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Posts Tagged ‘eye focus’

Friends Don’t Let Friends Take Bad Snapshots

August 31, 2011

Hey there, friends and neighbors! I’m back yet again with yet another post that is not related to the 52 Weeks of Color Challenge. (doh)

I highly doubt I have readers that she doesn’t but, just in case… I was inspired by some posts from Cajsa Lilliehook of It’s Only Fashion and put together a little LOTD plus a PSA. lol Sorta. There are sooo many SL fashion blogs these days and while some of them are fabulous (StrawberrySingh.com), others are a little lacking. Now, we all started somewhere (go check out the beginning of my Flickr- scary)and there are a lot of folks out there taking snaps just for fun, so this isn’t a criticism. It’s a shared moment of learning between all of us. We can all benefit from listening to other folks. So I listened. And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, here I am doing a snapshot post. And since laziness is the most prevalent of all my flaws, why should I ramble on and on about something that Cajsa has done so perfectly?!

I picked and chose some of the tips she mentions in her triptych of posts: The All-In-One Set Up Tip Sheet (I didn’t know about checking the SSAO and Shadow Smoothing setting), Lighting, Shadows and Projectors, Oh My! (I’ve never tried using a projector before) and Where Did They Hide My Windlight? (I’ve always been too lazy to fiddle with the sliders, maybe I’ll try it now) and put together a kind of before and after or what-not-to-do type thingum for you.

For my ‘before’ snapshot, I’ve lowered a couple of important hardware settings (anistropic filtering and anti-aliasing) and set my WL settings on something horrible and hope that it conveys the sense of unfinishedness(?? wtf, lol) due to the lighting and the jagged edges that I was going for. Oh! And crazyeye! Take Cajsa’s advice and get a focuser thingy or read up on how to focus on a prim. And then in the ‘after’ pic, I hope you’re all overwhelmed by the beauty and skill involved in taking such a fantabulous snapshot (you have to picture me saying all of that with ridiculous, wide, sweeping dance-like gestures). Okay, so maybe that’s a stretch, but I do hope you can see how fiddling with some settings can really improve your inworld snapshots.