Facelights, to wear or not to wear?

[Maccaulay]

Who finds them a good thing, and who doesn't like them, and why, i'm undecided, i've tried one and thought i looked better but then when it's night time i look odd all lit up like a torch while everyone else is on the darkness,lol or is there a better way to make your avs features look nicer and not lumpy? 

[Syo Emerald]

Use the environment and windlight settings.

[Ren Toxx]

/me grabs some popcorn and comfortably sits, waiting for the extremists in both camps to come and start snarling at each other

 

ETA: I'm on the facelight camp.

 

/me munches some popcorn while ducking the first incoming stone

[Theresa Tennyson]

Facelights are useful sometimes for photography where they serve the function of fill lights that RL photographers use, but for general walking around they frequently look bad and disruptive. They came into fashion under older rendering systems and to people using the new higher-end "lighting and shadows/advanced lighting model" some can look ridiculously bright.

One easy way to have your avatar's face look better is to not stare at it and nitpick - this also works in RL. You're probably looking more for a solution like a custom Windlight (world lighting) setting though - this is a way of modifying the unflattering default lighting to a softer look. Many skin manufacturers have notecards describing how to do this.

However, there's no way that you can reliably control how your avatar looks TO OTHERS because there are a number of different rendering systems and you can't know what other people are using.

 

[Dora Gustafson]

By all means wear face lights
Attached point lights are turned off in my viewer at any time, so they won't bother me

(face lights are attached point lights)

:smileysurprised::smileyvery-happy:

[Sephina Frostbite]

Im only told no bling or face lights where ever I go

[squashy Beeswing]

You really don't need a facelight with all the windlight options now available.  Plus they tend to irritate the hell out of everyone around you. 

Occasionally i wear a subtle one but only when i'm taking photos.   :matte-motes-grin:

[Caitlin Tobias]

Oooh, the good old facelight discussion.

I do not use them, not even for photography, as I always work with the windlightsettings and shadows. As for others wearing them, and they vary from 'gentle' to 'nuclear lighthouse' (!!).... I have attached lights unticked, so I do not see them, and so they do not bother me.

For people on machines that do not handle windlight/shadows or higher graphics well, I can see a gentle, subtle, facelight may help them looking better for themselves.

So, as Dora said: by all means...wear em, I do not see them anyway! Helpful eh!

 

 

[Kelli May]

If you want to wear a facelight - and by all means, do so if it improves your appearence -  wear one. And by that, I mean ONE (1) only. That's one source, not one attachment with a cluster of sources lighting every conceivable angle. Please, also keep the light setting as low as possible. Something around the following...

Intensity: 0.5

Radius: 0.3

Falloff: 2.0

...should be quite powerful enough to smooth out ones features without lighting up the landscape.

ETA: more powerful lights, and clusters thereof, are fine for photography. Just don't wander round with them on, please.

[Caitlin Tobias]

---

Sephina Frostbite wrote:

Im only told no bling or face lights where ever I go

---

Tsk! Bling is Vintage and I heard it will be all the rage in 2014 again!

[Perrie Juran]

---

Maccaulay wrote:

Who finds them a good thing, and who doesn't like them, and why, i'm undecided, i've tried one and thought i looked better but then when it's night time i look odd all lit up like a torch while everyone else is on the darkness,lol or is there a better way to make your avs features look nicer and not lumpy? 

---

If your only concern is what you see on your own screen, use your windlight settings.

If you are concerned with what others see, actually you have very little control over that.

When you think about it, how much time do you actually spend zoomed in on a face?  So for those times, perhaps consider something subtle like the Nlight FREE 2.0 Adjustable Beauty Light.  But if you want to be sure to blind everybody around you, the Megatron is the perfect choice for you.

[Jewel Laurasia]

I used to make and sell facelights, but they just aren't worth a damn anymore, even for photography. Windlight is the answer.

 

I bought a hybrid avi with a mesh head, with the option to have it on full bright. At first glance this looks like a great solution, but it really looks odd in a normal setting.

[Kelli May]

---

Caitlin Tobias wrote:

---

Sephina Frostbite wrote:

Im only told no bling or face lights where ever I go

---

Tsk! Bling is Vintage and I heard it will be all the rage in 2014 again!

---

/me hoards her bling waiting for it to come back in.

[Teagan Tobias]

What would come to mind when I would see someone with a bright light is a hooker standing under a street light, always made me laugh. But I don't see them any more so I don't care, but you can tone them down if you like them.

[Dora Gustafson]

---

Jewel Laurasia wrote:

I bought a hybrid avi with a mesh head, with the option to have it on full bright. At first glance this looks like a great solution, but it really looks odd in a normal setting.

---

What a horrible idea, a full bright avatar!

In the midnight hour and when you turn off the light to sleep it will look flooded with light

:smileysurprised::smileyvery-happy:

[Penny Patton]

I agree with Perrie. If you're concerned how you look on your own screen, there are windlight settings which can achieve the desired effect better than any facelight.

If you're trying to affect how others see you, facelights can be detrimental due to the nature of how SL handles light sources. A light that looks fine to you may appear to be a super nova to those around you. Also, anyone using the old rendering engine is limited to 6 local lights, if your facelight is large and bright enough it can eat up one of those light sources, removing an active light source from the environment or creating flickering light sources as SL tries to decide which to render. Face lights using multiple light sources have an even more drastic effect.

