Creating your own windlight settings is not easy: you need to know lots of parameters in your viewer and practice, practice and practice again.
How you can set up your windlight in the easiest way?
I think that the easiest and better way is starting from a real image.
In other words, you use the lights you found in an image to set up your Second Life locations or simply your photo scene.
How? Let’s see together.
Open your image in Photoshop or other graphic software. In this tutorial, I use PS, since it’s the most used graphic software.
Let’s create a colors range from the sky using the dropper tool, from the darker to the lighter, in this way:
Colors Range using the dropper tool
Now that you have all your sky’s colors plus the sun’s color, go to Second Life.
I am using Firestorm Viewer for this tutorial. Go to World → Ambient Editor → Sky Preset and choose Edit Preset.
You should have now a window like this one:
The Ambient Editor in Firestorm Viewer
Now, we need to know where to exactly put the colors we found in our real images. It’s easy, just follow this colors guide:
Colors Guide for Second Life
How to easily set up your colors?
Select the color you want to change and go to the “hex” tab. You can paste the color value you found in the PS’ colors palette. See this image to better understand:
Put this value in the Hex Tab (Ambient Editor in Firestorm Viewer)
Here you see exactly where the Hex tab is:
Hex tab in Firestorm Viewer
Copy and paste all values you found in PS to the Hex Tab in Firestorm and you’ll get exactly the same windlight settings of your image.
You will probably need to adjust the intensity parameter that will have an effect on the Hex value.
The hardest part is done! Now you need to experiment with the mist and the sun/moon dimension to find a better solution for your need.
I suggest to set up clouds with the same color as the sun, but with a lighter setting. This choice will let you experiment with a realistic colors mix.
Finally, choose your east angle, where the sun borns (where you see the sun in your sky).
Name and save your preset and you have finished!
Share an image of your beautiful sky presets in a comment and don’t forget to subscribe to my Youtube Channel.
I know, it’s not Friday, but today, the last day of this 2019, I would like to share with you The Cold Rose, the new rustic-chic location realized by Van Loopenand me.
We thought to the highly realistic location and, I confess, we worked a lot to give credibility to our homestead.
If you remember, in this video I talked about “How to Get Realism in Second Life” (if you missed it, I suggest to take a look).
The Cold Rose is an example of how to get realism to a location.
The homestead is entirely walkable, following the path that surrounds the various islands. You’ll find different ambients with a unique rustic-chic style.
The Cold Rose offers four exclusive houses to rent at a very competitive price. At least, for now.
Hello guys, in this video, I am going to answer some comments you left in my previous video about Realism in Second Life. Thank you so much for supporting me, Merry Christmas to everyone and see you after the Christmas Holidays! Bye!
Hello guys, in this video, I am going to show you how to build a credible and realistic location in Second Life.
Whatever you are going to realize, your home as well a whole sim, what you want to get is realism.
Why? You should ask.
Pretty simple. Because people like realism, people search realism since realism feels us like being there, like being in the virtual world.
People usually search two things in Second Life:
An ambient that feels them like inside the virtual world (so very realistic);
An ambient that feels them good that feels them happy to enter in Second Life.
In other words, people want to feel good inside a world that seems the reality, and that gives them what they can’t obtain in their existence.
For example, I live in an urban ambient, and I would love to live in a nature-contact, in a good-eye landscape, enjoying natural sounds. Unluckily actually is impossible for me living in this way, and for this reason, I enjoy a whole homestead built to satisfy my need (feeling happy in nature-contact).
So, how can you obtain this goal? How can you build a home, a parcel, or a whole sim looking so realistic to seem real? Is it possible in Second Life, or just Sansar can give you this realism?
Let’s start also saying Second Life can give an incredible realism even if, of course, just Sansar can offer a better result.
There are so many stores in Second Life can offer realism and low Land Impact at the same time. You will like to explore them, choosing your favorites items to decor your space.
