Group Photo idea

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Peggy Paperdoll wrote:

It's not as difficult as you are making it out to be.  I'm a self taught GIMP user.  I'm not in any way close to an expert.  I'm just an amateur hobbiest.  I do textures and image editing for the fun of it.   I've learned some tricks through experimentation that make somethings easier.......or makes somethings change from mundane to a "work of art".  Because I believe this project is for the residents and not for us, I think the residents should have all the freedoms we can reasonably provide.....if it means our workload is a little larger then, so be it (we volunteered, after all).

I know you are up to the task..........I"ve seen some of your stuff.  I think you will find it's not going to be beyond your capabilities at all.

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I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that photos be taken in a pre-built photo booth, which we will provide, that's lighted a certain way, set their viewer to Midday, take off any face lights and stand between two measurement prims, so that we have some constancy.  On the other hand, I do think it's unreasonable to ask that our volunteer editors be given the daunting task of having to crop out busy backgrounds and try to adjust each and every differently lit avatar so that they look half decent next to one another.  I wouldn't want to do that and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do it either... whether they're willing to do it or not.

I agree Tamara is up to the task... I have no doubt about it.

...Dres

 

[Dilbert Dilweg]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

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That looks great... I wonder if we could set up some sort of captcha system.

I have to put my foot down about inworld submissions... that just won't work for our purposes, period.  But thanks for the suggestion.

...Dres

 

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Yea Captcha could be used. It has been my experience that bots have gotten good at getting around captcha these days. Would have to use a question and answer type of thing. But it could be workable.

SL uses captcha and bots still get past lol

 

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

Yea Captcha could be used. It has been my experience that bots have gotten good at getting around captcha these days. Would have to use a question and answer type of thing. But it could be workable.

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Sounds good to me.

...Dres

 

 

[Tamara Artis]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

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Peggy Paperdoll wrote:

It's not as difficult as you are making it out to be.  I'm a self taught GIMP user.  I'm not in any way close to an expert.  I'm just an amateur hobbiest.  I do textures and image editing for the fun of it.   I've learned some tricks through experimentation that make somethings easier.......or makes somethings change from mundane to a "work of art".  Because I believe this project is for the residents and not for us, I think the residents should have all the freedoms we can reasonably provide.....if it means our workload is a little larger then, so be it (we volunteered, after all).

I know you are up to the task..........I"ve seen some of your stuff.  I think you will find it's not going to be beyond your capabilities at all.

---

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that photos be taken in a pre-built photo booth, which we will provide, that's lighted a certain way, set their viewer to Midday, take off any face lights and stand between two measurement prims, so that we have some constancy.  On the other hand, I do think it's unreasonable to ask that our volunteer editors be given the daunting task of having to crop out busy backgrounds and try to adjust each and every differently lit avatar so that they look half decent next to one another.  I wouldn't want to do that and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do it either... whether they're willing to do it or not.

I agree Tamara is up to the task... I have no doubt about it.

...Dres

 

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ty both for thinking I'm up to the task, And ty Dres for pointing at what I am trying to say all this time. 

But, for me not being up to the task... Since its not my language, I need to try harder to understand what exactly someone said, and allready this is becoming quite messed up for me. All those suggestions... and just when I think we've agreed on something (and can move on to the next thing) someone goes waaaay back and disagrees everything making it even harder to cath up. We were talking about textures applied on a prim for 30 and something pages, and then suddenly pops out a 3D avatar lol, I have nothing against it but I do want us to focus on main things and avoid endless discussions. 

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Okay I'm out of this thread since, apparently, I'm the one who "brought up" 3D avatars.  Even if I was responding to what I thought the suggestion was (I explained that, I thought).

