Beebo Brink

Despite all the photography I need for my store, my setup has always been fairly primitive: a pose ball thrown in front of a whiteboard. This worked well enough for product shots, but after seeing all the wonderful portraits on SLU's Style thread or fashion blogs like Strange Pixels, I've started hankering to stretch a little more.

Several people have shown me their very nifty commercial sets, and I was right on the verge of buying one when Ned gave me a link to Sarah Nerd's tutorial for building a photo studio.

Taking Decent SL Pictures Without Photo Equipment Tutorial | Your2ndPlace

That sounded like fun, so I gave it a try and I'm fairly pleased with the results. It's a step up from my original setup, but still simple enough that I don't get impatient with figuring out all the bells and whistles that the commercial packages provide. (I know myself by now: the features always sound great, but then I never use them.)




I loaded the sphere with backdrop textures (free source wallpapers on the web) and a script to change on touch. Two beams hold an array of lights that create a fairly even lighting.



Next on my agenda is to play with the lights arrangements for some different effects and better shadow/highlighting.

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Ned Easterwood

Glad it worked out for you Beebs.

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Aodhan McDunnough

I normally use a #00FF00 (green) background so that I can use the masking screenshots to replace things with whatever background I want or to help me snip out the main image so that I can do composites.

Beebo Brink

The other photo direction I've been pushing into is taking more advantage of on-location shooting. But the scouting can be time-consuming if I have a very particular concept in mind without a specific location that will fill the bill.

So for a recent Styles thread shoot with Carter, I decided building my own set would take less time and effort than trying to find it on the grid.



The set I created for that backdrop:

Aodhan McDunnough

Oh the Hollywood-esque fakery ... just gotta love it!

Bard Jameson

I've bookmarked this one. Thanks for the heads up, Beebo - and thanks Sarah for the tip!

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Cindy Claveau

Oh Beebs! One of my favorite topics! I'm always looking for new and cool ways to take photos, so I'm definitely going to be checking out Sarah's guide.

The irony is that, through the influence and advice of friends over the last couple of years I've developed my own studio that's eerily similar, including a clickable texture-changing backdrop. I also discovered a nifty lighting technique which I'll gladly share with everyone.

My studio has a hollow sphere that serves as the outer shell - I can change the colors on it for different effects, or else drag my insert shell in from behind the studio and click it to alter textures as shown here. I have about 20 or 22 different landscapes, nature scenes, cityscapes etc that I 'borrowed' from the net. I'd be happy to share them with whoever asks as long as they're not resold. I don't want to get into copyright problems.

3134993399_9f39fdd005_o.jpg

The lighting trick I learned is as follows: You create 3 invisible prims. Light prim 1 is the largest, Light prim 2 is a little smaller and light prim 3 is next smallest. They're positioned at 120 degrees around the focal point and linked so they can be moved or rotated as needed. Light 1 will be the brightest of them to create the primary shadows and 3D relief. Light 2 is a dimmer offset, and #3 is to counter overly heavy shadows behind the model. They all use a medium orange tint for warmth, since we don't ever want bright white light (think facelights ). Other colors could be used to explore different photo effects.



Light prim 1 features:

Intensity .750 (it rounds to .749 for some reason), Radius 5.0 and falloff .50. I have bumped the intensity at times if I'm looking at a dark subject or want more dramatic shadows:

3135775220_8b837c55eb_o.jpg

Light prim 2 features:

Intensity .350 (again it rounds down to .349); Radius 5.0 and falloff .50.

3135775150_ef4eaf96c6_o.jpg

Light prim 3 features: Intensity 0.102; Radius 10.0, falloff 1.0.

3135775074_08cf997c71_o.jpg

Last thing I do is to set the World Environment to MIDNIGHT, because I don't want the changing daylight to screw up my shot. I'll rely solely on the artifical prim light. The effect is a very nice, subtle ambience that requires very little Photoshopping unless you're nerdy like me (I usually use a 50% transparent overlay and Dodge/Burn brushes to accent highlights but that's my own personal preference).

This is unretouched, just cropped:

3135773634_14a597b179_o.jpg

I have no doubts whatsoever that my technique needs work. So Imma be watchin' this thread like a hawk for other ideas

Let me know if anyone wants my background textures.

Cin

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Sarah Nerd

That lighting effect is absolutely gorgeous!

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Beebo Brink

Thank you, thank you! The flat lighting I have was a starting point for trying to develop an appealing effect, and you just saved me untold time and aggravation trying to build on that.

Cindy Claveau

A RL working photographer/artist taught me that, and it's such a dramatic improvement over my old white-light/2d approach.

I use the orange tint most of the time, but light reds, yellows, even blues can give remarkable special effects to a shot.

Beebo Brink

So does anyone have any tips on their favorite posing stands? I've seen a range on SLEX from L$0 to L$800 and wonder if there are any with a substantial advantage over the freebies.

