Jump to content

How does your avatar look today ?

Nostoll

By Nostoll,
in Your Avatar

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 59.1k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Scylla Rhiadra

    2577

  • Talligurl

    2362

  • VictoriaGrwd

    1769

  • Orwar

    1039

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

ForrestChild
ForrestChild

This is my current avatar. She's an Usagi Child ^.^  

mQQnie
mQQnie

i was wondering around a SIM one day, and some dude private messaged me tellin' me he loved my look... he was very polite and kind, asked me to stop running and turn my AO off for him, so i did... the

Annika Velde
Annika Velde

Not a GREAT picture but i was working on this avi last night. :3 I'm obsessed with my face.

Posted Images

Sofia Gray

Sofia Gray

Posted
Posted
On 3/14/2022 at 6:00 PM, 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?

Snapshot-077.png

Thank you for such a detailed reply. :) The picture I posted the other day was using a depth map; that's the technique I like the best.  I do tend to shoot using a resolution significantly higher than my actual resolution - which I know is why the system DOF doesn't work for me at all.  I was "hand-painting" the blur myself in the past but some of the edging would really get to me so I have been playing around with other techniques.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Orwar

Orwar

Posted
Posted

   Mina bought some model ships to decorate her shed with. Also a hammock. Probably shouldn't have put the hammock up before finishing the rest of the decor though.

Snapshot-095.png

   I tried to persuade her to get up and get back to it. She just looked at me as if I were being silly. She's taking after Neph ..

Snapshot-096.png

  • Like 13
  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...