Jump to content

[HELP??] Graphics woes.... (advanced lighting)


Intoxicate
 Share

You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 3886 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Recommended Posts

So I joined the party and bought some Slink mesh hands today. Upon reading the instructions, the creator instructs the following: 

"Ensure your basic and advanced lighting is enabled in your viewer preferences/Graphics.  If not, you won't be able to match your arms effectively and you will always see the attachment point."

I'd had advanced lighting turned off prior to this point, and upon turning it on, i notice that my prim teeth disappeared. 

My prim teeth actually came with an alpha that I wasn't using. I wasn't using them because I could actually get the teeth fitted perfectly fine without it. 

So upon noticing that the teeth disappeared, I put on the alpha, assuming it would help. 

It..... did not. 

If I turn advanced lighting back off, everything looks fine, but the attach point on the slink hands will be visible. 
If I turn advanced lighting ON, the hands will look fine but I won't be able to wear the teeth. 


This is what the problem looks like: wth-lighting.png

 

And here are my current settings (with AL -on-)

settings.png

 

Also, I notice that when advanced lighting is turned on, my avatar in general has a -duller- appearance (the highlights on the skin and clothes seem to diminish).

 


• What am I doing wrong here? 
• How can I fix this? 

[EDITED TO ADD]  
Also, I'm using Firestorm 4.4.2

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Teeth - it looks like they're overbright with advanced lighting - either a facelight (make it go away - just make it go away) or they're internally lit (make it STAAAHP.) Older items often have added light sources to make them look "better" with the older, simpler lighting but when seen under advanced lighting they might look like tiny light bulbs in your mouth (because they ARE.)

2) Hands - best bet is to see if your skin maker has an "applier" which will map the actual texture of your skin to the mesh hands which will ensure the best possible match under any lighting. Usually advanced lighting isn't necessary to match attachments though - typically advanced lighting should look the same as having it off but using atmospheric shaders.

Still, I'd make peace with advanced lighting. It really looks better than the old way if you work with it instead of using the kludges from older lighting schemes, and you'll need it when "materials" catch on. The big difference is it will accurately render every lighting source - many lights that were jacked up to compensate with older lighting look too bright with advanced lighting. If you know anything about music recording and are older than dirt, it's similar to recordings that were given RIAA equalization for phonograph records that were dumped directly onto CD's and sounded like nails on a chalkboard because you could hear the high-frequency boost that was added to compensate for LP's reduced ability to reproduce high frequencies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I already checked, and there is absolutely no light emitting from the teeth. It's not set to full bright, and there is no glow. 

I was not wearing a facelight either. 


In addition, this only happens after i attach the alpha. And it doesn't look like it's emitting light, it looks like a distortion.

 

And yes I went to all of the people I bought skins from, but only a few of them had slink appliers for the skins that I actually purchased. Therefore I have to manually match the hands for those skins. Out of all the skins I own, if I only wore the ones that came with appliers, I'd be limited to wearing 2 skins, which is not an option. 

And honestly, I feel that my avatar actually looks better without advances lighting. My avatar actually looks duller in appearance when I have it turned on, which is probably why I've had it turned off all this time. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With advanced lighting, all local lights and the windlight settings have a huge effect on the scene and therefore things look different. In closed rooms shadows are the next thing that can make scenes look completely different.

In your case - throw your crappy facelight into the trash - is useless anyways. Or step out of the light array at the place you made the screenshot or use a more real windlight setting - one without the virtual floodlight array.

So you will find a setting for yourself. Has no influence on what others see though. If you care about that - forget it - everyone has their own SL.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Combining this with your other thread makes me wonder if you by any chance are wearing system hair that uses a transparent texture. That can really screw-up rendering of anything attached to the head, or anything behind it, almost like wearing some misshapen invisiprim helmet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I've said before, I am not wearing a facelight. 

The images above were taken using CalWL windlight setting, which comes as one of many presets in the firestorm viewer. 

To further emphasize that there is NO EXTRA "LIGHT" involved, I took the image AGAIN, using DEFAULT windlight settings. 

NO LIGHT!.png

As you can see, it's much darker, yet the teeth still look distorted when worn with the lip alpha while advanced lighting is enabled. If there were any light emitting from anywhere, it would be VERY visible. 

Why is everyone insisting that I'm erroneously wearing some secret hidden light that's causing this? I'M NOT! lol!

You guys are seriously trying to make me feel like an idiot. -_-

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Intoxicate wrote:

system hair? . . . no. I usually wear mesh hairs from lelutka, truth, or CatWa. There are no invisiprims being worn. I may be a bit new around here but i'm not a complete noob lol

Okay, but in fact, every avatar must wear some system hair. Among other things, it controls your eyebrow shape, which actually affects the shape of your head. It sometimes comes with prim/mesh hair, may be called a "bald cap" or it may come with a shape. Because it's not worn for the visible hair anymore, sometimes a transparent texture is used for the system hair. One might expect that this would simply make the system hair invisible, but it doesn't. Rather, at least for some graphics settings, where that transparent hair would be is actually treated like an invisiprim, masking display of more distant alpha textures.