On the photo booth........no it's not unreasonable to ask anyone to use one.  And yes that would require we have one available for free or at a very low price.  And if we go that way I believe we automatically make participation by residents a little less attractive......many people (myself included) won't obtain, rezz and use something unless the interest is more than just "oh, that sounds fun".  And for many I believe that's going to be the very first thought.  I could be wrong but about the "many" but I know I'm not alone with getting, rezzing and using objects from unknown people........and how many people are going to know any of us?  The placement of a photo booth is a better alternative and will not desuade nearly as many from participation.  I'm not against placing restrictions or laying out conditions for accepting submissions...........I am against such restrictions and conditions if we can overcome them without those restrictions and conditions.  I know some backgrounds will be harder than others to remove.  I also know that "harder" is relevant.  Is it really harder because it takes 10 mins to remove a background than if it takes 5 mins?  Yeah, it is......but not much.  Is it worth inconveniencing the people we are asking to help us do this project?  If it is then fine...........I lost my argument.  But, I don't think it is worth it myself.

Now, said I'm done with this thread and I am.  I will read on but no respond here.  I'll attend every meeting I possibly can and I'll communicate my ideas in-world with IM's, notecards and face to face chat.  I certainly don't want to be the cause of any hard feelings and I feel I've done that to some extent to at least one person here.  For that I'm sorry.  It was never my intent to do so and now I'm done.

[Dresden Ceriano]

Don't fret Tamara, we are all still getting used to the way we communicate within a context that is quite different than just chatting on a forum.  I'm sure, as time passes, we will all coalesce and end up on the same page.

...Dres

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Peggy Paperdoll wrote:

Okay I'm out of this thread since, apparently, I'm the one who "brought up" 3D avatars.  Even if I was responding to what I thought the suggestion was (I explained that, I thought).

On the photo booth........no it's not unreasonable to ask anyone to use one.  And yes that would require we have one available for free or at a very low price.  And if we go that way I believe we automatically make participation by residents a little less attractive......many people (myself included) won't obtain, rezz and use something unless the interest is more than just "oh, that sounds fun".  And for many I believe that's going to be the very first thought.  I could be wrong but about the "many" but I know I'm not alone with getting, rezzing and using objects from unknown people........and how many people are going to know any of us?  The placement of a photo booth is a better alternative and will not desuade nearly as many from participation.  I'm not against placing restrictions or laying out conditions for accepting submissions...........I am against such restrictions and conditions if we can overcome them without those restrictions and conditions.  I know some backgrounds will be harder than others to remove.  I also know that "harder" is relevant.  Is it really harder because it takes 10 mins to remove a background than if it takes 5 mins?  Yeah, it is......but not much.  Is it worth inconveniencing the people we are asking to help us do this project?  If it is then fine...........I lost my argument.  But, I don't think it is worth it myself.

Now, said I'm done with this thread and I am.  I will read on but no respond here.  I'll attend every meeting I possibly can and I'll communicate my ideas in-world with IM's, notecards and face to face chat.  I certainly don't want to be the cause of any hard feelings and I feel I've done that to some extent to at least one person here.  For that I'm sorry.  It was never my intent to do so and now I'm done.

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Sorry if I wasn't clear, my idea was to give them out (yes for free) and also have some set up inworld that people can just visit.  It would be especially effective if we have one at the site of the project so that people that visit will be encouraged to participate right on the spot.

Rest assured that I consider your input here very important and I will take all of your concerns into consideration.  My objective is to make this as painless as possible for everyone involved.  To that effect, I have to balance the needs of the people we are asking to participate with the needs of the people that volunteer to work towards accomplishing what we've set out to do.  My hope is to come out with a win/win solution and help us to execute it as efficiently as we possibly can.  Obviously, that is not going to happen overnight... the last thing I'm prepared to do is run head long into something ill thought out.

...Dres

 

[Luc Starsider]

Gathering up a couple of posts here...

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

True. I understand not everyone can be at every meeting or post on these forums at the same time so it is unfair to make decisions without them. I propose though, that by our fourth meeting we:

1. Decide on the project. One or two, yes or no.

2. Decide on the final board members. Either you are in or you are out and the membership is closed

or

we leave it open to the possibility of new members.

