Support for Scripted Camera Effects?

[Penny Patton]

In addition to the need for improved camera placement in SL, I firmly believe it is in LL and SL's best interest to provide content creators more tools to create increasingly engaging content in SL, giving us almost video-game like options for atmosphere andf environment (which will also benefit other uses for SL, such as social, casual, educational and marketing).

To that end, I'd LOVE to see LL finally give us scripted camera controls.

I'm not talking scripted camera placement and positioning, we already have that via scripted attachments. What I'm talking about is visual effects.

The TPV "Singularity" has "post processing" effects, such as a "night vision" filter and a "blur" filter". SL should have such effects standard, as scriptable visual effects we can call up.

You know how ctrl+8/9/0 affectsw field of view? Creating a "zoom" effect or a "fisheye" effect? We should be able to control that via scripted attachments.  Imagine wearing an sim's scripted bit, then wandering around the sim. You find a security camera station you can sit at. Sitting down psoitions your camera as if you were looking through the security cam, the script calls up a grainey black and white post processing effect and increases field of view to give a "fish eye" effect.

 

Imagine a combat sim where you pick up a sniper rifle and some night vision goggles. Turning on the night vision goggles triggers a scripted post processing effect that makes everything green and grainey, but brightly lit even in a dark sim. Triggering the scope on the sniper rifle decreases field of view, "zooming in" where you aim the rigle.

 Imagine being able to trigger windlight settings defined by 3D zones "carved out" in space in a sim. So individual rooms could have unique windlight settings to those wearing the scripted bit.

 Imagine wandering through a haunted house near Halloween. Attaching the scripted bit automatically gives you a hint of the fisheye effecf, just one level of it, subtle but noticable. Wandering through the dark halls of the haunted house, the fog picks up. The lighting goes red, everything goes a bit hazy, and the field of view increases to a more dramatic "horror" look as a ghostly figure appears floating through a door just down the hallf. It turns and looks at you for a moment, suddenly a wailing noise is heard all around you as all the doors in the hallway. which start open, suddenly slam shut. a moment later all the windlight/post processing/camera effects return to normal and the ghostly figure is gone. All the doors are shut and locked, except the one at the end of the hall, where the ghostly figure had emerged from.

 

 These are just a handful of the ways we could use such features. It would be easy to implement them (RLV already allows for scriptable windlight, but such features shouldn't be limited to TPVs) Other than the post processing effects all these features individually existi n the stock SL viewer, we just need a way to make use of them.

[Penny Patton]

And a Jira entry.

[Nalates Urriah]

Are you using KirstenLee's Viewer S21(8)? (Review) It is the viewer for those into machinima. If you click in the menu you can find more articles on the S21 viewer.

You may also want to chase down Gaia Clary. She makes the video tutorials for Machinimatrix.org and I think is part of a team making other machina. She may know how to get the effects you want.

Phoenix was adding features to their viewer. I seem to recall that some type of viewer programming was in the mix. Ask in the Phoenix/Firestorm group.

 

[Penny Patton]

I do use Kirsten's viewer now and then, it does not support any of the features I'm requesting here. No viewer does, except that you can script windlight using RLV. But this should be a standard feature, not something relegated to a TPV patch that many want to avoid due to security concerns.

 When machinima creators add these effects, it is done via manually set up windlight effects, utilizing RLV to script windlight changes, and through external post-processing of video outside of SL. That's not at all what I'm looking for.