Using Local Lights in Second Life Photography

No doubt many of you will have seen lights with impressive names such as soft focus, spotlight, umbrella, flood etc. This is so much hype! In SL a light is a light is a light! One of the main reasons I started to make my own lights is that long, long ago in a land far from here I paid several hundred Lindens for a light which turned out to be a prim monster with a clever name and which did very little worth doing!

Other than the SL sun and moon there is only one light source in SL which is capable of lighting other objects. This can take many forms but is ultimately a simple prim with its lighting features enabled. All such lights have a limited set of functions which are described below.

This article refers solely to prim-based lighting which is often controlled via a lighting script.

Lights will not appear at all unless you have ticked 'Nearby Local Lights' in the Graphics tab of your preferences. That's the first thing to check if lights don't seem to be working.

Second Life only allows 8 user light sources to operate at any one time. One is reserved for the sun, a second for the moon so SL users can only work with up to 6 lights at a time. If there are more lights present, you will only see the 6 lights that are nearest to you.

Just as in RL lights will work better with colours which reflect light. Lighting a black wall isn't really going to work!

Lights will have no effect on textures which are set at Full Bright.

The word 'photography' comes from the Greek and means 'drawing with light'. As in RL, where SL photography is concerned using lights has a single purpose..... to illuminate the subject!

This can be a simple process using SL sunlight (or more complex if you use Windlight settings) or it can be as sophisticated as you like using all sorts of lighting effects.

You can use lights in the following situations:

• in your photo studio if you have one
• on location anywhere you can rez
• on location anywhere at all if you have lights that you can wear - eg a Facelight

Check for other light sources and switch them off if you can.

To find other lights go to Advanced Menu > Rendering > Info Displays > Lights. (If you don't have the Advanced menu press CTRL ALT D and it will appear to the the right of the Help menu.) Any active lights will show up in turquoise.

Set midnight! Lights look better in the dark!!

Lights ALWAYS shine as a sphere which emanates from the centre of the prim containing the light. As a result, lights are NEVER directional.

The shape, size and other characteristics of a prim have no bearing whatsoever on the light. It will always shine from the centre of the prim whatever other settings you may have applied.

Lights can:

• be switched on or off
• have different levels of brightness from 0.0 (off) to 1.0 (full on). This is the Intensity setting.
• have colour - ANY colour - although it is often hard to distinguish subtle changes. Some colours are stronger than others eg red is stronger than yellow. Reduce the brightness or increase the falloff with stronger light colours to allow others to be seen better
• shine over a a distance from 0m to 20m . This is the radius setting
• have Falloff. This is the one that many find hard to understand. This determines whether the light cuts off at precisely the distance set by the radius or whether it fades out gradually. This is applied on a scale from:

• 0 = no falloff - the light will shine evenly all the way to the radius and then cut off instantly
• 2 = the light fades out gradually over the distance set by the radius. A setting of 2 is equivalent to switching the light off!

Making an SL light is the easiest thing in the world! Rez a box, edit it, go to the Features tab and start playing with the settings! That's all there is to it!

You can see exactly what your lights are doing by going to the Tools menu and clicking 'Show light radius for selection'. This will display a sphere around the light you are editing. The size and colour of this will vary according to your settings.