~ Red Praises ~

Post-processing SecondLife shots - transcript of a talk by CodeBastard Redgrave on 16/11/2008

• CodeBastard Redgrave: I'm better known as an inworld photographer for close to 2 years now, and as a scripter for my work on MachinimaCam HUD and more recently FilterCam, a camera filtering system for SecondLife
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Among my photography work, the best known series is surely Boudoir Rouge, which is portraits of influential women in Secondlife, taken in a boudoir/pinup photography style
• CodeBastard Redgrave: You can view the whole Boudoir Rouge series on Flickr, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbredgrave/sets/72157603777971430/
• CodeBastard Redgrave: And also on my sim Rouge, which houses my collections. I will give you a minute so you can take a quick peek, then I will start =)
• OomPoppaMowMow Snookums: very nice
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Thank you very much =)
• CodeBastard Redgrave: *bows* I'm very flattered and honored, thank you all so much =))
• CodeBastard Redgrave: So let's start with stating what I will expose here. I won't give a course about inworld photography. I may give a few tricks but this is about post-processing, not photoshooting per se.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: I hope every one of you knows that no post processing will do any miracles on a bad shot. It doesn't replace proper composition, angle, and lighting. In some cases, you can make it look a bit better with processing, but it doesn't replace photography skills, no matter how much talented you are with Photoshop.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Another important thing: if your processing shows on a given shot, you missed the point completely. Good post-processing is INVISIBLE. It is very frustrating because you can spend 10h fixing glitches on a picture, and nobody will notice. It is sad but it's part of the job.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: The point of post-processing is not to make your picture super flashy and multicolored. It is to fix the numerous glitches on avatar meshes that we are stuck to deal with because of technological limitations. SecondLife avatars are not like Poser models. The mesh on a standard SL (tm) avatar is ridiculously weak, the number of polygons is neglectable.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: This will especially show on women avatars, specifically on the most round and curvy ones (not unlike myself) and I had to develop techniques to get an avatar look acceptable using post-processing. It can be a long and time consuming process, but it is the price to pay to do good work.
• Ludwig Prinz: you mean the edgy knees ?
• OomPoppaMowMow Snookums: crease in the nose
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Yes, Ludwig, this is part of the glitches i'm refering to.
• Drusus Thunders: edgy just about everything
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Absolutely, sharp edges on the knees, glitches around the nose, also what i call "straight shading" like shadings cut in a very straight line, also clothing and skin seams, etc...etc...etc... We could include prims poking through the skin and all of that.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Many of those glitches are usually caused by badly made poses, which causes stretching, limb difformations, twisted elbows, and so on. Those are always hard to get rid of, this is one of the main reason why I hired a posemaker to make poses for my own Boudoir Rouge series, because I'm a very lazy photoshopper.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: A good pose will make all the difference between spending 3h and spending 12, the more difformities or glitches the pose will cause, the more work you will have to do. It is better to use poses that respects certain specifics, for example, any pose that bends the knees or elbows more than 45 degrees are BAD. They will cause the back of the knee to protrude on the knee, and makes it much harder to fix.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: I think you all get the idea about the poses. Another important point, ANTIALIASING.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: If you have to put Gaussian Blur on a picture because you got jagged edges all over, you are doing it wrong! A shot should never require any kind of blurring because you shouldn't have jagged edges from the beginning.
• CodeBastard Redgrave shouts: If you have to put Gaussian Blur on a picture because you got jagged edges all over, you are doing it wrong! A shot should never require any kind of blurring because you shouldn't have jagged edges from the beginning.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: All modern ATI and Nvidia videocards have a built in hardware function which is called Antialiasing. It does some kind of pixel collating that will automatically give you pictures without any kind of jagged edges, or "staircase effect". I won't explain in length how to activate this since it depends on the video driver, etc.. But all latest versions of the SL (tm) viewer have a setting for Antialiasing. It is in Preferences / Graphics / Hardware options. Turn Antialiasing to 4x or more for better effect. The more the better but it can impede on your rendering speed.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: I am done with the essentials, I will take questions if there are any, before proceeding to the postprocessing part itself.
• Sirius Vayandar: IF there is a tradeof between antialiasing and graphics quality turned up high, which would you chose?
