LUMIPro continues the tradition of offering the highest levels of capability for serious Second Life photographers with its High Resolution Animation Gazer™ technology.
After lighting and posing, setting the eye position is one of the greatest challenges SL photographers face. Prior solutions focused on having the talent “gaze” on a prim in-world, or offered basic 9-position eye animations—solutions that made self-portrait work extremely difficult.
LUMIPro’s new High Resolution Animation Gazer™ feature offers a much better solution, both for models and for self portraits.
The photographer now has fine control of 125 eye positions ranging from -30 to +30 degrees, horizontally and vertically, with independent eye control for up to 4 individual models. These Priority-4 animations only adjust eye position and work seamlessly with the LUMIPro pose system to create full body and eye control.
The new High Resolution Animation Gazer™ seamlessly integrates with the LUMIPro HUD, and its intuitive interface will have photographers using the new capability in just minutes, with no complex new features to learn. Now photographers have a single HUD that controls lighting, projectors, animation, and gazing into a single intuitive HUD.
Continuing in LUMIPro’s tradition, simply pressing the help button takes you to video tutorials and manuals so you’ll be up and running quickly.
Following the tradition of LUMIPro, this is now the 4th major feature to be added to the existing LUMIPro L3 family as a free upgrade to existing users, over nearly 2 years since its introduction.
LUMIPro is a game changer in lighting for photography in Second Life. It was developed by a pro photographer in RL who found the lighting systems available in Second Life to be inadequate, and got tired of the limitation of rezzing prims and moving them each time he reposed his model. LUMIPro changes all this.
LUMIPRO is a HUD worn by the photographer that controls all aspects of lights worn by the model or self. Photographers can adjust position, color, radius, and falloff of lights, and it all works in zero rez and no-script sims! The built-in posing system controls up to 4 models independently, without the need to rez pose stands, gazers, or lights. LUMIPro also features projectors that allow rezzing multiple spotlights or projectors to cast shadows, again all controlled by the HUD.
An example of a shoot with fine eye position control using LUMIPro High Resolution Animation Gazer™
From the Desk of Colleen:
With LUMIPro, you are actually just 4 minutes away from the perfect photo! Pose yourself , pose 4 models, catalog your poses by gender and save... even your favorite light settings. Wear your HUD anywhere! You or your models can wear the projector and LUMIPro lights, tp to any non-rez sim, and shoot without the bother of trying to get groups or chasing sim owners around to ask for rezzing perms. Just wear, tp, and shoot! My HUD is never off of me and I am never out of LUMIPro lights. I've wore it all to Ambrosia Dance Club, one of Second Life's most active and packed clubs with zero issues, AND my friends have had as much fun shooting me in it as I have! See the results here . They don't even own the LUMIPro—it’s all me, and me from their camera.
From the Desk of Stefan:
This project was nearly 6 months of deep diving into the depths of technical animation and user interface work. A detailed study of the animation systems of SL indicated that left and right eye positions are little documented. With some experimenting and prototyping, I was able to prove that eye animation was a viable method of controlling eyes. Prototyping was required to ensure a reasonable trade-off between the level of control and the quantity of animations. From observations of other animation-heavy solutions (with 1000s or 10,000s animation), teleport and lag became impossible and finally concluded that 125 animations ranging from -30 to +30 degrees horizontally, and -20 to +20 degrees vertically, was the right solution. The generation of the 125 animation scripts was done by dedicated python scripts and a single tedious night of manually uploading 125 animations one at a time. It was another 2 months of investigating how to get the right integration into LUMIPro before we could make this release possible and over a month of beta testing before this release was realized. I'm excited. This seems to be a game changer!
What our users say about LUMIPro:
Wise Sandalwood blogs her thoughts on LUMIPro.
“I do a lot of self-portrait work, and eye positions are extremely important to me. While LUMIPro has become indispensable to my work, the goofy tricks I used to get my eyes where I wanted them were convoluted at best, and required TP viewers to get the level of control I needed. It was even more difficult when working with clients, as I not only had to explain my arcane processes to lock eyes, I could not control what viewer they used. And let’s not *even* talk about setting eye positions on no-rez sims—that was virtually impossible! Thankfully, the High Resolution Animation Gazer™ that Stefan has developed puts all this nonsense in the past. I’d say “the future’s so bright, I’ve gotta wear shades,” but then you wouldn’t be able to see my eyes :)” —Corinne Helendale, LUMIPro Master Photographer.
“If they would set a prize for best found possibilities in SL. You earned it!” —Aida Lundquist
“Ya don’t need telling , but I will anyway.. LUMIPro is light years ahead of anything else in SL: literally nothing comes remotely close :) Just watched the video, sweet! Just when I think it couldn't get any better... it does :)” —Safi Mesmeriser
“You make the single greatest tool in SL for us to use .” —Cali Badger
“BIG hugs for making such a phenomenal tool that I cannot live without! <3” —Calypso Sparrowtree
“TY soo much I Really LOVE this HUD ♥ “ —Applonia Criss
“Well first off, your lighting system? Oh my god, you created it right! It’s such a powerful system. I couldn't live without it. It literally gets used in every piece of work I do now.” —Nik Arlington
“When you do it with the LUMIPro, it’s almost like doing a real life studio picture with all the lights :)” —Krise Shepherd