If you're going to wear one, a single, subtle light is best.

 

There are also other alternatives which may or may not apply to you.

Some of the flaws people try to hide with facelights are caused by pinching vertices when customizing facial features. You can often smooth these out by applying a bit of fat (it doesn't take a lot) and by trial and error in adjusting facial features to see how the surface of the face mesh is affected.

There are also mesh heads which are generally far higher quality in terms of model work. Using any mesh body part replacement does have its drawbacks, I recommend researching them before purchasing anything.

[Bree Giffen]

Everyone else is in darkness... because it's night. That usually happens. Would you think someone was a little strange if they shone a flashlight at their own faces at night? Windlight is your friend. Even if you don't use windlight much you can still turn off the sun/moon point lights which is what causes the lumpy effect.

[JoJo Aurelia]

I don't like glaring ones and started a thread here once complaining about them. But decided to be proactive, rather than complain, and created one with very low light and sell it for 10L. It's mod, too. I called it, "I'm addicted to my facelight." LOL. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Kakia-Designs-Im-Addicted-to-Face-Lights-Soft-Light/4206608I ... I gave up, just encourage low light facelights to avoid the glare. 

[Madeline Blackbart]

---

Jewel Laurasia wrote:

I used to make and sell facelights, but they just aren't worth a damn anymore, even for photography. Windlight is the answer.

 

I bought a hybrid avi with a mesh head, with the option to have it on full bright. At first glance this looks like a great solution, but it really looks odd in a normal setting.

---

I disagree ont he photography thing. Sometimes you have a windlight setting you like that makes the mood right but your skin fairly dark. The best solution is even after tweaking said windlight sometimes is a facelight. Still rarely used.

 

Are you thinking of the s@r Mesh head?it has full bright and a facelight.... Beautiful mesh head and I likte it but wtih full bright on and a facelight at night it looks weird so I had to turn it off. Other then taht great mesh head.

[Jewel Laurasia]

With the S@R mesh head the transparency was showing around the mouth with the smile gesture turned on, and not just on my viewer. So I had to turn it off. Seems mesh heads are very limited on facial movement.

[Sephina Frostbite]

---

Penny Patton wrote:

I agree with Perrie. If you're concerned how you look on your own screen, there are windlight settings which can achieve the desired effect better than any facelight.

If you're trying to affect how others see you, facelights can be detrimental due to the nature of how SL handles light sources. A light that looks fine to you may appear to be a super nova to those around you. Also, anyone using the old rendering engine is limited to 6 local lights, if your facelight is large and bright enough it can eat up one of those light sources, removing an active light source from the environment or creating flickering light sources as SL tries to decide which to render. Face lights using multiple light sources have an even more drastic effect.

If you're going to wear one, a single, subtle light is best.

 

There are also other alternatives which may or may not apply to you.

Some of the flaws people try to hide with facelights are caused by pinching vertices when customizing facial features. You can often smooth these out by applying a bit of fat (it doesn't take a lot) and by trial and error in adjusting facial features to see how the surface of the face mesh is affected.

There are also mesh heads which are generally far higher quality in terms of model work. Using any mesh body part replacement does have its drawbacks, I recommend researching them before purchasing anything.

---

How do you mess with wind lighton firestorm?

[Penny Patton]

Firestorm includes a lot of very nice, pre-made sky settings and day cycles you can choose from if you're not up to creating your own.

 

 AnaLutetia - AvatarOpt is one of the popular settings I believe is included with most viewers. It is a midday sky that brightens surfaces and reduces shadows I, personally, don't like it because of that (except when editing attachments, then it's fantastically useful) but again it's very popular with people looking to replace face lights with windlight.

 I haven't used Firestorm in a while, but there will either be a button for skies either in your toolbar or at the top of your screen, or you can go to the top menus and find it under World > Environment Editor > Environment Settings.

 From the window that pops up there should be a drop down menu with a tonne of sky presets.

[SugarPutty Magic]

99% of facelight users dont understand how bad they make the world look for others. If you have a high end pc and can run shadows Facelights show up like a mini sun making everyone around the wear'er washed out. People that tend to wash everyone out around them with their face lights, soon find themselves derenderd to a large portion of SL never to be seen again. So if your intent is to make it so others can see how beautiful you are and how you stand out from all the rest. You failed horribly. becouse you just got derended.

 

[Penny Patton]

I encountered this issue long before LL introduced deferred rendering. I'm not entirely convinced it is merely a difference between the old rendering engine and deferred as all other lights look the same, or at least similar, to me between deferred and the old rendering engine.

It's possible, but it is not my experience.

My theory is that there are a lot of people who are running SL at such a low visual setting that they actually do not have local lights enabled. I've talked with many people where this was definitely the case. Some of them did not realize they were wearing lights at all, others knew they were wearing face lights but any difference they thought they saw was wholly imagined, which was why the lights were set so bright.

 This may or may not be the case for everyone wearing blindingly bright lights, but it is something I have certainly encountered

[Sidnella Riler]

Well you should wear whatever you want to wear on your side, and in my side I just

turn off Attach point lights, no big deal