How does your avatar look today ?

[Robberinthemuseum]

7 hours ago, MoiraKathleen said:

This one is a strong contender for the, "Lovely Girls" competition 

[Robberinthemuseum]

19 hours ago, Aiyumei said:

Bouncing on another big pink thingy comes later 

Do you have a pic of that too?

[Boy Reaper]

3 hours ago, Marigold Devin said:

I truly enjoy your photos. You certainly have a unique avatar and way of living and viewing your Second Life.

Tysm!

[Kalegthepsionicist]

1 hour ago, Robberinthemuseum said:

Intense!👁 👁

partner not like my scars and eyes, she said stupid 😅

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Not Far from Lviv

Content Warning: Really long text!

In 1927, my paternal great grandfather, a very proud Ukrainian, emigrated to Canada with his large family from what was, at that particular historical juncture, Poland. They came from the western reaches of Ukraine not far from Lviv, where they owned a modest but prosperous farm. Over the course of less than a decade from the outbreak of the Great War, they had struggled successively under Austro-Hungarian, Russian (briefly), German, Independent Ukrainian, and finally Polish rule. By 1921, the greater part of Ukraine had been bound into the Soviet Union, and as my great grandfather was violently anti-Communist, when he determined it was time to move, he looked far westward -- to Canada. They settled in Saskatchewan, with a suitcase full of now worthless Austro-Hungarian and Ukrainian bills, and very little else.

There was one son, and four daughters, of which one was my grandmother -- my Baba. They settled into a Ukrainian emigre community near Saskatoon, and my Baba dutifully married a Ukrainian man (my grandfather, who may also have had some Russian and Belarussian blood) and had two children: my aunt, and my father. My grandfather died when my father was just 9, shortly after the small family had relocated to Toronto, finding a community, once again, among the large Ukrainian community here.

Although she did eventually take up Canadian citizenship, my Baba always considered herself Ukrainian. My aunt spoke Ukrainian for nearly a decade before she learned English, and eventually herself married a Ukrainian man. Life very much centred around the Church, and extended Ukrainian community. At age 13, however, my father decided he'd had enough of what he was increasingly seeing as a regressive and restrictive cultural heritage: he left the church, and began refusing to speak Ukrainian at home. Eventually, he left home to go to school and, horror of horrors, married an Englishwoman -- my mother.

My own home was accordingly not very "Ukrainian" -- at least, as compared to that of my cousins, who attended "Ukrainian school," learning the language, dance, and other aspects of the culture. But my Baba, strong woman that she was, figured fairly large in my youth, as did my extended Ukrainian family, so I was, to some degree, Ukrainian through constant and fairly immersive exposure.

Much of my immersion in the culture is associated with holidays (I was one of those fortunate kids to get TWO Christmases!), weddings, and large family get-togethers. And there was the food, of course -- pedaheh (perogies), halupki (cabbage rolls), and my personal favourite, patychky, which was ground, breaded veal on a stick. There were sweet salads, a sort of oddly flavourless chicken soup, and for dessert, sugared khrustyky. The weddings were huge and extravagant, and often involved visits to what seemed to me far-off locales, such as Sudbury. There were even occasional visits to church with my Baba (generally unbeknownst to my father), which I found rather hilarious, and were the occasion of much shared but secretive eye-rolling between myself and my sister.

My Baba was tiny but immensely strong-willed -- which, given that she had to raise two children by herself, was a very good thing. She held the Ukrainian side of the family together almost by force of will, and when she died, some 15 years ago, things began to fall apart, and my little Ukrainian community began to drift. I still see my cousins occasionally, but while they are "more Ukrainian" than I am, they are, like me, modern Canadians. I no longer feel as though I am "being Ukrainian," as I once did.

I hadn't really thought much about Ukraine or that side of my heritage over the past decade. The invasion of that country by Russia, and the nightmare unfolding there daily, caught me by surprise -- not merely on account of the unexpectedness of the event itself, but because of my own unlooked-for emotional reaction to it. I've never been to Ukraine, and, honestly, likely will never visit, but videos of bombs dropping in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities have impacted me on a deeper level than I had thought possible.

My Baba's Ukraine was not that of 21st-century Ukrainians, of course, and the Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora is similarly, I'm sure, very different in a great many ways from the culture and people now under attack in eastern Europe. I am, and will always be, Canadian far more than I am anything else -- whatever that means.

But it feels a little as though someone has tugged on an unseen thread that connects me, at some odd and deep level, to a land I've never visited -- to, perhaps, a modest but prosperous farm that once stood in western Ukraine, not far from Lviv.

[VictoriaGrwd]

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

7 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Not Far from Lviv

Content Warning: Really long text!

