Windlight settings :: Elysiumeilde – Pinkpurplesunrise.
Camming your avatar and taking a snapshot is a piece of cake!. But manipulating your environment settings can make a significant improvement in the way your image turns out. Most of these tips or tricks are general knowledge ( at least I think they are ) but, I wanted to share them anyway because, I am hopeful they will be useful to someone out there who is interested in giving their snapshots an interesting edge. Playing with your settings is heavily recommended! Here are some examples of different windlight settings I have used in the past.
( I started sharing my windlight settings recently so if you click the image it will take you to my flickr page where you will find a direct link to the post and the windlight used. )
While I still have a lot to learn when it comes to taking snapshots, I thought I’d share with you guys a few helpful tips I’ve picked up along the way. First things first!. You wanna collect windlight settings and install them. I suggest looking through one of the following.
1. Visit Linden Lab’s wiki page . There you will find an extensive overview of windlight settings and how to install them. Be sure to watch Torley Linden’s wonderful tutorials to see some “ need to knows” about windlight settings.
2. Visit Strawberry Singh’s website for an excellent collection of windlight settings along with links to other websites and downloads from other residents.
After you have installed your windlight settings and you are ready to experiment a little further begin here;
Step One.
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I am using Kristen’s viewer S21 Version 6 ( See here; Mac or PC or LINUX ). You can also use any other viewer!. You will need to be able to pull up the environment editor menu on your viewer. Try, World >> Environment >> Environment editor ( or see the screenshot! ). Here you can manipulate your windlight settings to achieve the most out of your them.
Step Two.
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In this step you will need to select Advanced sky from your Environmentor Editor’s window. Another window will pop up as seen above. Here is where you get access to all the windlight settings you have installed so far. For this post I will be using Elysiumeilde – Pinkpurplesunrise. Sometimes depending on the time of the day or where you are taking your snapshots in world you may or may not get the full effect of your windlight choice. That is where the tweaking comes in!.
Step Three.
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In this step you will need to select the “lighting” tab from your advanced sky editor. Sometimes even after selecting your perfect windlight setting the environment may appear either too dark or your avatar’s face may end up looking harsh due to the lighting. I have found that using the Scene Gamma slider tends to either lighten ( higher than 0 ) or darken (at 0 ) your surroundings. Sometimes when it appears brighter the harsh lines seem to either blend in or disappear slightly.
Step Four.
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This step is just a brief demonstration of what Scene Gamma can do. As you see, the image appears slightly clearer and brighter. Here is a little excerpt from Secondlife’s Wiki page giving you a brief description of what Scene Gamma really is/ does;
” This control functions similarly to the Gamma setting in the Graphics Hardware Settings (formerly Adv. Graphics) tab. It adjusts your screen’s distribution of light and dark output. Lower settings will cause everything to appear dim, while higher settings may make the scene look gray and “washed out”. Scene Gamma is more precise than the older Gamma in that it only affects your rendered view of the SL world- not the menus and rest of your computer’s screen.”
So, playing with your gamma is highly encouraged!! 
Step five.
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In this final step you can edit your SunMoon Position as well as the East Angle without actually “walking around to find good light or the sun“. Make the sun come to you! 
If only that were possible in realife. In this shot I had shadows enabled hence the shaded look. So viola! all in a days work! and no Photoshop needed except of course if you will be adding on text and cropping your images. That of course, is another entirely different tutorial.
Thank you so much for reading and following along. If you would like to know what I had on in this post, see my previous post here.
xoxo,
Mia
P.s :: Feel free to play around with your DOF at the sametime too. You never know what yummy goodness you’ll come up with in the end. Good luck! and have fun as always.
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