Here's how a transparent texture for the most extreme fluffed-out system hair settings looks on my avatar, in front of a translucent window:

Snapshot_001.jpg

[ETA: To clarify why I'm posting about this effect here: Firstly, I think it may correspond to the advanced lighting setting, and possibly a materials-capable viewer, just based on when I started noticing this effect on a rarely-used alt. And second, the theory is that the prim teeth are actually an alpha-channel texture, blocked by this weird "invisihair" effect, and then when you wear the alpha layer that's supposed to expose those prim teeth, it actually exposes the skin's teeth, inside the lips. Just a theory, mind.]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

all of my system hair sliders are set to zero, and I'm not wearing a hair base (or hair alpha layer), if that's what you were referring to. 

I actually don't wear -any- alphas besides those that come with my shoes/boots, and clothes... and the one that i wear to get rid of system lashes. 

And thank you for explaining your theory about the teeth. I'm using firestorm 4.2.2, which is not materials-enabled, so my only assumption is that the person who made the teeth, made them using a materials-enabled viewer, and mistakenly used settings that are only compatible with other materials-enabled viewers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Intoxicate wrote:

all of my system hair sliders are set to zero, and I'm not wearing a hair base ...

Even so, you are wearing system hair - always. We cannot take it off. Just like we cannot take off our skin, or shape, or eyes.

We can shrink and hide the system hair totally inside our heads by setting the hair sliders to zero.

The system hair is referred also with names such as: "Hair base", "Bald base".

This system hair is also used in controlling the shape of the eyebrows.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know all of this. The person I was responding to was suggesting that my system hair could be the cause of an issue that I posted about in another, separate topic, I was responding to that. 

Anyway, I logged in using a different viewer and found a prim attachment in front of the teeth, that had an invisibility script running. 

So thank you for letting me know that invisiprims don't work in advanced lighting, that explains a thing or two. 

What I still don't understand is why an invisiprim would cause such a distortion with advanced lighting, but -only- after an alpha was added to the same area. As I showed in the 1st post, even with advanced lighting enabled, only the invisiprim was affected. It wasn't until after I put the alpha on that it caused the distortion. 

Is it possible that the combination of the invisiprim with the alpha is the cause of this?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Intoxicate wrote:

I know all of this. The person I was responding to was suggesting that my system hair could be the cause of an issue that I posted about in another,
separate
topic, I was responding to that. 

Anyway, I logged in using a different viewer and found a prim attachment in front of the teeth, that had an invisibility script running. 

 

So thank you for letting me know that invisiprims don't work in advanced lighting, that explains a thing or two. 

What I still don't understand is why an invisiprim would cause such a distortion with advanced lighting, but -only- after an alpha was added to the same area. As I showed in the 1st post, even with advanced lighting enabled, only the invisiprim was affected. It wasn't until after I put the alpha on that it caused the distortion. 

 

Is it possible that the combination of the invisiprim
with
the alpha is the cause of this?

 

 

 

Invisiprims were basically a bug which proved useful for certain things so the bug was tolerated for quite a while - alpha layers were meant to replace them. The bug that allowed invisiprims was removed for advanced lighting. It was kept in for Famous Original Lighting to reduce the BAWWW level their complete disabling would have caused.

Transparent textures that are in front of each other frequently cause strange effects in a variety of 3D computer graphics applications - it's more noticeable in Second LIfe because other applications tend to be controlled environments put together by professionals so the problems can be hidden.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Intoxicate wrote:

 

It wasn't until after I put the alpha on that it caused the distortion.

 

Is it possible that the combination of the invisiprim
with
the alpha is the cause of this?


Well, invisiprims were used to hide something before Advanced Lighting Model was implemented.

Because with Advanced Ligting Model on invisiprims do not work, Linden Lab implemented Alpha Mask. So when we have Advanced Lighting Model on we use Alpha Mask to hide something on avatar's body instead of invisiprims.

So, we do not use both at the same time: Alpha Mask and invisiprim - something strange might happen.

Anyway, it's not even recommended to use inviprims any more. Because anybody having Advanced Lighting Model on will not see the hiding effect of invisiprims - not on their own avatar and not on anybody else's avatar.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for explaining.... I'm gonna assume that whoever made the teeth, made them before advanced lighting was implemented, hence the invisiprim. 

I even tried to change the alpha mode on it using the official second life viewer, results were hilarious. :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You are about to reply to a thread that has been inactive for 3886 days.

Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...