In 1927, my paternal great grandfather, a very proud Ukrainian, emigrated to Canada with his large family from what was, at that particular historical juncture, Poland. They came from the western reaches of Ukraine not far from Lviv, where they owned a modest but prosperous farm. Over the course of less than a decade from the outbreak of the Great War, they had struggled successively under Austro-Hungarian, Russian (briefly), German, Independent Ukrainian, and finally Polish rule. By 1921, the greater part of Ukraine had been bound into the Soviet Union, and as my great grandfather was violently anti-Communist, when he determined it was time to move, he looked far westward -- to Canada. They settled in Saskatchewan, with a suitcase full of now worthless Austro-Hungarian and Ukrainian bills, and very little else.

There was one son, and four daughters, of which one was my grandmother -- my Baba. They settled into a Ukrainian emigre community near Saskatoon, and my Baba dutifully married a Ukrainian man (my grandfather, who may also have had some Russian and Belarussian blood) and had two children: my aunt, and my father. My grandfather died when my father was just 9, shortly after the small family had relocated to Toronto, finding a community, once again, among the large Ukrainian community here.

Although she did eventually take up Canadian citizenship, my Baba always considered herself Ukrainian. My aunt spoke Ukrainian for nearly a decade before she learned English, and eventually herself married a Ukrainian man. Life very much centred around the Church, and extended Ukrainian community. At age 13, however, my father decided he'd had enough of what he was increasingly seeing as a regressive and restrictive cultural heritage: he left the church, and began refusing to speak Ukrainian at home. Eventually, he left home to go to school and, horror of horrors, married an Englishwoman -- my mother.

My own home was accordingly not very "Ukrainian" -- at least, as compared to that of my cousins, who attended "Ukrainian school," learning the language, dance, and other aspects of the culture. But my Baba, strong woman that she was, figured fairly large in my youth, as did my extended Ukrainian family, so I was, to some degree, Ukrainian through constant and fairly immersive exposure.

Much of my immersion in the culture is associated with holidays (I was one of those fortunate kids to get TWO Christmases!), weddings, and large family get-togethers. And there was the food, of course -- pedaheh (perogies), halupki (cabbage rolls), and my personal favourite, patychky, which was ground, breaded veal on a stick. There were sweet salads, a sort of oddly flavourless chicken soup, and for dessert, sugared khrustyky. The weddings were huge and extravagant, and often involved visits to what seemed to me far-off locales, such as Sudbury. There were even occasional visits to church with my Baba (generally unbeknownst to my father), which I found rather hilarious, and were the occasion of much shared but secretive eye-rolling between myself and my sister.

My Baba was tiny but immensely strong-willed -- which, given that she had to raise two children by herself, was a very good thing. She held the Ukrainian side of the family together almost by force of will, and when she died, some 15 years ago, things began to fall apart, and my little Ukrainian community began to drift. I still see my cousins occasionally, but while they are "more Ukrainian" than I am, they are, like me, modern Canadians. I no longer feel as though I am "being Ukrainian," as I once did.

I hadn't really thought much about Ukraine or that side of my heritage over the past decade. The invasion of that country by Russia, and the nightmare unfolding there daily, caught me by surprise -- not merely on account of the unexpectedness of the event itself, but because of my own unlooked-for emotional reaction to it. I've never been to Ukraine, and, honestly, likely will never visit, but videos of bombs dropping in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities have impacted me on a deeper level than I had thought possible.

My Baba's Ukraine was not that of 21st-century Ukrainians, of course, and the Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora is similarly, I'm sure, very different in a great many ways from the culture and people now under attack in eastern Europe. I am, and will always be, Canadian far more than I am anything else -- whatever that means.

But it feels a little as though someone has tugged on an unseen thread that connects me, at some odd and deep level, to a land I've never visited -- to, perhaps, a modest but prosperous farm that once stood in western Ukraine, not far from Lviv.

I loved that little peek into history.  Thank you for sharing a little personal history.  The photo is an interesting take on looking back in a moment while being slightly apart from the details.

Are you on the outside looking in, the inside looking out, or is it a reflection of sorts?   Anyway, thanks for sharing.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

I loved that little peek into history.  Thank you for sharing a little personal history.  The photo is an interesting take on looking back in a moment while being slightly apart from the details.

Are you on the outside looking in, the inside looking out, or is it a reflection of sorts?   Anyway, thanks for sharing.

Thanks Cinn! It's a sort of imagining of a "Ukrainian" me - something that really only exists notionally, but that I've caught fleeting glimpses of, as though through a veiled window, of late.