• Ludwig Prinz: i heard the SL antialiasing does not work at all and you should rely on your graphic card only
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Sirius: Antialiasing, anytime. Even at high resolution, the trade is not worth it.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Ludwig: It was broken in a few versions but I think they fixed it, but I agree that you should always activate it directly on your videocard driver, for the good of all of your 3D applications.
• Drusus Thunders: code are there any trade offs you could recommend to speed of up the process in doing many pictures in a shoot?
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Okay before proceeding to the post-processing part of my course, I would like you all to check on the following image, which compares the Before processing, After corrections, and After lighting and effects. I will give you a minute to examine it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbredgrave/2480389857/sizes/o/
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Drusus, this is rather a inworld photography question, but I couldn't recommend anything special to accelerate the process. I personally shoot at 6000x4000, every shot takes up to 1 minute just to capture on a very fast machine. A trick i found is remove the "Constrain proportions" checkbox since it tries to rescale the pixels. Turning it off makes the capturing much faster.
• Ludwig Prinz: oh now I have a trick for you Codebastard
• Ludwig Prinz: use multiples of your screen resolution
• Ludwig Prinz: if you have 1680
• Ludwig Prinz: then use 5040
• Ludwig Prinz: and it is much quicker
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Yes Ludwig, it's true this helps. But in my case, I work for a printable result, and you know 6000 may do an enormous difference on print. But it's a very good trick if you want to make something that will be scaled back to screen resolution after the processing. It's a very good trick for people to know about, thank you.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Any other question before I proceed?
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Okay let's rock then ;)
• Ludwig Prinz: you save as PNG or BMP ?
• CodeBastard Redgrave: BMP all the time, they are fatter but totally lossless. Important at very high resolutions.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Okay let's consider the model on the image I gave you, before the processing.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: First thing of course, after opening the shot in Photoshop, is to examine every glitch on the image to see how much work it will require. If you are to spend 10h on a picture, it better be the best one you got in your entire shoot. You will try to select one that has the best photographic qualities, but you may have to do a tradeoff with a picture that has as less glitches possible, to avoid some extra work. But as I said I am very lazy, the most courageous will ignore the tradeoff and just choose the best picture according to it's qualities and start on that.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Let's examine the non-processed model in the image I sent you, so the top one.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: If you examine it closely you will detect numerous and various types of glitches.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: The first one that jumps in your face is the inner thigh. It is horribly difformed and caved in. The fingers colliding on this rather deliciously chunky avatar is a problem too. Also around her knees, you can see pointies protruding, making it look absolutely sketchy and non natural.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: The infamous "pointies" are avatar mesh limitations. But happily, Photoshop got the most marvelous tool known to mankind, called LIQUIFY. It is in the Filter submenu, and can be used to fix any avatar difformation glitches possible.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Liquify works like a standard Photoshop brush. It's effect is to "push pixels" like if your image was made of some sort of liquid, and quite easily. You must ajust the size and pressure according to the gravity of the glitch, for example. With less pressure, you will be able to round the pointies around calves, boobs, butts, arms, and so on.
• Thea Hellershanks: question? what type of input device do you use with PS?
• MystiTool HUD 1.0.23: Entering chat range: Ludwig Prinz (4m), Trixee [18:55] CodeBastard Redgrave: On a more precision level, you can use it to make nipples actually look like nipples, not just painted on the skin. I use it also, like in this case, to fix her nails by "smudging them" slowly. (thanks Trinidad) Yes it's good for prim hair too, since they always look sketchy because of the prim meshes.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: (Thea, I always use a graphic tablet. Doing 10h of Liquify with a mouse is suicide for your wrist)
• [18: 56] Ludwig Prinz highly recommends a graphic tablet for everyone, so worth it
• OomPoppaMowMow Snookums: omg
• Bren Dovgal: nods
• OomPoppaMowMow Snookums: find me one Luddy
• OomPoppaMowMow Snookums: ;p
• Darkko Mathy: What version of PS do u use Codie?
• Drusus Thunders: good advice ludwig
• Amythest Morigi: And not too expensive eitheer
• Trinidad Anatine: If you join NAAP, wacoms offers great deals on them once or twice a year.
• Ludwig Prinz: you get coupons when you buy PS too
• Trinidad Anatine: Got mine for half price.
