 5 or 6 layers by the time i was happy with them, some only needed one layer. It depends a lot on how pronounced you want the lighting in the final to be, and how pronounced it is in the original snapshot.

I hope that helps!!

Other randoms bits of advice:
ooh also, apparently my videocard is a Nvidia FX 5600 Ultra. It's not bad, but definitely not the-best-money-can-buy. Most of the effect is done after the fact
There are a few things that help though- Local Lighting combined with Avatar Vertex Program being OFF can get some nice effects, try that out and you can rez a small (like 1m small) ball set as a light and get a little greater control over your lighting. Try it out at night- that looks really nice.
You can also color this light for neat results, but a caveat: if you try to use more than one light at a time to light an avatar, it seems like NONE of the lights will work properly.
Bodyskins help a lot with the Level-shifting, just adds more detail to the avatar's skin.

Also, sunset/sunrise are always great times to take pictures- the pinky/orange light is really flattering on most avs.

Also cool: if this method agrees with you, try it on other things- I've gotten interesting results using it on photographs, building textures, clothing maps

*bowing down!!!*

"We're not worthy!!!!"

yay nephi! I've been waiting on your tips for how you do your pictures for a looooong time lol.

Awesome tips Neph!! I am not sure how I missed these the first time! hehe
And now to play

Incredibly helpful. Thanks, Nephi Especially this part:



Soooooo true!

haha I love your crazy face Neph!

Everybody is awesome!! Thank you

Govindira made a great cloche hat, which i couldnt resist taking some pics in.
Here they are.

Damn , the lindens should better put your pics on the front page of the second life site , to attract more people.

bump hehe I like being able to easily find this thread

Awesome tips Neph! And gorgeous pics as always.

I'll post some random pics of my avie tomorow.
Wich reminds me i'd better hurry to post a thread about my PC that seem to have hardware problems.

In the meanwhile keeping this thread alive

and this is wut I got!

Oooooooooook...

1. A pic I did for a friend that wanted a postcard for his build
2. A pic I did after our wedding
3. Just playing around wif my bad side
4. A pic JUST done with Ano's great new poses
5. Me and ma baby... SEE HE CORRUPTS ME!! IMMA ANGEL!!!

Wow, Willow, very impressive!! Those rock.

I love the last one Neph. Very 20's feel.

I don't know why everyone takes pictures with Seburos. The Seburo sounds cool. It fires cool. It has many nice effects.. but the model? Egh... Atop that it only vaguly resembles a Seburo CX.

http://hometown.aol.com/ndkartmodelshow/ndk4/seburo_c.jpg

THAT is a Seburo CX. Francis Chung's Seburo CX's strength is when it's being used. Maybe a picture with the nice muzzle flash going off is in order.

Anyways, something of mine. An flight shot of the planes I spend basically all my time working on.

Hey Kayin, have you thought to ask Fran why this might be so? Or checked the original NWN story explaining why she did what she did?


http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/08/shooting_to_kil_1.html


It's fun to learn from historical sources. Fran's is inspired by the GITS firearm, and took on its own life in SL. Consider it an "alternate reality" version if you will, perhaps in part to cut its own parallel path of creativity as opposed to being a mere "copy". I really like what Neil did with the smoke... I'm still hoping for an omnismoke vers. Hehehe.

Cheerio!

Doesn't make the gun any prettier though. I'd still say if the gun had any weakness it would be the model.

Ahhh... Kayin, do you make guns -- even meshes without scripts -- of your own? I'd like to see what you've really been excited about creating if you've got pics and stuff, or if you'd like to meet inworld sometime.