I should add -- it's also sort of my young Baba. Remarkable woman. I miss her, feisty, lovely and loving woman that she was. I'd like to think there's at least a little of her in me.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

2 hours ago, Kalegthepsionicist said:

partner not like my scars and eyes, she said stupid 😅

Your look is unique and intense.  I actually like seeing people put some "flaws" into their avatars.  Perfection in SL is pretty easy, but finding those small details like scars, lines, wrinkles, crooked noses, or eyebags takes some effort and adds to the interest of the characters we each make.

Sometimes I feel intimidated by those "perfect" avatars.  For me they are harder to approach than others.  

[Maitimo]

[Zeta Vandyke]

[Aiyumei]

6 hours ago, Robberinthemuseum said:

Do you have a pic of that too?

I do, but you won't see it 

[Nalates Urriah]

22 hours ago, Bagnu said:

I'm not sure if that depends on our hardware or graphics card settings (or driver version). 

DOF in the viewer is mostly independent of your graphics card.

The DOF is very dependent on the rez setting, editing, and your viewer settings for DOF, which make the most difference. You can't use the same settings for moderate and high rez images... well you can... but the blur level will look every different for the same settings in low and high rez images.

[SkylarNitely96]

Newbies warning... if you change you're body/head/skin the reward is very pleasing but.... the journey is painful, ohh man its sore, time consuming, frustrating...... DEMO's is the key, you will go through loads.... but when you get close to that picture in your head, its definitely worth it (it'll be a while before i attempt this again) be good ❤️

[Charalyne Blackwood]

Just now, SkylarNitely96 said:

Newbies warning... if you change you're body/head/skin the reward is very pleasing but.... the journey is painful, ohh man its sore, time consuming, frustrating...... DEMO's is the key, you will go through loads.... but when you get close to that picture in your head, its definitely worth it (it'll be a while before i attempt this again) be good ❤️

I've been on for almost a year and a half, and changing my alt's head was a nightmare in and of itself. Demo's certainly smoothed that path some, but it was still 4x4 territory

 

[Orwar]

On 3/13/2022 at 9:01 PM, Sofia Gray said:

Thank you! Depth of field doesn’t work for me if I shoot in high resolution… I usually have to edit in post to get the effect I want!  

   DOF, along with a few other graphic settings (such as shadow settings) are rendered to fit your viewer's resolution. If your viewer is set to 1920 x 1080 and you set your DOF up so it looks great on your end, and then take a snapshot in, say, 4096 x 3072, that snapshot will be rendered with the magnitude of the DOF (and other settings) of 1920 x 1080 still - in essence, halving the resolution (intensity) of those settings. That's also why shadows which may look perfectly smooth in your viewer comes out jagged and stripy in a high resolution snapshot.

   There isn't any easy way to fix this as far as I'm aware of, you can try to up your DOF and your shadow settings and take snaps until you get it the way you want it (although I wouldn't advise anyone play with the advanced settings unless they know what they're doing - I certainly don't!). In my opinion, both DOF and shadows are much easier fixed in an editor.

   DOF also has another issue; it doesn't (always) play ball with alphas (not in FS anyway, although I did notice it works better in BDW); essentially, the DOF will be drawn with alpha masks considered completely opaque, so if you have an alpha hair and take a shot with viewer DOF the fly hairs and loose strands will have an 'aura of sharpness' around them (similar to alpha hairs in front of alpha blended textures - such as vegetation or windows). The issue persists even if you dig up and follow my guide for using depth maps (as depth maps function the same way in how they perceive alphas), which is why I always do both my DOF and fix up my shadows in Gimp instead.

   I'm not going to regurgitate the entire process here (again?!), but in short for DOF: take your picture into Gimp (or PS, if you're weird), copy the layer, add gaussian blur to the top one (you can put it pretty high for now - but just like in-viewer settings, gaussian blur also doesn't scale to the image size, so I can't give you an exact figure - but go harder than you would expect to), then add an alpha mask to that layer. Now pick your paint brush and a solid black, and with the alpha mask selected, start painting over the details you want to be in focus. Next, pick a fairly dark grey and pick out the objects near the same depth as the focal point (and set your brush mode to 'darken only' so you can freely paint to connect with the black without starting to blur what you just focused). Then, go lighter and lighter, until you've made a rough sketch of the whole image (although you could well use a depth map taken in-world if it's a posed shot to speed up the process, then just bring the background colour in to blur those fly hairs). I usually finish by blurring the alpha mask itself a bit to make sure that the transitions are smoother - finally, and this is why you want to start with the blur hard, adjust the transparency of the entire blurred copy until the DOF intensity is to your taste (you also can increase the blur by redoing the blur on the copy itself if you didn't go hard enough, but as they say; go hard or go home!).

   ... I accidentally regurgitated the entire process again, didn't I? 

