Thursday, April 19, 2012

LUMIPro at a life performance


After publishing the work we did with Shadow at SteamDolls, I was approached by
GąЪ ジ (gabryel.nyoki) who is an impressive musician and singer for a set of still shots from a life performance. Sounded like another great test of the L3 lights in a high stress environment of a live venue with 50 avi's on it.

Just like any good shoot, it does take some prep work to ensure the talent and the stage are set. I was very fortunate to have QueenOfNorway Alex offer the a stage and gave permission to both hunt down and remove stray lights and also give me rez privies (which i actually didn't use because of a technical glitch). I planted a couple careful lumipro balls in the audience as well as having each performer wear the full L3 face lights and projectors.

Gab chose to use his RL birthday for a private party (for which LUMIPro members were invited). There was about 50 in the audience and i had to admit i was quite pleased that i was able to shoot full ultra, 4x anti-aliasing, and DOF without crashing or unfortunate lag and 20 FPS. You'll also notice in the shots that Gab webcam projects his concern and this as my first experience shooting with a live video feed (three copies actually) without issues. I ran run HUD exclusively on Gab and another HUD on his guest performers.

Notice both the projection shadows on the stage as well as the well lit faces!

I did find one bug with radar of more than 12 people in range that i will update in 0.9.

Shots were using LUMIPro L3 on performers in Firestorm on ultra with Photoshop, FotoFusion for layout, and NIK Color FX for giving the shots a decent "pop" of color.

(click the photos for full screen and press the arrow keys to change pics)


(click the photos for higher resolution versions)


Sunday, April 8, 2012

Painted Love




~or~ Birds of a Feather

See Jessica's absolutely lovely version here!

What looks like body paint is lighting done with a single projector only - no windlightPainted Love


Excellent use of the LUMIPro HUD Projection / Gobos. 

Don't know what our Gobos are? Read more here .

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Pushing the limits with LUMIPro

As you might have noticed by 3 of the 9 bulbs in L3 projection lighting being spot lights, i have a certain special love for theater. I've personally shot a tremendous amount of live theater RL and the high contrast, pop in colors, and the challenge of capturing live photography has always been a love of mine.

With the revival of burlesque in SL, i've enjoyed going to many shows. I had a chance to see SteamDolls at Shadow's Gentleman's club recently and fell in love with the 6 dancers doing some really cool choreography with a great set, custom music, and special effects. I had a chance to meet Shadow Tarber, creative director and lead dancer for the show, and gave her a demo of L3 and asked if we could take a crack at shooting one show with performers wearing the L3 lights. She said yes.


With curtain at 6pm we met the performers at the 5pm call and had all the performers wear the L3 lights with both point lights and projectors. Lights were set to Rembrandt and projectors set to medium spot all with a very common violet hue used in live theater (the theater lighting pro i work with RL says they NEVER use a straight white light EVER on stage (ok there are expections i'm sure)).

I asked colleen Criss, LUMIPro's business manager and also partner with Toran in Babenco & Criss Machinima and Photography if they wanted to video shoot the performance while i shot stills. The results honestly was darn impressive.

This is pushing the limits of SL for live work. With Toran and I both having overclocked GPUs with multi-core CPUs working thier butts off with ultra settings with 6 performers, 20 in the audience, in high animation with 18 point lights, 6 projectors, full shadows, and me running DOF. I crashed once on DOF and Toran ran the entire show without a glitch.

Want to see SteamDolls live? Check out the SteamDolls show schedule by clicking here. The address of the theater is here.

(click the images to see them full screen. watch the video)


Monday, April 2, 2012

LUMIPro Grows Popular with the Machinima Community


(Be aware, this vid is NOT rated G and contains adult content.) 

The awesome creative talent on Second Life never stops amazing us here at LUMIPro, from photography to machinima, and we are pleased to be part of  both community's.  We get to meet some amazing people doing amazing things and watch how they create their brand of art using the L3 HUD. It's exciting everyday.

Nik Arlington, creative force behind Cheesecake Studio wow'd us with this video. She spent many days and sleepless nights working to get her lighting just right and told me she absolutely could not imagine not using her LUMIPro HUD. Something that we always appreciate hearing from our users!

Watch for this bright and shining machinimist ! I can't wait to see what she brings next.