SL Profile Tips Part I

RAWR!

That means hello in dinosaur language!, now that we know each other, lets get down to business.

I’m going to be posting a series of articles to give you hints and tips of how to do some of the stuff I do in my profile pictures, some of it you might already know, but in the heart of making this as friendly and easily for anyone, I’m going to try to go through most of it, even when I know posting everything would take a long time, but if there’s ever a subject you struggle with, let me know and i’ll expand on it!

The above image is an example of the editing I’ll try to explain here, in a brief description (left to right):

1. Base SL picture: That’s a no edit sl picture, the base so you can compare
2. Stage 2: it takes a long time to get there, and i’ll spend most time in this to walk you from 1 to 2, most everything you see here is done with painting
3. Last two are with adjustment layers, i’ll show you some of these and how they can enhance (and sometimes break) your picture, 4 is the first, and then 3 is lowering the effect, it’s usually a matter of preferences on them.

Right so lets start with the basics, you’ll want to take a High res picture, pick a nice pose, and either a good background or a green screen, I won’t get into those much here since I do believe there are other posts that cover that. In short, get the least amount of things to fix in sl, it will save you hours in PS. That being said, any picture can be good, so long as the base is solid, which is why I’ll be doing this with the following Pile Up, I didn’t take this picture or chose the settings or shadows, but I’m going to try to recreate some of it’s effects, that way if you can’t take a high res pic in sl or you have a bad one, you can see if you can save it.

There’s going to be some notes in all pictures, it’s what i wrote along the way, some might be helpful and some utterly random, click to enlarge in all if you want.

First order of business! Liquify, I show some of the common areas you need to look, i know most already do this so it’s no news, but one thing that i do want to mention is that i always duplicate layers, and keep the saved in case i forget or miss something, I have it there to fix quickly and not have to redo the whole thing. Oh and when you crop your pic at the start, try to envision a 4:3 ratio, follow photography rules of making 3 by 3 squares in your mind and placing your picture avoiding the center, it creates a better image usually, or it’s easier to do this way, but always go with what looks best in yours.

 

So I made this quick tutorial once of how to get rid of green screens, but in case you get edges like above, or in case you don’t have that tool in ps, or just because you don’t want to find it again, here’s another way:

1. You need to get rid of the whole green around, just leave the bits you can’t select
2. Pick a color from the hair, something neutral or closer to the color of the edge of it
3. Draw a halo around the hair in a new layer (v. important!)
4. Hold your ‘alt’ key and click between both layers, you’ll see a white and black circle in your mouse when you hoover over the correct place, this will create a clipping mask, welcome to the mask world, you’ll be using them often.
5. You can change the blending mode to color, or use a normal one, whichever works best, blonde’s and blacks are hardest, red, brown are easiest, anything else i don’t even remember! (I use color blending mode for this example)

 

Here’s a look on my layers so you don’t get lost, yo can see the clipping mask with the arrow down and how the hair looks after i do that, also how i duplicate and create layers for everything. I have all layers saved so if at any point you want me to go into detail tell me and i’ll post a mini picture to describe it.

Next very important thing, smudge or smooth the sl weirdness, the better your quality ad zoom the least you’ll have to fix here, basically try to get rid of anything that looks pixelated, you can put back the details yourself but you need a clean base to work with. The smudge tool is that little thing that looks like a finger in your tools, if you have a good computer you can get away with a huge size, but for me 100 is usually where PS starts lagging, find your computer limit and smudge away, I use intensity of 32% usually, lower if you want it smoother, higher if you want to do something similar to liquify.

 

You can see what I smudged in the last pic, one huge thing is, if you have sl lines, and you did a green screen, don’t use the method where you select the whole line and fill it with content-aware that will mess up the transparency, you can smudge these lines easily imho. Here’s your first decision:

Smooth skin or not?

This is going to affect heavily on how you do other things later on and how your picture will look, you can go the in between and kinda do kinda not do, its up to you…

Smoothing: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8059/8166055590_d020387a49.jpg ; I decided against it on this tutorial, simply because it is less effort to smooth it, so i’ll go with the more complicated part here, but for now this is it for part I, I’ll post part II in a couple days, so you don’t get annoyed of me!.

Next up is going to be mouth, eyes, nose, and eyebrows, take a look at some pictures in flickr and try to see what they do, deviantart is always good as well!.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions, and I’ll take those in consideration for the next post too.

Oh yeah, Happy Valentines!

Photo Drama: Layering Windlights

Lighting and shadows are one of the things that add visual drama to a photograph, and I’m going to cover an easy tutorial on how to get optimal drama on a photograph with minimum post editing. Before I begin, I want to point out that I am a Photoshop 4 user, but this tutorial will essentially work with most digital editing software. Alright, let’s begin.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is pick two windlights. One that has a very dramatic effect of lights and shadows and then one that maybe doesn’t have shadows at all. For the latter, I prefer Strawberry Singh’s ‘Closeups’ or ‘Original’. I also like Luna Jubilee’s ‘Bright and Sparkly’ as well as Nam’s ‘Optimal Skin and Prim’ windlights.

For this example, I’ve used Phototools‘ Black and White # 11 and Strawberry Singh’s Original. The Phototools’ Black and White # 11 is available on the latest version of Phoenix Firestorm (they might be available on other 3rd party viewers, but I don’t use anything else but Firestorm and SL Beta Viewer.) For Strawberry Singh’s ‘Original’ you must download it from her blog. However, ‘Closeups’ is available on Firestorm and the Linden Viewer.

