/sl/ - Second Life

once you make a dumb cube, move it up and center it in the middle of the room.

ambient lights are a general idea of where light is stored wtihin the confines of a room. Ambient light can act as an agent of reflective lighting, highlighting and illumination lighting.

The room itself is small, barren, but lighting can help bring more interest to the room, and most of all, color. you dont even have to tint your textures if ur good enough. Here, I have an arrow of warm colors in the orange and blue with some greys and whatnot, pick any warm soft rose, apricot or indian yellow, (pick a soft but not vibrant orange, make sure its faded but still colorful and leans towards the red and not green)

( forgot to mention, I want my room to bounce with color, you can choose any color depending on your preference and intentional theme/idea but creamy warm colors are a wonderful start )

and establishing shot of one side of the room.

here's another establishing shot. please note, my lightsources are now apparent. the roof is a source of light *you usually want to make sure light comes from a cieling for a generic room, most rooms have light sources in the cieling*

a light source blooms from the corridor on the left and the shut stable doors from the right. We'll open those later. that is 3 light sources. I'll detail further

once you create your ambient light, reduce the radius to about 3-7 depending on the actual size of the room, the walls will gradually light up along with the character.

do not reduce fallout, it is a cheap way to reduce intensity and fucks with your shades. notice as I reduce fallout, the muscle definition decreases. you do not want to do that. pretend fallout doesnt exist unless you have too much light in the room. it is a last resort to reducing bleeding lights.

intensity in general is kept at 1 and if it is too strong, desaturate the color and reduce its luminosity or move the light away. if you want and NEED to maintain its color, intensity reduction is your first option but it will fuck with the ambient lighting. jumble between those 2 options, ignore fallout.

Notice as I move the cube away, the material mapping changes, it becomes less centered and expands the light, because the reflective light expands but dissipated as you gauge distance between material and light source.

So, generally, keep your ambient light a good few feet away from your body. you do not want to be walking around with invisible reflected lights popping all over your body or you'll look like you're in a rave.

as you change radius of the ambient light itself, it will affect chemistry between your background and your character. in general, and in porn, the main focus of the piece is your character, not the fucking background. your character is center stage.

Notice the silhouette of the avatar becoming more apparent as the radius is reduce, the background becomes less visible but your character stands out more. this is what you want, the most important thing in lighting is what you want to see. if the radius was any bigger, the character would end up blending with the background.

so, in this instance, I keep my radius very low but not low enough to not bounce light away from the walls, they still need to be illuminated from the ambient light.

your ambient light is done, go ahead and make it invisible by turning on transparency to 100, make the object phantom and rename the object " ambient light " or anything like that. you'll want to do this, lights end up taking a lot of resources, link them together so they take up less land impact. that is entirely optional but organization > going with the flow.

right click your dum dum object and shift drag it up OR make a new box and watch the webm. you create a point light. click on the next little color icon near the light button to the right and forget about adding a texture, just click on blank and click ok. Blank is a pure white texture that will project that specific texture as a light onto any visible surface in SL from the prim itself. (think of a flashlight) infact, if u want a flash light point light make a fucking circle in MSpaint and upload it

this new light source is a point light, move it up abit higher than ur ambient light, not too high though. there can ONLY BE 2 POINT LIGHTS at ANY GIVEN TIME. the light will still be casted if there are more than 2 but they will not project cascaded shadows.

point lights produce a shadow, this is important, it adds both depth and contrast to your scene. you want lights and darks in your scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugJfjmxOR2I

Please watch if u have 20 seconds to spare.

in point lighting, Radius is distance the light source bleeds onto the surrounding. as you increase distance, you reduce the chance of creating shadows as the lightsource radius bubble increases. if 2 bubbles may collide and produce 2 shadows, but if a third clashes with that specific bubble, you will not be able to see shadow from the bubble furthest away from your camera.

https://i.gyazo.com/85c8fe99045974be5f2710a26d6714d8.jpg

https://i.gyazo.com/fac2177cf8a98441bff245e3b52e6822.jpg

press alt+P and look to your Aids tab and look at light radius, you can then study the lights this way too.

for this scene, im keeping my radius to about 5 or 7. notice as you increase radius, light becomes stronger. thats because the distance for the light to bleed and blend with other light sources or the enviroment increases. if the radius was 3, u wouldnt be able to see the light source but if u were super close to the cube, your avatar would reflect the light very vividly.

As you increase FOV, the field of view is projection angle of your light source. if your goal is to have a large radius of light surround an enviroment with color, be aware that anything above 2.5 FOV will FUCK UP YOUR SHADOWS. https://gyazo.com/031819798c14fb1743ee7851406e987f

keep your FOV in control and do not fuck it up with the meme numbers 2.5+ even 2.0 is too much, shadows are crisper and more solid as u reduce it. it is redundant to reduce FOV any shorter than 1.2 the optimal setting for FOV is always 1.5, with 1.8 being the most generous before it starts fucking up and turning into blocks, the shadow resolution decreases internally you cannot change any settings to fix that on firestorm. Do not.

for this setting, i keep the FOV to only illuminate the ground, as it is REFLECTING the light perpendicularly, (u wont see any reflections if u look at a surface parallel to any light source, physics man. anyway, only the ground should be abit more lit up. if ur that serious about keeping ur floor dark, reduce the radius but you WANT to keep ur body illuminated thats the most important part.