• OomPoppaMowMow Snookums: coolool
• Michela Benazzi: **could someone please IM me their Local chat from 0641 and on....
• CodeBastard Redgrave: You can use Liquify to fix the weird twisted cavings in the inside of the arms or legs, round elbows and knees properly, seriously there's a million uses for them. Honestly, Liquify constitute about 80% of my post processing work, timewise. It is the longest process but it's also very efficient.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Usually Liquify is the first thing I do. Open your shot, duplicate the layer (CTRL-J) and fire up Liquify. Zoom in and fix everything you need to fix. I recommend a good stiff drink, makes your hand go smoother. Using it with a graphic tablet will give you the impression of repainting a portrait. It's great. Once it's all fixed, apply the changes on the layer, and for god's sake, save your picture after that step. Loosing 5h of Liquifying work is a pain in the ass.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Next step I usually do is "Healing". The Heal brush is one of the best tools available to fix everything that Liquify cannot fix.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: The Heal brush is an insanely cool tool that does some kind of pixel blending starting from a pre-selected point on your picture.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: You can use it to fix "bad shadows", like shadows that shows a straight like, but also to correct standard shadows or highlights that would look screwed. Its also amazingly awesome to fix things like seams. For example...
• CodeBastard Redgrave: In the sample picture, take a close look at the model's foot. Some skin glitch cuts a nasty line on the top of her foot. Heal can fix this by blending both sides of that line into a nice gradient. You could use standard brushes and sampling and a lot of patience, but Heal does the job quicly and efficiently.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Heal can help to fix one of the most common glitch on the avatar mesh, the one i called the "belly glitch". When an avatar is on any pose that bends it's torso even slightly, a nasty jagged line will appear on the torso. Heal will fix that in a few seconds and in a seamless manner.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Of course, speaking of seams, Heal can fix most of the skin and clothing seams that designers would have left over, by blending both sides of the seam into a smoother mix between the two. After Liquify, Heal is the most used tool for every of my post-processed work. I usually use it for much less time than the Liquify tool, but still usually spend 30 minutes or so doing healing.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: So using those 2 single tools, you can do probably 99% of all needed retouches on a picture. The rest is mostly lighting and "special effects".
• CodeBastard Redgrave: For the rest, use a standard diffused brush to fix shadows and highlights, using a very low pressure brush. But this is usually very minor retouching.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: For the rest, I cannot give a complete course on how to enhance lighting on a picture in so little time. But I will give you a basic procedure, the same I usually use for all of my lighting processing work.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Once you got your retouched layer, duplicate it again and save the image. Hide the original to get it out of your way.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Duplicate this layer again. This will constitute your BASE and your EFFECT layer. There can be multiple effect layers of course, but let's start with one.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: The effect layer is a layer that will be overlayed in some way over your base layer. It usually will be some kind of transparent depending on the desired effect.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Usually, I start by doing a "cramped leveling" on the effect layer. For this you will need to use Levels (CTRL-L) and move the left slider to the right, and the right slider to the left, in order to saturate the colors and get a more selective highlighting contrast.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Then, you can use a filter called Diffuse Glow, very carefully. No, it won't show as glowy. It is use to make your highlight glowy, not the whole picture like many people do, with quite disastrous results.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: Then, you must simply select a mode for the effect layer, like Overlay, Soft Light, Screen, or so on. Play with them, play with layer transparency, you will find out you have more to do with that than any prefab filter actually available in Photoshop.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: You can do that overlaying 2, 3, 4 even more effect layers, using different combos, you can use image effects on every layer like Colorize, Saturation, and so on, the sky is the limit. Just make sure that it actually enhances the lighting and make it more vivid.
• CodeBastard Redgrave: So this is my base technique I use for quite every post-processed shot I do. The effect part can be much fun to experiment with, don't limitate yourself, by trial and error you can reach quite any desired result. Remember that a good processing is seamless. Special effects is something else you add AFTER doing the corrective and lighting work. You can get artistic on the special effects if you want, but too much may be like not enough in many cases. Good artists uses good judgement ;)
• CodeBastard Redgrave: I am done for today because of time constrains, hoping that maybe I can elaborate more on the subject in a near future if I get invited to speak again. I want to thank Oomp for inviting me, that was very nice doing that talk for you people =)