 

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By boardmembers, you mean...? What exactly? I'm rubbish at guessing so I just want to make sure I understand.

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

That looks great... I wonder if we could set up some sort of captcha system.

I have to put my foot down about inworld submissions... that just won't work for our purposes, period.  But thanks for the suggestion.

...Dres

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and

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Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

Yea Captcha could be used. It has been my experience that bots have gotten good at getting around captcha these days. Would have to use a question and answer type of thing. But it could be workable.

SL uses captcha and bots still get past lol

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I agree with Dres regarding inworld submissions. It's been said before - It's just not going to work at an acceptable quality.

Wouldn't a captcha system be the easies for submitters to use? It is also something most (?) people are familiar with, and likely to accept?

- Luc -

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Luc Starsider wrote:

Wouldn't a captcha system be the easies for submitters to use? It is also something most (?) people are familiar with, and likely to accept?

- Luc -

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Now that you mention it, I wonder what type of PNGs a bod would upload... could be interesting... lol.

...Dres

 

[Luc Starsider]

Probably a full-body shot of itself, with a clean background that is easy to cut out taken at mid-day.

- Luc -

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Luc Starsider wrote:

Probably a full-body shot of itself, with a clean background that is easy to cut out taken at mid-day.

- Luc -

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...Dres (Hey, as long as it's G-rated.)

 

[Marigold Devin]

Before you vamos from the thread, Peggy, don't.

I haven't been able to input much, but I've read all, and considering relatively few residents have been contributing to this thread (I think I counted 15 in total), the ideas swishing around seem to be becoming more cohesive, in spite of some of you believing that new ideas are being thrown into the mix, or that you're going round and round in circles.

Just bear in mind that it has only been one week since Knowl aired the idea for this particular group photo collaboration, and it should still be at discussion stage.  What's the group motto? - Haste makes waste?

Tamara - you said in an earlier post you'd been able to contact various people - plenty of guinea pigs for tests, but I loved your transparent prim, and used it on my profile photo (I think you may have referred to this much earlier in this thread, but here's a memory jogger)

Charolotte - you're amazing, I have to say. I've watched you learn so much so fast this last couple of years. I know this project is something you're really enjoying getting your teeth into particularly.

Dresden - Was that your maze? I haven't had chance to go over and see it yet, but I do like the idea of something a bit different to what has gone before.  Charolotte said something about Hall of Avatars. I love that idea.

The mosaic seems to have been done before and looked good, and the 1000 avatars project was superb (is superb if it's still installed in SL).  Just to throw another spanner in the works (!), I love the idea of a sim/chunk of land that looks highly populated. These avatars on a transparent background, in the form of a maze, or just dotted around land, would look pretty neat.

(If wishes were fishes and all that, I think it would have been nice if there was a place we could all go to leave a lasting copy of our avatar, complete with name tag, where we could go and visit old friends who are no longer with us (too sentimental, that's me :matte-motes-big-grin-wink: )

The main thing, though, is not to let a fun project become an all-consuming job of work. I'm sure Knowl would not want it to be.  There's a lot of enthusiasm, and talking at 100 miles an hour, which needs to slow down just a bit or you'll all just get burnout!

Last point though. Why is it so bad that if residents take their own photos the quality of the photos aren't all identical?  I know that some people can be very **bleep** if a photo isn't perfect (glances at someone in particular who is absent from this thread, but she knows who she is), but often a person's choice of outfit, height, lighting, adds that wonderful quirkiness that is key to Second Life - we're individuals, not cloned from one cell.  Where I prefer Nam's Skin and Prim lighting, because I love to accentuate what I see to be the cartoon-like appearance of avatars, others prefer a red desert sky. (Yes, I am very aware that my avatar looks out of proportion to the others in the photo above - my world always is a little out of proportion and strange.)





 

 

[UncommonTruth]

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Marigold Devin wrote:

Before you vamos from the thread, Peggy, don't.