From the above picture, you can see my two images on the ‘Layers’ tab. Please note that I have layered the dramatic photo over the plain photo. I’m going to work mostly from the ‘Layers’ tab on the side bar. I’m not sure how this translates to other photo editing software.

What I’ve done is decreased the opacity of the dramatic photo over the other photo, which allows the better lit and cleaner shot to come through, but leaving the dramatic light effects. I’ve also pointed to the layer options. I’ve not given this layer any special effect and left it on ‘normal’, but if you’re a Photoshop user, try the different effects. Multiply, Overlay, and Screen are some of my favorites.

For a little added clarity on the face, I go to my eraser tool, make sure the brush opacity is decreased, and erase the face. Using a soft brush is the best. I like to use a very low opacity with a round, soft brush and just center it directly over the face. Now my face shines much more, becoming the focal point of this photograph.

This is essentially it for this tutorial. Obviously I encourage photographers to go much further with the post editing. There are countless ways of making this photograph even more dramatic with darker shadows and brighter highlights, but that’s a matter of personal preferences. If you have Firestorm or a viewer with a wide variety of windlights, play with this tutorial! It’s a lot of fun.

Here is my finished product. It’s been edited to be SFW here, but you can see my marvelous Lola breasts on my flickr photo here. I posted a smaller, more simple version of this tutorial on my personal blog “It’s a Wonderful SecondLife” with the credits if you want to know more about what I’m wearing.

Have fun!

Keliah Angelis

All the Houses!

So I was recently speaking with Harlow Heslop in regards to SL housing.She found this wonderful mesh cottage from The Domineaux Effect and loved it so much that she spread the word on Plurk, to which some of us had to go scope out the build. Mainly me. Because I have an addiction.

You see, I’m so addicted to buying and decorating SL builds (homes, skyboxes, scenes..) that I have a system in place that allows me to live in multiple skyboxes on a shared SIM. Harlow confessed that she had the same addiction – that she also loves SL builds. When I told her what I do with builds, she declared that I am a genius. I’m not sure how genius I am seeing how much money I spend on SL homes and furniture, but none the less, I figured that if Harlow and I were both home junkies in SL then probably most of the blogging community is.

So. Here is my big secret. I have a rezzer.

There are many types of rezzers available in SL. Just search the market place and a bevy of scripts and devices come up, but I use Horizons by Novatech. It comes in three editions: Basic, Home, and Pro. Pro is for those who build commercial scenes. Home allows you to build SIM size scenes and make multiple copies of the rezzer. Basic does not have the tools and you can not create new scenes, so it is my recommendation that you get the Home Edition.

In my opinion, Horizons is the easiest out there and there are so many options one can do. One can make a shell scene or one can make a scene crate. For the sake of this post, I’m just going to talk about scene crates.

Rez your scene. For example? A skybox! You’re going to want to arrange your skybox so that your rezzer is visable on the floor level of your build so you don’t plummet to your death when you rez things. Once you’re happy with the placement of the skybox/build it’s time to decorate the crap out of it. If you’ve rezzed a skybox from a faux rezzer (most buildings are set up this way) make sure you ‘save’ the build on the menu. Most skyboxes or homes home in a temp or faux-rezzer. If you don’t save the build or make it permanent (whatever it says on the menu) then you need to go through all the prims and remove the scripts.

Decorate how you see fit. Want a goth theme? A clean theme? Posh and modern? Classic and casual? Go for it. It’s just important that all your decor is copy/mod. If it’s not copy and mod then it will not work and you stand a chance of losing your non-copy items in the SL black hole. LUCKILY most furniture stores and decor stores have copy/mod things. If I absolutely need a no copy/no mod item in my build, I usually save the item in my folders in which I store the crate (a crate is something the Horizons rezzer creates for you), but it’s up to you. (Skydomes are a good example of this. I rez my decorated and arranged house and then rez the skydome separately.)

After you’ve decorated your build it’s time to put it together and drop it into the scene crate.  The first thing you’re going to want to do is link together what you can. This makes packing your crate much easier. Link all your wall decor and floor decor together.  Once it’s linked together then drop the rez script (It comes with the Horizon tools) in via the edit menu. Pick up the decor into your inventory.

As a rule of thumb, anything with it’s own scripts should not be linked together. So drop a rez script in any furniture that has poses or texture menus. Doors, too! Once everything has a rez script pick it up into your inventory.

From the Horizons menu rez a new crate. Crates are also in the Horizon’s tools. Rez the crate. Drag the decor and skybox (everything your put a rez script in) into the crate. The best way to find everything is to go into Inventory>Recent and then look through your recent folders. Usually the items will be in the Objects folder, but sometimes they return to their home folders.  Name your crate as you see fit and pick up the crate into your inventory. This almost always goes into the objects folder. Drop the crate into the contents folder of the Horizons rezzer. Now I can rez this decorated skybox any time I want via the menu. Today I might live in a New York skybox; tomorrow I might live in a desert temple. This way I have plenty of options of picture scenes for blog entries.

I realize that much of what I said here can be confusing. Luckily, Horizons comes with MUCH better instructions. The point that I wanted to make here in this post was to show you how to have multiple decorated scenes on hand. Anyone who has any questions is welcome to comment here or contact me in world (keliahangelis resident.)