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Ditch the Facelight


JoJo Aurelia
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The most powerful pc will not change the fact that a scene can only be lit with 6 light sources. Some facelights have more than this which is a) pointless and B) destroys scene lighting.

 

...no matter what PC.

 

I did suggest turning off attached lights earlier too.

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Facelights have one absolutely magnificent benefit: Another entry for the mute list.

Besides that wonderful benefit, there's always the option to just turn attached lights off. There's relatively few situations where attached lights are of any real use.

1) Facelights do ruin any kind of intended ambient lighting. People have already mentioned the max. number of lights in non-deferred rendering as well.

2) Facelights just look ridiculously dumb for anyone who does have deferred lighting on.

Everyone has the right to look as stupid as they like. Just like I have the right to mute everyone for any reason whatsoever. Including for wearing facelights.

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It depends on which facelight, surely.   There's a vast difference between a discrete, 'polite' facelight and those that light you up like the Second Coming. 

I *only* use mine for photography purposes, when my chosen windlight settings are too dark for my face to show.   Otherwise, i really don't see the point of them. 

TBH, they're a bit of a perma-noob indicator, much like blingy shoes and body oil.

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I do agree my post was contentious. Bad day and pushed post too fast, didn't re-read and well, there you have it. No excuse, just fact of the matter. Not intending anything but an ill placed ill worded rant bought on by a visit to my studio from 5 models, all arriving in full bright lights blinding me, causing me to stumble and fall 1000 meters...luckily not to my death.

Regarding FL, I used to wear one when I first came into SL and I honestly thought everyone did. Those that didn't, I thought they didn't know about them! I felt sorry for them.

But, one night, I was at a ballroom and someone sent me a note card and said that I was ruining her good time, depleting resources, the bane of all evil and sure to go to hell because of my facelight. She said my pours were so big she might vomit from looking at them (yes she said that). She then gave me a picture of myself looking like a Bakersfield mug shot.

I remember being pissed, similar to these posts I got here in response. Anyways, I started to really pay attention to my environment and decided to try to go without. It was hard. It was like coming off morphine. At that time I was wearing eStyle skins. So, I read around and tried Nam's Skin 1 windlight. Which seemed to help and eventually I forgot about it.

My BFF cried foul and said I was now ugly, and she continued to wear hers and complain to me about my darkness.

Currently I use ::Wow:: skins or Oceane. I don't think it's necessary to say my skin is ugly or say my skin is cheap and I don't think these designers would appreciate either. It would take a half brain to figure out what I wear because of my blog, where I normally have a stylecard.

There are FL that are not really bright, and there are many settings to adjust our environment but for the general population, most don't know how to do that. Yes I can derinder and make adjustments but it's a pain--but I guess that's the point I'm hearing. We want to do XYZ and to hell with the rest of you. Kinda reminds me of the crappy builds around my mainland home and store.

My point about ppl looking at themselves was not neccessary.

I do see cross hairs on ppl, and the 90% turn when they walk.  I am guility of it too sometimes.

My OP was contingeous and I should have worded it better. Long day, lots of issues, just posted something without really reading it and thinking about those waiting to jump down people's throats for farting and make it all personal and call you ugly to boot. LOL

 

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This is one of those situations that finding a win/win for everybody can be difficult.

It's really very easy to tell a seasoned resident to "uncheck attached lights," or however the setting works.

But what about new people.  Guess we just add to their learning curve? 

There are some people wearing them, mainly Newbs,  because they were told they make them look better.

While I know this wont be an absolute because of different peoples computers,  in a conversation with someone I was helping out I suggested she do screen shots with and without the lights.  She had to confess on her computer she could see no difference. Then I sent her a screen shot of the 'washout' she was causing on mine.  I did switch her to a subtler light.

Those who say it makes their faces look better, well you only really need one with with a short radius cause its only when you zoom in that you see the details that you are saying you want to enhance.  Seriously, why is that face light hanging 5 meters from your face and why are you surrounded by six of them?

If you are going to use one, take screen shots at sunrise, sunset, noon and midnight, both with and with out.  If it doesn't make a difference in what YOU see, at best it probably is making no difference in what others see and at worst it is probably washing things out for others.  Do an honest comparison.

If it truly does make a difference in what you see, then use it.  But maybe consider getting one that doesn't cast 1000 watts of light for 100 meters around.

 

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Generally I leave attached lights off, but when I use a flashlight or similar device, I turn the setting back on for the effect.

When that happens, I get to suffer people walking around with small suns strapped to their face.  I often simply take a screenshot and show them.

If they keep it, I ban them (when I can), otherwise mute and derender... Which is particularly interesting on roleplay or combat sims that have rules against ignoring people!

Seriously, if you need a facelight at all, you're Doing It Wrong. Windlight and Graphics settings can do the job better than any facelight.

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Facelights are a personal choice of the wearer, just as seeing facelights or not is a choice available to you.  If you don't like them,turn them off - simple. Given that you have a choice, why do you feel you need to impose your choice on others and insult them in the process?  IMHO, saying people are vain is the pot calling the kettle black, when you obviously care enough to make an attractive avatar when it is not strictly necessary. Do you do that because you stare at yourself?

The great thing about SL is the freedom that it gives to everyone to look the way they wish to look. 

Perhaps a more constructive way to approach this is to talk to your fellow fashion creators about the issue as most people probably are wearing face lights that they got when they bought something else and didn't make themselves. I get them all the time with outfits and most of them are like mega spotlights and go in the trash.  You could also do a constructive post telling people how to make their own facelight so they just softly illuminate their own face and nothing else.  This is easy enough to do by keeping the light radius and intensity very low.

