Making better Second Life snapshots using the environment editor, part three

Pagoda in Gaden Gardens at mighnight

Gaden Gardens is a Second Life location of classic Japanese architecture and a magnificant replica of Japan's ninety-three ton Kamakura Bhudda. This pagoda is not far from the Bhudda and will serve as an excellent subject for learning about taking Second Life snapshots by available moonlight.

This is what the pagoda looks like at Second Life's midnight. It's certainly attractive, but changing the moon and the cloud cover will drastically improve the picture and alter the mood of the shot.

For the following exercises, please refer to the picture in yesterday's article (part two of this series) of the Environment Editor and the Advanced Sky Editor's Lighting tab. Today we'll continue playing with the Lighting tab and also with the Clouds tab.

If you're a Second Life member and you want to visit the exact location from which I made these snapshots, just click http://slurl.com/secondlife/Resnik/55/80/91

he pagoda after changing the moon position and cloud cover

You can see how much improved this picture is. To accomplish this, I made two changes:

1. In the Advanced Sky Editor, Lighting tab, I changed the Sun/Moon Position slider to where the pagoda was lit the best
2. In the Environment Editor, I moved the Cloud Cover slider to the max 1.00.

It's still a night shot, using just moonlight, but the pagoda is much better lit than in the first shot.

You might be wondering how this shot would look if we could actually get the moon into the picture. Let's find out.

The pagoda with the moon behind it.

For this shot, I did something we haven't done before: I changed the moon's East Angle, using the Advanced Sky Editor's Lighting tab, which changes the moon's azimuth. The moon was obscured by the thick cloud cover, so in the Environment Editor, I changed the Cloud Cover slider to the minimum.

However, moving the moon from behind us to behind the pagoda created a new problem: we've made a more interesting background, but the pagoda's front is once again shrouded in midnight gloom.  We'll tackle that next.

The pagoda with maximum cloud cover

For this picture, I went back to the Advanced Sky Editor's Lighting tab and changed the Scene Gamma.  This caused the overall scene to brighten while retaining black sky of night.

The moon is still there, but is obscured by the much brighter clouds.  There is one more trick we can try to make the moon more prominent

The pagoda with clouds removed

When clouds get in the way in our first lives, there's not much we can do about it, but in Second Life it's easily handled. 

For this picture, with the clouds removed and the moon and stars showing clearly behind the pagoda, I once again used the Advanced Sky Editor, but this time I opened the Clouds tab.  Under that tab, on the lower right corner, I unchecked the box next to "Draw Classic Clouds".  This won't always get rid of clouds, but it does get rid of the classic puffy clouds that were obscuring the moon in our previous shots. 

Now it's your turn to go out and play with the information you've learned from these three articles.  You can dramatically change the appearance of your shots by using the Environment Editor and its sub-editors.  They are powerful tools.

For additional news stories about Second Life and virtual worlds in general, visit my website avatarplanet.com.