   Um. Here. Have a random depth map I took for a shoot a while back. Still counts as a selfie, right?

[Boy Reaper]

30 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   DOF, along with a few other graphic settings (such as shadow settings) are rendered to fit your viewer's resolution. If your viewer is set to 1920 x 1080 and you set your DOF up so it looks great on your end, and then take a snapshot in, say, 4096 x 3072, that snapshot will be rendered with the magnitude of the DOF (and other settings) of 1920 x 1080 still - in essence, halving the resolution (intensity) of those settings. That's also why shadows which may look perfectly smooth in your viewer comes out jagged and stripy in a high resolution snapshot.

   There isn't any easy way to fix this as far as I'm aware of, you can try to up your DOF and your shadow settings and take snaps until you get it the way you want it (although I wouldn't advise anyone play with the advanced settings unless they know what they're doing - I certainly don't!). In my opinion, both DOF and shadows are much easier fixed in an editor.

   DOF also has another issue; it doesn't (always) play ball with alphas (not in FS anyway, although I did notice it works better in BDW); essentially, the DOF will be drawn with alpha masks considered completely opaque, so if you have an alpha hair and take a shot with viewer DOF the fly hairs and loose strands will have an 'aura of sharpness' around them (similar to alpha hairs in front of alpha blended textures - such as vegetation or windows). The issue persists even if you dig up and follow my guide for using depth maps (as depth maps function the same way in how they perceive alphas), which is why I always do both my DOF and fix up my shadows in Gimp instead.

   I'm not going to regurgitate the entire process here (again?!), but in short for DOF: take your picture into Gimp (or PS, if you're weird), copy the layer, add gaussian blur to the top one (you can put it pretty high for now - but just like in-viewer settings, gaussian blur also doesn't scale to the image size, so I can't give you an exact figure - but go harder than you would expect to), then add an alpha mask to that layer. Now pick your paint brush and a solid black, and with the alpha mask selected, start painting over the details you want to be in focus. Next, pick a fairly dark grey and pick out the objects near the same depth as the focal point (and set your brush mode to 'darken only' so you can freely paint to connect with the black without starting to blur what you just focused). Then, go lighter and lighter, until you've made a rough sketch of the whole image (although you could well use a depth map taken in-world if it's a posed shot to speed up the process, then just bring the background colour in to blur those fly hairs). I usually finish by blurring the alpha mask itself a bit to make sure that the transitions are smoother - finally, and this is why you want to start with the blur hard, adjust the transparency of the entire blurred copy until the DOF intensity is to your taste (you also can increase the blur by redoing the blur on the copy itself if you didn't go hard enough, but as they say; go hard or go home!).

   ... I accidentally regurgitated the entire process again, didn't I? 

   Um. Here. Have a random depth map I took for a shoot a while back. Still counts as a selfie, right?

Love this pic you look great

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, HorseMommy said:

Love this pic you look great

   Almost looks a bit artsy, don't it? 

[Boy Reaper]

2 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Almost looks a bit artsy, don't it? 

Hell yeah babe we love artsy here 

[Orwar]

   Just for fun, I ran the pic through Gimp to play around with it. 

   I just used a depth map to apply DOF to a depth map. How cool is that?!

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

45 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Just for fun, I ran the pic through Gimp to play around with it. 

   I just used a depth map to apply DOF to a depth map. How cool is that?!

Are you facing the camera or away from it?  You've mentioned that you are into really fine details when you edit. Was this shadow done with a windlight or in your photo editor?

 

 

 

For some reason I want to fiddle around with your piercings...

[Orwar]

5 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

Are you facing the camera or away from it?

   Facing it!

10 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

You've mentioned that you are into really fine details when you edit. Was this shadow done with a windlight or in your photo editor?

   The brightness is based on the distance from the camera. The closer something is, the darker it is, which is why depth maps make excellent masks for adding DOF manually. I then adjusted them in Gimp to give them more depth for a more stylised appearance, decreasing the exposure and increasing the contrast (in several steps by making various S-curves).

14 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

For some reason I want to fiddle around with your piercings...

   Hm, just the ones in my ears ..?

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

21 minutes ago, Orwar said:

37 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

For some reason I want to fiddle around with your piercings...

   Hm, just the ones in my ears ..?

Unless I bring in my alt, I'm not touching that question.  Cinn would never touch anything that is not in view of the general public.

[Paul Hexem]

51 minutes ago, Cinnamon Mistwood said:

Unless I bring in my alt, I'm not touching that question.  Cinn would never touch anything that is not in view of the general public.

You don't know what @Orwar shows to the general public.

[Boy Reaper]

Oh and heres my actual post for the day