I haven't been able to input much, but I've read all, and considering relatively few residents have been contributing to this thread (I think I counted 15 in total), the ideas swishing around seem to be becoming more cohesive, in spite of some of you believing that new ideas are being thrown into the mix, or that you're going round and round in circles.

Just bear in mind that it has only been one week since Knowl aired the idea for this particular group photo collaboration, and it should still be at discussion stage.  What's the group motto? - Haste makes waste?

Tamara - you said in an earlier post you'd been able to contact various people - plenty of guinea pigs for tests, but I loved your transparent prim, and used it on my profile photo (I think you may have referred to this much earlier in this thread, but here's a memory jogger)

Charolotte - you're amazing, I have to say. I've watched you learn so much so fast this last couple of years. I know this project is something you're really enjoying getting your teeth into particularly.

Dresden - Was that your maze? I haven't had chance to go over and see it yet, but I do like the idea of something a bit different to what has gone before.  Charolotte said something about Hall of Avatars. I love that idea.

The mosaic seems to have been done before and looked good, and the 1000 avatars project was superb (is superb if it's still installed in SL).  Just to throw another spanner in the works (!), I love the idea of a sim/chunk of land that looks highly populated. These avatars on a transparent background, in the form of a maze, or just dotted around land, would look pretty neat.

(If wishes were fishes and all that, I think it would have been nice if there was a place we could all go to leave a lasting copy of our avatar, complete with name tag, where we could go and visit old friends who are no longer with us (too sentimental, that's me :matte-motes-big-grin-wink: )

The main thing, though, is not to let a fun project become an all-consuming job of work. I'm sure Knowl would not want it to be.  There's a lot of enthusiasm, and talking at 100 miles an hour, which needs to slow down just a bit or you'll all just get burnout!

Last point though. Why is it so bad that if residents take their own photos the quality of the photos aren't all identical?  I know that some people can be very **bleep** if a photo isn't perfect (glances at someone in particular who is absent from this thread, but she knows who she is), but often a person's choice of outfit, height, lighting, adds that wonderful quirkiness that is key to Second Life - we're individuals, not cloned from one cell.  Where I prefer Nam's Skin and Prim lighting, because I love to accentuate what I see to be the cartoon-like appearance of avatars, others prefer a red desert sky. (Yes, I am very aware that my avatar looks out of proportion to the others in the photo above - my world always is a little out of proportion and strange.)

---

 

Yes I know this was just posted, but I thought it was worth reposting.. so very well said!  I agree with this, all of it. Except I have seen Dres's maze, and it looks great :smileyhappy:

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Marigold Devin wrote:

Last point though. Why is it so bad that if residents take their own photos the quality of the photos aren't all identical?  I know that some people can be very **bleep** if a photo isn't perfect (glances at someone in particular who is absent from this thread, but she knows who she is), but often a person's choice of outfit, height, lighting, adds that wonderful quirkiness that is key to Second Life - we're individuals, not cloned from one cell.  Where I prefer Nam's Skin and Prim lighting, because I love to accentuate what I see to be the cartoon-like appearance of avatars, others prefer a red desert sky. (Yes, I am very aware that my avatar looks out of proportion to the others in the photo above - my world always is a little out of proportion and strange.)

---

The point is to capture a persons avatar in all of it's glory... of course they'll wear what they want (as long as it's PG) and wear whatever shape that they want.  The idea is to create the illusion of them all being in the same place at the same time... therefore, the lighting needs to be similar to maintain consistency.  I also think that it will actually put more of a spotlight on the avatar's individuality to be shown under similar lighting.

The reason I spoke of measurements is so that we can reflect their correct height in the display, which is meant to be life-sized... not to make them all the same height.  If we wanted to make everyone look like a clone, then the whole display would be filled with nothing but pictures of me... lol.

...Dres

 

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

  If we wanted to make everyone look like a clone, then the whole display would be filled with nothing but pictures of me... lol.

...Dres

 

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What? That's not the project?

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

  If we wanted to make everyone look like a clone, then the whole display would be filled with nothing but pictures of me... lol.

