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Your avatar in a mirror - a random Suella guide!


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So, yesterday I was playing around with creating a photo of my avatar looking at her reflection in a mirror and, because I'm feeling all generous today, I thought I'd share with you how I did it! Note that there may be other ways to do this, or things I did that could be done better, so feel free to share your tips too. :smileyhappy:

I'm going to show you how I created this basic image of my avatar looking at my reflection:
Image 12.jpg
I've written this guide using Photoshop Elements and am assuming a basic knowledge of image editing. The principle should be essentially the same for other image editing software.
First of all you need to take your snapshots inworld. You'll want a snapshot of your avatar facing a mirror in SL like this:
Photo 1.jpg
Note that this is just a basic snapshot taken in my plain white building skybox. You can obviously take a snapshot in a more detailed location, but bear in mind this may require a little extra work when you come to cutting out and overlaying your mirror image. You'll also want to take the snapshot at a slight angle rather than snapping directly behind your avatar. This is so that we have a decent portion of the mirror viewable for our reflection.
Now take the mirror back to your inventory. Be very careful not to move! Swing your camera around so that you are now facing the front of your avatar and try to maintain the correct angle for what will be your reflection. If we imagine that in the image above directly behind my avatar would be 6 o'clock, you can see that I have taken the snapshot at a slight angle that would make it something like 4 or 5 o'clock. So, the opposite of that would be 10 or 11 o'clock and that is where we want to swing our camera to for the reflection. Here is the resulting snapshot:
Photo 2.jpg
Remember to maintain the pose your were doing for the first photo. If your pose is animated, wait until the action is the same as it was for the first snapshot.
Now we have two snapshots, and here is how they look in Photoshop:
Image 3.jpg
The first thing you should hopefully notice is that if we were to move the 'reflection' onto the main image with the mirror it wouldn't be quite right. It needs to be mirrored to be a true reflection. The easiest way to do this is to simply flip it on the horizontal (Image > Rotate > Flip Horizontal) as follows:
Image 4.jpg
So now we have a mirror image of our avatar from the main photo. Before we drag it onto the main photo to become our reflection, we need to delete the space around the avatar. Use the Magic Wand Tool to delete the white space, not forgetting areas such as those between your arms (note that if your snapshot is a background layer it may be locked preventing you from completely deleting the white space. The easiest way to unlock it is to double click on the padlock in your Layers palette and click ok to rename it as a new layer).
Also bear in mind that, if your took your snapshots with more background detail in SL this may require more work and careful thought as to how you proceed. Some of the background detail would also be reflected in the mirror and it won't be quite as simple as deleting white space!
Once you have deleted the space around your reflection you should have something like this:
Image 5.jpg
We can now drag our refection onto the main image:
Image 6.jpg
There are now three main issues. 
1. The reflection needs to be smaller as the mirror is slightly further away.
2. The reflection needs to be slightly more transparent to look as though it is in a mirror.
3. The reflection needs to be behind the main avatar.
The first two are easy to address. Simply resize the reflection layer slightly by using the move tool and dragging one of the corners so that it looks right for the size the reflection it should be in the mirror, then turn down the opacity slightly (I used 65%) using the opacity slider from the Layers palette. This results in the following:
Image 7.jpg
It's starting to look like a proper reflection! Now we need to address the fact that the reflection is in front of the main avatar which is slightly more tricky! We need to delete the areas on the reflection that are overlapping the mirror or would be blocked by the avatar standing in front of the mirror. 
Firstly we can delete the areas overlapping the mirror by going to the main image layer and using the magic wand tool to select the white space around the main elements of the image. Once they are selected switch back to the reflection layer and hit the delete key. This will delete the areas selected from the main layer on the reflection layer. Be careful to switch back to the reflection layer or you will be deleting from the main layer. Again, remember that if you have a more detailed background this will require more work as you won't just be dealing with white space that is easy to select. Some careful use of the eraser tool will likely be required.
You should now have something like this:
Image 8.jpg
We can now start to delete some of those areas on the reflection that would be behind the main avatar in front of the mirror. Use the Magic Wand tool again to select the dress on the main avatar, switch back to the reflection layer, and hit the delete key. That will delete those areas on the reflection that should be obscured by the dress:
Image 9.jpg
You should be getting the idea now! We are going to do the same with the skin area of the main image by selecting it with the Magic Wand tool, switching to the reflection layer and deleting it:
Image 10.jpg
This has removed most of the areas we want from the reflection, but there are sill a few small spots that were missed by the Magic Wand tool. Zoom in close using the zoom tool and delete those using the Eraser tool as follows:
Image 11.jpg
Make sure you are erasing those rogue spots from the reflection layer, carefully ensuring you don't go over the lines of the main avatar. This requires a steady hand! In the picture above, for example, we just want to carefully erase those spots from the refection layer around the elbow of the main avatar. If we go over the edge of the elbow area we will be deleting parts of the dress refelction which we don't want to do! Carefully pan around the image erasing all these rogue spots that are still in front of the main avatar. You'll also want to erase and areas of the reflection that are still overlapping the frame of the mirror.
Once you are done you should end up with a rather marvellous image of your avatar looking at its reflection like this:
Image 12.jpg
This was a bit of a quick job I did and there are lots of things you could do to improve the image even more. For example, you may notice that some of the edges around the main avatar are a little jagged and pixelated. This is partly because I forgot to turn on anti-aliasing in the viewer when I took the snapshots. Anti-aliasing helps a lot with this (see here for more info on that). You can also do more work in Photoshop to address these issues such as using the feather tool to smooth araeas. The liquify filter works well too.
Anyway - hope some of you found this useful and have as much fun with it as I have been doing! Post your results in this thread! :)

 

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

I don't understand... how doesn't it give a true mirror image?

...Dres

 

You know what ... I'm completely losing my mind! It does! :smileyvery-happy:

For anyone else reading this, I'll hold my hands up and admit that I made an edit to the guide above saying that flip horizontal doesn't make a true mirror image but it does. I got all confused becuase I forgot that in rotating the camera to take the second snapshot for the mirror image and then flipping it horizontally, it does indeed create a reflection.

Basically, I'm stoopid, but in my defense it was far too early when i wrote this! :smileyvery-happy:

Anyway - edit removed and the guide is correct!

/me goes off to take some paracetamol for her poor brain!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you Suella for  this wonderful tutorial. This is a practical guide to making a  very realistic mirror image within SL and for other platforms to diplay in. You definitely deserve those kudos:smileyhappy:

 

I recently started a Mirror Project' of my own ( and I've  been using the technique you outline for years now) and wanted to do this  effect in SL in 'hard mode' given inworld constraints. One important thing you point out is that the geometry of the limbs and features have to be flipped, and that alone will make a great mirror image. I have more information on my technique at:

The VaNiTy ThReAd here is what I came up with so farMaxHunterMirrorShootFacingHands_01.pngMaxHunterMirrorCuriousGaze.png.

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Fantastic pics Hunter.

I love how you have got the beam of sunlight through the window and the slight haze.

I really need to find time to get back inworld and do some more playing around with this :)

ETA: Just read how you used both yourself and your twin to create the mirror effect - that's a very clever idea that had never even occured to me!

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