I lost my last pose stand (and all its poses) when my photostudio folder went missing. I have no idea whether I accidentally trashed it or the asset server burped, it, but it's time to replace it.

Tya

i am kicking myself reading this thread... i never ever thought of using a sphere....

oh beebs there is someone that does a fantastic one, starts with a T.. .i don't remember the name off hand but i find it great to use. its controlled by a hud. from positioning to changing poses. when i log into world later today i will post here.

from some reason i am thinking Tillu?

Darkley

i have a folder of about 50 lm of 'good places to take photos' from urban/city to swamp to desert

if you want it, i can pass it over

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Cindy Claveau

Mine is from Taz Tomba. It's moddable, so I made it invisible and I can drop all the poses I want into it.

Multi Pose Pedestal, $100L. Hard to beat the price

Taz Atap Store SLURL

Hex Blackthorne

MadamG makes a very nice photo studio.

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Beebo Brink

Ah. I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I'm getting it now. Thanks.

Ann Launay

Tillie's Posing Stand

The stand is controlled via HUD, allowing you to not only cycle through poses, but rotate and move the stand around to get the perfect position without fiddling with the camera angle excessively. You can also sort your poses into different sets, so you don't have to cycle through every single one when looking for one in particular.

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Mourna Biziou

Very nice results, Beebo. One little tip. If you're going for a solid background like the pic you posted, you might want to turn off foot shadows. (cntrl-alt-f5) (A pet peeve of mine. )

This works well unless you're wearing hair or clothing with semi-transparent textures... then it will pick up some of the background color. I'm usually cutting out my avatar to pop it onto a photoshopped background, so I decide what general color I want to use in advance, and use it as a solid color backdrop. Then the little bits that get left on around the hair, etc, won't show up when you drop it on the new background.
This is the one you played with in my studio the other day, Beebs.

Ann told me about it, and I adore it. The newest version even has camera locking controls, so you can take identical product shots, etc.

Oh! And it comes included with a standalone posing hud, so you can pose on the fly for location shots. I used to keep my modelling poses in my Huddles, but I stopped after I lost mine. Best to keep them separate, I think.

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Ran Garrigus

Freyja and I use a green or blue background and then use a plug-in called Primatte (designed specifically for dealing with greenscreen and bluescreen images) to deal with removing the color -- it even does a pretty good job with semi-transparent bits with some fiddling.

Although I've recently learned the wonders of "hue to target", which is extremely useful for dealing with anything that Primatte can't quite handle (thin wisps of alpha-textured hair, for example). Just select the appropriate color with the eyedropper and pass the hue-to-target over it and voila, all matching.

As far as lighting goes, I tend to use Caliah Lyon's Windlight setting (but with atmopshere shaders off), which gets rid of most shadows. Then I introduce a light that I position as wanted to create some softer shadows in whatever way I need. I haven't messed very much with using non-white lighting, as lately I've just done some careful work with screen and multiply layers with H/S/L fiddling to introduce colored lighting effects.

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Aisuru Rieko

I'm going to have to try the orange tint light. It seems to give a very nice candlelight-like glow. I made my own photo studio quite a while ago and the lights I've been using are a 3 system, one with a slight pink light, one with a yellow-ish gold and one pure white but not very intense, and sometimes the 3rd one is off all together. I found that the pink/yellow blend together nicely, so you might want to try that too.

LoganBauer

The 3-point lighting technique that Cindy mentions usually works well for me. I use about the same setup, with a few variations:

1. I usually raise the key light(or main light, light #1 in Cindy's explanation) up a little - since it's usually simulating outdoor lighting or indoor lighting coming from the ceiling. (and lower one or both of the other two lights)

2. Typically I'll make the one of the front 2 lights a bright yellow or orange, and the other one a darker, more color-saturated orange or yellow. Then I'll make the back light any cool color (usually blue or purple) - it doesn't work well for everything, but the idea is that the warm highlights on the front of your object/avatar along with the cool light on the back make it stand out and pop more.

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Natalie P.

Ooooo, please? I'm a ho for location snaps.

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alisia student

Some great tips here, thanks ;D

nieve

this thread has really great tips.
as for pose, i always make a copy of all the pose i have in seperate files.

as for Tillie's HUD, the great thing you can have as many copy you want. Beside just the standalone pose you can just wear the HUD which will be great if i'm in sim with nice location (time to time I do explore with my SL family to have some time either walk in the garden or picnic by the beach). The price is not that expensive if compared to others I've seen in-world.

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talisien

I have a full perms multi pose stand, it has a lot of freebie modeling poses in it, but you can add your own. It works well, has a show/hide funtion. If anyone is interested, IM Desmond Gothly inworld, my building alt, and I'll send it to you for free.

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