...Dres

 

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What? That's not the project?

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You weren't supposed to tell.

...Dres

 

[Charolotte Caxton]

Oops, plan b?

[Charolotte Caxton]

Thank you Marigold, that means a lot to me.

Peggy, I think it was just a misunderstanding, Tamara can sound kinda harsh, reminds me of someone else I know :smileymad:

 

[Knowl Paine]

Greetings All,

I will review the comments posted today, and update in a few hours. (have some errands to complete)

I will be Inworld at about 7PM PDT today.

 

Yes Charolotte, I meant spell check :smileyvery-happy: :smileyhappy:

 

[Charolotte Caxton]

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Luc Starsider wrote:

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

True. I understand not everyone can be at every meeting or post on these forums at the same time so it is unfair to make decisions without them. I propose though, that by our fourth meeting we:

1. Decide on the project. One or two, yes or no.

2. Decide on the final board members. Either you are in or you are out and the membership is closed

or

we leave it open to the possibility of new members.

 

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By boardmembers, you mean...? What exactly? I'm rubbish at guessing so I just want to make sure I understand.

- Luc -

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I meant like the planning committee, those of us who are in charge of and active members of getting this project together.

Roles have been assigned and responsibilities have been defined, I wondered if we were open to more or were closed. 

Also, I wanted it to be clear what our mission is and that everyone agreed to it.

[Keli Kyrie]

So I am not a very good planner, or a good builder but I made something maybe we can look at and talk about. This is 100 512x512 textures taking up 51 prims using mesh. (you could use 1024x1024 if you want but I did not have many textures that size)

 

Far away or close up it looks good.

 

Even the details.

 

Like I said I am not a good builder so if we had a better model maybe we could get the count even lower. I made this on the beta grid and if anyone would like to look at it I can send them a copy over there.



 

 

[Knowl Paine]

Thank you Keli :smileyhappy:

I was thinking about about what you were thinking. I was wondering, "what is she thinking".

My first thought of your picture was, I haven't seen very many Green Dresses.  (women pictured in 3rd row up from the bottom)

All joking aside, your photos have lots of different colors, that is good. A Photo-Mosaic could be made with the variety of image colors. The example also helps me to see, we would need a lot of photos to make a second image from the images.

One hundred on one, (101) (long story) A Photo-mosiac may need 80 panels like that.

 

Thanks for thinking about the Group. :smileyhappy:

 

 

[Knowl Paine]

Enrollment is Open by Invitation.

If you or any other Group Member knows of a Resident who wants to help, please do add them to the Group. Send them a copy of the Survey to complete, we can assign them a Role accordingly.

 

I will sent up (2) Group Meeting for this Weekend.

For now, the Group can relax.

Each Group Member should prepare any information they have for the Group, or any questions.

If a Group member cannot attend the Meetings; send me a Notecard, I will present your data at the meeting.

[Knowl Paine]

I have reviewed the comments here today.

Very good information, thank you to all. :matte-motes-smile:

 

 

I do not wish to touch base on every subject presented here; we can do that Inworld at the Meetings.

 Our Group has (2) Owners to balance and protect the interest of the Project. Charolotte has my full support.

Marigold made an insightful observation in mentioning that it has only be 8 days. :matte-motes-smile:

Dresden is the Lead and will define Ideal image specifications for images for the Display Project.

At both meetings, I will present a list of Reasons why I support (2) projects.

I understand that Group Members in other Roles, are just waiting. I apologies for the delay.

We need some meetings.

 

 

[Luc Starsider]

Well said, Marigold!

@Peggy. Please don't leave the thread!

@Charolotte. Thanks for clearing that up. I had a flash of an Apprentice type situation when I read the first post Made me think of grabbing hold of the doorframe. The more that can be decided firmly on, the better.

@Knowl. RELAX!!! WHO CAN RELAX??? lol. Will do. I hope I can attend the meeting(s)...

- Luc -