So, let’s start to see step by step what you need to do to build your location as realistic as possible.
Assuming you are creating a whole sim (if you want to decore your home, no worries, go forward to steps 2, 3, and 5 when I talk about decoring), let’s see what you need to do.
The Rusty Nail
Step 1: Choose your ground textures. Choosing your ground textures is the first step you need to do, and it’s one of the most important. Why? Because you will build your space starting from this aspect. So you need to know if you want to create a beach, a mountain, or a lake ambient (to say), before starting to choose your textures.
I suggest you search for your ideal ambient real images on Google. Searching real photos will help you to know the strategy better to realize your project. When you see the landscape you want, you will need to buy the perfect textures fixed your needs. On my blog, I will share with you my favorite stores to help you reach your goal. You can also download the guide to find the stores I mentioned above quickly. Just click on the link to my blog in the description of this video to download and consult it any time you like.
Step 2: Choose your building style. What you want to create, an elegant ambient or a rustic one? An urban landscape or a natural one? And so on. Another crucial start-point, since what you will do it depends on these choices. On my blog, I will share with you some incredible stores that can fit your needs, whether you like to get an elegant and refined style or a minimal and rustic one.
Step 3: Choose just copy/modify objects. This aspect is crucial since you will need to change the items your rez. It’s evident since it’s challenging, a piece is perfect for your landscape: you will probably need to modify it to let it integrate into your landscape.
Step 4: Landscape, landscape, landscape! Let’s start to edit terrain, keeping in mind your style and the real images you choose for your inspiration. Try to edit in a more realistic way as possible. The reality is not regular, so don’t be regular and don’t create a unique flattened ground, but choose to do altitude jumps. They give lots of realism to your place and make the landscape evocative if you don’t know how to landscape, no worries! In the description of this video, you can find the link to my blog, where I share several videos about editing terrain in Second Life.
Step 5: Put your items to decorate the sim realistically. Remember: reality is not regular, so don’t be! Around the grid, I found out several locations (also for renting) building in a too regular way to not be realistic. For example, you are putting identical rocks all adjacent. Stones are never similar and not necessary adjacent. Like before and once again, the better strategy is viewing real landscape images before decorating.
Step 6: when you have finished or also during decorating, be sure to think about how many prims you need for decoring and how many you need to get free. Moreover, it’s true if you don’t own a full sim but just a homestead.
So, if you don’t have enough prims, level the ground and give space to water. You will get a lovely landscape without using many prims.
Give life to a realistic ambient is not easy, moreover if you don’t have many prims. In Second Life, we have some excellent examples of destinations where the creator realized this goal.
Click on my blog in the description of this video to get the SLURL to these great locations. See you in the next video!
Step 7: Windlight Settings. Windlisght Settings have to be realistic, in tune with the ambient you realized. On my blog, I put some high stores that sell their windlight settings.
If you like my video, like, share, comment, and subscribe to my channel!
Today, the 13th DecemberShop & Hope 2019 Winter Event is going to open to the public!
I am there and I am excited about this (huge) winter event. So excited that I’ve just finished recording a video about it. I want to share my experience like a blogger for this important winter event.
Shop & Hop will open today at 9 AM SLT, so stay tuned!
Good morning folks! I’m already late for work, but I had to post this today and get it out of the way. I have been spamming you with Arcade posts lately but can you blame me? There are so many goodies in this current round and only 20 days left for you to go check them out. I’m sporting some of them today so take a look below for all the details and enjoy your shopping!
Please note that I Love Events(TM) is not associated with Linden Research, Inc. or any of its affiliated companies or products, including Second Life (collectively known as "Linden Lab"). The opinions and views expressed on this site belong to the content creators and do not represent the views or opinions of Linden Lab or its employees, directors, officers, agents, or representatives. The usage of the SLBN logo by I Love Events(TM) does not indicate endorsement or representation by Linden Lab.