Focus is simply an illusion. it is for realistic instances. as you increase the light, it no longer fades and blends with the surrounding surfaces, it basically becomes a doom 3 light. the reason why you'd wanna do this is for wall lights. in example, look here https://res.cloudinary.com/clippings/image/upload/t_big/f_auto/v1/products/b3-wall-light-cubic-light-grey-concrete-gold-plating-gantlights-clippings-8482021.jpg

near the source of the direct light itself, light does not blend with the direction of the light itself. the rays of the light only slowly turn, as the distance of the light increases, it becomes more and more subtle. focus helps you recreate this effect. i have never found a use for focus but it still helps with some lights

do not touch Ambiance, it is if u lack the resources to rez any more cubes or need to reduce prim count. the only thing ambiance does is remove shadows. do not touch it unless your windlight is EXTREMELY DARK and your shadows are INCREDIBLY FUCKING DARK. again, do not touch ur ambiance unless your shadows are PURE BLACK and you cant see a FUCKING THING.

the next important thing you'll wanna do is a very neat trick, this is very important. the ground is more illuminated, it is reflecting light from the point light directly. so where does that light go? it goes up. to create that affect without affecting the ground itself and making it ANY brighter than it already is, create a prim, MOVE IT UNDER THE GROUND, make it an AMBIENT light only, make it VERY subtle. ATLEAST intensity of 0.6 or 0.7, if this is a stone floor or hardwood platform; its about 0.6. if it is a metal surface or water, its intensity is 1. if it is cobble, grass or even dirt/sand/cement, the intensity should be about ATLEAST 0.3 i'd go about 0.2 even.

remember, this wont affect your walls if ur smart enough, the radius is very small and only influences the room itself, it is an ambient light not a light source. it is a faux light, a reflection of the light from the ground casted by the point light.

here is an example. please forgive the seams on the legs, im actually supposed to be fixing that. but, notice the legs itself become illuminated by the reflection of the light from the floor. an extreme version of what im talking about is here https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2187335077_10.jpg

notice the strong lights punching color onto the leather boot in that picture, it brings the character further into the realm of the enviroment. we are recreating that effect due to the floor being cement that is reflecting light from a point light. its supposed to be subtle, so do not make it strong and reduce its intensity.

lets move quickly along. remember the corridor to the left? THAT creates a light. this is no ambient light, so the intensity is strong, and the radius about 3 or stronger. this is because the look of the next room is vivid, light bleeds from it. http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/278/itsgoofytime.jpg

notice the room in the background is almost pure white, light blooms over the surface of the character's arm creating a STRONG CONTRAST between LIGHT AND DARK. we wont recreate that extremity, but realistically, we do want to respect the laws of physics here and ambient lights from the other room WILL BLEED into OUR room. dont forget to set up that light here. cute room isnt it

>>45144

forgot to post my pic.

I want to mention something about "window" lights. they are reflecting the light outside, but the actual light that pierces the window directly is the sky/horizon light. for an example, when you walk outisde, bright blue sunny day, the sky is blue. the sun is yellow. if u block the sun's rays, you see shadow. but hold on, the sky itself is vivid, it TOO is a light. the blue light bleeds OVER the shadow, thus a blue shadow is formed in the middle of a sunny day under a yellow sun.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_aPitHQwjqI/URBNhhraBNI/AAAAAAAABYA/i8NVNLshVQc/s1600/DSC_0190.JPG

for this demonstration, because my windlight is violet almost warm blue, i should have chose a faded purple'ish color but because im an asshole, I chose blue. it kinda works but it is incorrect. but notice as I turn the ambient window light on and off, my character's outlines reflect light. those are called highlights. highlights are the last and artistic touch but also beautiful if rendered correctly. they change the mood of a scene from dead to alive. see this example here

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gon2.png

so when ur poseballing now with these basic lights bumping tossing and turning, notice the details now formed with your scene. in this instance, notice the leg casting a shadow, notice the shirt reflecting lights left and right. in this case, it turns out my shirt is too glossy so I will reduce it's color so that it reflects less light, and I will increase the specularity of my coat of fur, you can see the normal map but my specular is too absent. im not perfect and sound like nitpicks but they make all the difference.

https://gyazo.com/1121743b44f2fa25e53ea652fd19edd5

^see here for an example of specular mapping reflecting multiple light sources while respecting theme of the image (dark and brooding image) This isnt about material mapping but this lighting guide compliments your material mapping so of course dont forget it.

here is your typical scene being lit on your average poster on 8chan. notice as I flicker between on and off of a single lightsource, an ambient light, it looks no different than say

>>44859

or

>>44832

(im sorry kiki please forgive me, ur lighting sucks but the characters are gorgeous as hell)

last post of this guide

while ur poseballing, DO NOT BE AFRAID OF ADDING MORE LIGHTS TO COMPLIMENT OTHER LIGHTS.

in this situation, notice as the outside light doesnt reach far enough to hit this character. create a prim just 1 foot away from you and recreate that light but reduce the radius by a significant amount, especially when ur poseballing. THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE

IF U TAKE ANYTHING FROM THIS PLEASE TRY WHAT IM SAYING HERE IN THIS VERY POST

the highlights return without affecting the diffuse textures of the surrounding enviroment, highlights create a nice flair of depth to a very vibrant scene due to the nature of the background.

windlights also affect how dark shadows are, as well as other factors.

so again, this is just lighting in general, I could also go on and on about the other things I said from the lewd thread like material mapping, texturing and seam repair, mesh vs sculpts, freya body abuse, ambient occlusion abuse im looking at you paid programming, depth of field, alpha blending vs alpha masking (and when to use them), tinting walls, what third party programs to use and WHEN to use them (the only person allowed to even use reshade is jdb because they have better vision than any of us, fucking pilots man).

I can make another guide about material mapping, how to make them, where to get them, how to be a nigger with them, how to apply when to apply and how to make some decent ones if u aint got any.

I wish I could have talked about glossiness and enviroment for specular mapping.

>>45265

I unironically wish more people had sex toilets in their skyboxes because I am a degenerate.