As you may know I joined Team Eshi Otawara for RFL this year, and contributed one unique piece of art for the upcoming art auction this weekend, that will take place at Rouge.

I just wanted to give a bit more information about the piece I will put on sale. It is a portrait from my own Boudoir Rouge collection, of course. It will be sold under the same terms I usually sell portraits from the Boudoir Rouge series. This is a unique item inworld, one single copy has been produced and will be sold inworld under the form of a resizable and copiable frame. The new owner will be the only person in SecondLife to have a copy of it, as I pass the original to the new owner. Also, I will send a 6000×4000 JPEG copy to the new owner, so he or she can make RL prints for personal display.

Here is a snap of the said portrait, already on display at Rouge for the upcoming auction:

Please join us for a fundraising event this Sunday the 26th, 2009. Bidding Starts at 10:00 AM SLT, and will continue until all items have been placed on the bidding block.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rouge/200/65/22

All proceeds will be donated to the Relay for Life fundraiser 2009. Team Eshi Otowara and Dirk Talmasca have joined forces to bring you some amazing artisans for this event.

There will be Second life photography, Second life digital Art, Second life Sculpture, Real LIfe Art, and a few eccentric pieces that are artistic in their endeavors. There is even a full 17th Century Period English cottage With furnishings included.  DJ Seren Dawes will graciously provide some tunes for our bidding pleasure.

Here is a latest list of contributing artist.

• Ahmad Hosho
• Akira Seymour
• Anathaniel Gausman
• Arteer Olivia
• Barrowness Beaumont
• Case tomorrow
• Cicciuzzo Gausman
• Cienega Soon
• CodeBastard Redgrave
• Dan Yapungku
• Dingo Utorid
• Douglas Story
• Eliza Wierwight
• Gary Kohime
• Gracie Kendell
• Gwen Carillon
• Java Moonwall
• Joshua Morane
• Juicily Loon
• Keiko Morigi
• Kiya McMahon
• Life Charron
• Looker Lumet
• Mars Lake
• Panteleimon Aeon
• Riona Rimbaud
• Silverdrake Sparrow
• Shoshana Epsilon
• Shoshisn Shilova
• Stephen Venkman
• Sura Abismo
• Theresa Carfagno

For some time now I wanted to compile a list of the most annoying bugs for SecondLife photographers. SecondLife photography may seem secondary to the metaverse experience, but it is not. If anything, photography is one of the prime concerns Linden Labs should have, as it represents one of the main activities one can do in SecondLife. Also, along with machinima, SL photography is the one window that presents SecondLife to the outside world.

For a while now, I almost lost faith in SL photography. I slowed down considerably creating artwork based on SL photography, mostly for all the reasons below that makes this activity irritating and unpleasant. The bottomline is, to make decent quality artwork in SL without heavy use of Photoshop is nearly impossible, and this should not be.

Let’s begin, shall we?

1. Quirky camera focus: Try photographing an element laid on the floor and to cam over it without pulling your hair. As soon as you dunk the camera 1 degree too much, it flips over and to hell it goes. And how about caming in a restrained area? It’s enough to be a burden on the photographer.
2. Broken high resolution snapshots: I am not refering to the dreadful and definitely borked “Hi-Res Snapshots” option in the Advanced menu. I am speaking of taking a snapshot in a Custom resolution higher than your current screen resolution. For some it will work, for some, they will see cutting lines, black edges, or will find one of the other problems like the RenderGlow glitch or disappearing attachment like stated below.
3. Crashes on snapshot: I tested several clients and had numerous reports of crashes on snapshot. It’s time to realize it is one of the main usage for the SL viewer. Having a fantastic environment you can’t photography is pointless. Snapshot functions must be througly tested and stable. Some also get pitch black snapshots that apparently can only be fixed with a cache cleanup.
4. RenderGlow support broken: If you don’t disable RenderGlow, most people will see “glow ghosts” if any item with a bit of glow appears in the scene. If you shoot over your current screen resolution, those lasty glow bugs will appear exponentially accross your snapshots.
5. Disappearing attachments while taking a snapshot: This is probably one of those I hate the most. Often, when snapshotting at very high resolution, hair will disappear, or random attachments. Sometimes changing the angle does the trick, or changing the distance, but not always. Restarts are useless. I screwed whole photo sessions because of that glitch and wasted dozens of hours.
6. Inconsistent lighting system: Lights in SL have always been a problem, like light sources cancelling each other, with a max of 6 lights. Under low ambient lighting conditions, this makes it hard to create complex lighting scenes. Lights also competes in a weird way, and hard to say if they are directional or omnidirectional sometimes. Add Windlights to that mix, and it makes it even more complex. Shadows are still very crude if you don’t use high Windlight ambient lighting, and I sure hope it gets fixed when the new ShadowDraft builds come into play.
7. Invisiprims: One of the most long lasting bug in the SL rendering system. We all know about it; think about everytime you noticed how ugly your 800L shoes looks over a club dancefloor. I heard it’s complex to fix. But I sure wish it was, as it makes snaps look akward and amateurish, if one doesn’t spend insane amounts of time fixing this with Photoshop, often with mitigated results.
8. Deficient avatar mesh: Again, we can dream. But some like RealXtent apparently did it. So it’s not impossible. It is surely the reason why I spend so much time fixing snapshots using Photoshop. Be it stretched inner thighs, horrible feet, clunky fingers, square boobs and butts, you name it.
9. Limited zoom: You can only cam that close to an avatar and then you need to use the CTRL 8-9-0 zoom keys. Why limit that, or can we at least have the option to disable this behaviour? The extra zoom controls are fine, but makes it harder to cam and focus too.
10. The eyes!: Do really I need to elaborate? Especially when you are shooting yourself, since you need to focus on a prim to have your eye fixed on it, caming to zoom on your face becomes an extreme sport. It’s feasible, but there’s no miracle solution, and it often turns into luck shots. Same thing for taking snapshots with closed eyelids. Take 50 snaps and pray you get the right timing.

This list is surely not complete or exhaustive, one could probably name other quirks and bugs that are extremely irritating. My point was not to list them all, but to send a message to the Lindens. Please fix our photography, because visuals are what makes SecondLife what it is, and it is currently broken. Maybe one should submit a JIRA as a meta issue and put it as showstopper, because the show is indeed stopping…