User:Torley Linden/Draft

Do you want to photograph gorgeous scenes like this?

INSERT VIDEO, TORLEY

Inworld photography is one of the most popular hobbies inside Second Life, and getting started is as easy as clicking a single button. This guide from Torley, SL photographer pioneer, will quickly run you through achieving great results in minutes. Watch this short video tutorial and do the steps for yourself:

Take your first snapshots

1. As shown in the video, in the Viewer's Advanced mode, simply click the Snapshot (camera icon) button on your toolbar.
2. In the SNAPSHOT PREVIEW window, choose Save to my computer.
3. Click the Save button.
4. A file browse window appears. Choose your location — like on your desktop — and save it there.

Now, every subsequent time you Save a snapshot during this session, it gets saved to the same location. If you want to change locations, restart the Viewer.

You should also open the snapshot in your operating system to make sure it turned out fine.

Tip: Snapshots saved to disk automatically have a number appended to them. For example, "Snapshot_001.png, Snapshot_002.png, Snapshot_003.png", and so on.

Use a shortcut

There's a faster way than repeatedly clicking the toolbar's Snapshot button: press Ctrl+`. This bypasses the SNAPSHOT PREVIEW and saves to disk directly.

Change your point of view

OK, so how do you change your camera angle? Since a snapshot is taken of whatever you see:

1. Click the toolbar's View button to bring up the camera (Orbit Zoom Pan) controls.
2. Click the controls to change your view. As you get more advanced, you'll want to try keyboard shortcuts for each of these.

Tip: To get an easy shot of your avatar's face, click the Eye icon to show Preset Views, then click Front View.

Change the time of day

Is it too dark? Want a clear blue sky with no clouds? That's easy too.

1. Select World menu > Sun > Environment Editor.
2. Drag the time slider to change the time of day, and drag the Cloud Cover slider to make the sky more clear or more overcast.
3. A lot of extra fun can be had if you click Advanced Sky and make choices from the Sky Presets dropdown.

Second Life's atmospheric system is called "WindLight". You can get hundreds more sky and water settings.

Make your Second Life look its best

If you've looked at other Residents' photos and wonder why some things look so vivid or sharp, it could just be because of graphics settings. These are dependent on how powerful your computer is, but if you meet or exceed our System Recommendations, you should be able to see Second Life in all its glory. Here's a quick setup:

1. Select Me menu > Preferences.
2. In the PREFERENCES window, click Graphics tab.
3. On the Quality and speed slider, click High, or if you have a really powerful computer, click Ultra. When you're comfortable, you can also click Advanced to show more options.
4. Click OK to save your changes.

Tip: On a powerful computer, click the Hardware button and enable Anisostropic Filtering and Antialiasing to at least 4x. Antialiasing smooths out jaggy edges. Torley thinks this should be on by default on capable systems.

Silent snapshots

If the whirr-click! snapshot sound and animation starts to get on your nerves, you can disable that.

1. Select Me menu > Preferences.
2. Click Advanced tab.
3. Enable Show Advanced Menu. You'll see it appear at the top of your screen.
4. Uncheck Advanced menu > Quiet Snapshots to Disk.
5. In the PREFERENCES window, click OK.

What's next?

Torley says: "I've focused on cutting to the chase so you can get photographing without feeling overwhelmed — even though amidst emotional beauty, it's natural to feel that way! Snapshots are a 'gateway skill' of Second Life that will lead you to learning so many other parts. Alas, I want to tell you upfront that despite their joy, there are many technical bugs with snapshots — such as them turning out black or otherwise distorted, which is why I recommend always check a test shot before continuing further in a session. Here are some links to learn more!"

More options

In the SNAPSHOT PREVIEW window, click More to reveal additional choices. Here's what each one of them does when Save to my computer is selected:

• Size - Default is Current Window. If you change the size, it may only capture part of the visible Viewer area, as shown in the preview thumbnail. Torley usually leaves this alone, since he prefers to crop in an external image editor. If
• Format - Default is PNG. Torley recommends PNG as the best balance for archiving snapshots in a web-friendly and relatively compact format. JPEG degrades image quality (plus, you can always convert PNG to JPEG) and BMP is an old format incompatible with the web, and uses bigger file size. Unless you know what you're doing, leave this alone.
• Width - Change this if you want to change t
• Height -
• Constrain proportions -
• Capture -
  • Interface -
  • HUDs -
• Keep open after saving -
• Freeze frame (fullscreen) -
• Auto-refresh -