117 - Stand 4 Love

Meow meow meow meow.... (I meow 4 love.)


I discovered this campaign when I saw this pic by Bouquet Babii, so I followed the links to the Stand4Love website and decided to do a pic with Dim Sum.

They require a square pic, so I did another one for the "Where's Dim Sum?" series at the usual size.

They also said a plain white or black background. And, well, ... technically, the background prim *is* plain white, but I was playing with projectors again. See the words on my arm and on Dim Sum? :D

Okay, since I'm playing around with this, I might as well do Strawberry's tutorial meme from the past week before she publishes the next one.

Technical notes

windlight: Phototools- Build 005 Light (modified) + projectors

Strawberry's memes - Teach Something

Strawberry says, "Teach me something." To be honest, I wasn't sure what I could teach, because almost everything has been taught out there. But I'll talk about how I used projectors with this photo and include tips as well.

The only reason I started playing with projectors is because I was thinking of using them for my SL10B build. This is the second photoshoot I've done with projectors. The first one wasn't particularly PG, but if you want to take a look: closeup, zoomed out, and combined.

It's really very simple. (I'm glossing over the details here.)

1. Change your graphics settings. Turn on Local Lights, Atmospheric Shaders, and Advanced Lighting Model and choose SunMoon + Projectors. Set your windlight to a nighttime one until you know your projector works.

2. Create a projector.  Or two or three. It's just a prim. Be sure to set the rotation to all zeroes, and the light would come out at the bottom (negative z-axis). You can rotate it again later to point it at your subject. Then go to the Features tab of the Edit dialog and check the Light box. You're essentially creating a prim light. You can choose the color of the light and choose the texture that would be projected. You can play with the FOV to blur the texture too.

Now the tips:

• If you use a temporary texture, it won't work. (Trust me, it took me hours trying to figure out why it wasn't working.)
• If you don't turn on the Advanced Lighting, you wouldn't see the second (texture) box to the right of the Light checkbox. You'll have to close the Edit dialog and open it up again, or edit something else and go back to the projector prim.
• You can use the blank texture to get a plain square patch of light. Or create a texture with a white circle (or many white circles or even any shape you want) for a spotlight effect. A cylinder will not make a round-shaped spotlight.
• If you stretch one side (x-axis or y-axis), the light (and texture) will also stretch.
• You can get some cool effects, if you angle the spotlight against a wall (instead of projecting it straight on), and if you use several and overlap the projections, and if you add color to the light.
• Browse the web for tips on how to position lights in real-life photography. Try them out or set up your own.
• Try different windlights with your projectors. They can be daytime ones too, as long as they don't overwhelm the projections.

I'll continue playing with projectors for a while, so I'll have more samples to come.