You are correct about facelights coming in full avi packs. I think got my first one that way.  I think somewhere I even asked a question on the old forums about if there were better ones. I plan on having a designer event to discuss many subjects and this is one that I will add to the agenda. tyvm

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I have a very expensive system, that was built just for designing in Second Life. 

_____________________________

 

Sextoy Gynoid wrote:

Ditch the attitude. If your cheap comp can't handle my lighting, go ahead and block me.

 

You do realize that there's a very simple setting that allows you to turn off attached light sources, right? 

 

The self-import of some people blows my mind.



Please share your simple settings.

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

Problem with that is it screws up legitimate uses of attached lights, like lanterns, torches and flashlights.

And also, another point that's been mentioned at least once in this thread but people don't seem to realize, disabling attached lights does not stop them from breaking environmental lighting.

That's right. When you disable attached lights, attached lights still count towards your 6 light limit, breaking environmental lighting when someone with an abusive nose lamp is nearby.

 

I'm not sure if derendering is any different regarding this.

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I was at the SL9B the other night and it clearly states to set your environmental settings to midnight. So, I did, and there, standing on the corner was a woman illuminating the build, which was supposed to be viewed in darkness.  That to me is way more about self importance.

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Perrie Juran wrote:

 She had to confess on her computer she could see no difference. Then I sent her a screen shot of the 'washout' she was causing on mine.  I did switch her to a subtler light.

 

Graphics set to Low turns off all lighting.  That's probably why.

I've had to send snapshots to creators who made things with their graphics set to low but put a light source in every prim of an object.

 

 

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For those that like face lights here is a simple polite one anyone can make that will be minimally intrusive. Size will not effect the light and the smaller the ball is the less it will get in your way if you are editing things on your head. Also the smaller it is the closer people have to be to you to even see the light rendered.  That's because a prim has to be able to be big enough to be seen within the draw distance of the observer before any effects in the prim can be seen. 

The light cast will only be on your face and you won't be a human flashlight. As a bonus It will not distort the light reflection when tinting prim feet an other attachments below your face so you will be able to get a truer match.

 

  1. Rez a ball and reduce its size to very small. <0.1, but 0.01 is even better
  2. Click it, go to edit and then the features tab.
  3. Check the light box.
  4. Set the intensity to =/<0.5
  5. Set the radius to =/<1 (0.5 is generally more than enough unless your avi has a huge face)
  6. If you want to you can click the color box and tint the light a very soft peach or rose
  7. Go to the textures tab
  8. Click the texture box and select a transparent texture (there is one in your library)
  9. Go to the general tab and name the light something that you will remember
  10. Take the light into your inventory then left right click it and select Attach to and attach it to your nose or mouth.
  11. If necessary you can Highlight Transparent (ctrl+alt+T) and click it and move it around to get the exact look you want.

 

 

 

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Yesterday I saw one female avatar burning the ground textures (and her textures) with super strong light.  I was was wondering where the light came from as there were no balls orbiting her.  Further inspection revealed this:

• Both earrings had light
• The necklace had light
• The hair had light

:smileysurprised:  :smileyfrustrated:

Personally I have never understood the use of facelights.  They take off the effects of environmental lighting effects.  To me facelight sends a message "look at me". :smileywink:

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Coby Foden wrote:

Yesterday I saw one female avatar burning the ground textures (and her textures) with super strong light.  I was was wondering where the light came from as there were no balls orbiting her.  Further inspection revealed this:

• Both earrings had light

• The necklace had light

• The hair had light

 

:smileysurprised:  :smileyfrustrated:

Personally I have never understood the use of facelights.  They take off the effects of environmental lighting effects.  To me facelight sends a message "look at me". :smileywink:


Coby Foden wrote:

Yesterday I saw one female avatar burning the ground textures (and her textures) with super strong light.  I was was wondering where the light came from as there were no balls orbiting her.  Further inspection revealed this:

• Both earrings had light

• The necklace had light

• The hair had light

 

:smileysurprised:  :smileyfrustrated:

Personally I have never understood the use of facelights.  They take off the effects of environmental lighting effects. 
To me facelight sends a message "look at me". :smileywink:

Heh, I do not mind the 'look at me' message, after all I want ppl to look at me too - I spend a lot of time dressing Caity up and make her look good! :P

Then again, a VERY bright facelight makes my eyes water and makes it hard to look at them - so they reach the opposite effect.

 

 

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Coby Foden wrote:

Yesterday I saw one female avatar burning the ground textures (and her textures) with super strong light.  I was was wondering where the light came from as there were no balls orbiting her.  Further inspection revealed this:


If you don't see light-balls imagine teh following:

- rez a sphere make it smallest possible size (0.01m)

- hollow to max

- one of the dimples to max

- one of the cut paths to max

The result is something smaller than 0.001m - even if not transparent it's often not rendered or just not noticeable most of the time - but you add a transparent texture of course.

Careful - you need some building skills to find and select it if you make it :)

So it's no problem to make a facelight with no visible emitter. The huge globes I often see shows that the creators are clueless and never realized that SL only has point lights. Beeing clueless they don't know that not everyone uses their low graphics settings.

However - one point is that there is no shared experience in SL. Hardware, viewers, viewer settings and windlight settings make a huge difference to what people see. And so we will have abusive facelights and again the solution is on viewer side (block/derender) to fix that.

 

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Caitlin Tobias wrote:

 

Heh, I do not mind the 'look at me' message, after all I want ppl to look at me too - I spend a lot of time dressing Caity up and make her look good!
:P

Then again, a VERY bright facelight makes my eyes water and makes it hard to look at them - so they reach the opposite effect.

Oh yes.  I find it a compliment too if somebody stares at me for some length of time.  We indeed can look great without the aid of those beacons shining at our faces.  :matte-motes-big-grin:

desismileys_2164.gif                           hubbahubba.gif  Wow!

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