CKDexter Howley

This error has been happening to me for over a year. I'm now on the latest Firestorm viewer 4.4.0 and it is still happening. I thought it was related to the amount of memory available to my video card, so I'd shut down my multiple windows and throw out everything unnecessary in my system tray and it was still happening. I had what I thought was a good video card (Geforce GTS 250) with lots of memory. I replaced the card with a new one - a Geforce GTX 660Ti. I'm still getting the "textures discarded" error. Also, SL won't run with the latest Geforce driver. I have to roll it back in order to get SL to load (FS or the Linden Lab viewer).

Thanks so much Marianne!

I saw this avatar with this hairstyle and I cannot find it anywhere in SL. Does anyone know who designed or who sells this hairstyle? I don't know who this fellow is otherwise I'd ask him. :)

Excellent image Tamara! People don't mind paying for quality. The time and effort shows in this image.

I've been a fashion/portrait photographer in SL since 2007. I've settled into a standard pricing (for me) that has a single pose image at $1000L, double pose image $1200L and a single couples photo at $1500L. I spend considerable time on my images both in the photoshoot itself and in the processing using PS CS6. I know other photographers that charge much more than I ($2000 and up for single images) but I also know that those that price in that range do a LOT of hand painting and compositing. So I think pricing has to do with how you and your customers value your work. I do it as a hobby so even though many people have said I'm under priced, I'm not doing it for the Linden as much as for the pleasure. I do work an average of two hours on a photo in PS and at least 30 mins on a shoot (75+ snaps per session). http://www.flickr.com/photos/29560786@N05/

Any good PC/Mac audio setup for recording would be good for SL. The key is having a good audio card and using a good quality microphone. A headset mic into a laptop audio system is very poor for audio quality. I have a condenser microphone into a small mixer into my M-Audio audio card input to my PC. If you have a desktop PC or an iMac, those audio cards, although not made for quality audio are at least useable with a good quality recording mic. My condenser is not high end but good quality and cost about $200.

One thing I've found VERY useful, well... two things: 1. Get a mouse that has a programmable button (mine is a Logitech MX Revolution). Map one of the programmable buttons to do the keystroke combination "CTRL ~" Now you are free to ALT Zoom/Pan with your mouse and then just tap the button to take the snapshot. It is great for taking many snapshot. In a photosession I will zoom and pan around my subject and just click click click click. 2. Use the "Freeze Frame" feature in the photo dialogue of your viewer. I believe you have to pull down the extra features at the bottom of the dialog to get the checkbox for freeze frame. Once you've frozen the image, use your ALT Zoom/Pan features to orbit your "frozen" scene to get the best angle. This is a feature not well advertised. This is great for trying to capture moving events or scenes. Just keep freezing the moving scene (wedding, dance, road race whatever) until you get a "scene" you like. Then once you've "frozen" it, orbit around and use CTRL 0, 8 and 9 to get the right framing and then save it to disk.

The point of highest possible image size for snapshots has to do with flexibility after the in-world shoot. Once I have an image in photoshop, what happens if I want to crop a medium or even a face closeup from a full body shot? If I have an image just the resolution of my screen, I'll end up with a very low resolution cropped image. Whereas, if I have a huge resolution image to start with, then crop to just the face, I still have an image that is larger than the 1024x1024 maximum image size of SL. Start big and you won't have to call the model back for a reshoot. PS: film is cheap in SL... take LOTS of snaps while in a photoshoot... snap snap snap snap..... I'll routinely take 80 to 100 snaps in one model's photoshoot (saved to disk of course).

I would be more than happy to help. I have been a professional photographer in SL since 2007 and am a university professor teaching design in RL so I support your research. Feel free to contact me in-world.