M is for Myg

Myg’s post on Photoshop and Second Life images sparked a good conversation and raised some important issues. I started to comment, but then got so long-winded I figured it would be better to lay my thoughts out in another post.

Let me begin by saying that I am not a programmer, nor a graphics expert of any kind, either in 3D rendering or Photoshop. I’m just a voracious reader with a lot of curiosity. I don’t claim to understand the technical details of the Second Life graphics engine, nor am I going to explain them. However, I am going to set out my understanding of why it is the way it is. If I’m wrong, please correct me.

No matter how good the graphics platform, card, or skill of the photographer, Photoshop will always be able to “improve” an image. This will be true no matter how much better the graphics engine of Second Life becomes (and let’s hope it gets better quickly and continues to do so).

For the user/viewer, there will always be a difference between interacting in a “3D” graphic environment with motion and viewing a two-dimensional still image of that environment. Photoshop is the best tool (so far) to enhance and create ever more stunning *still* images. Second Life, like other MMOs, is about a sense of place or a feeling of being “inside” that the user gets through interaction. Viewing 2D still images is a representation of that, but is something different itself–a visual art form all its own. Even when those 2D photos are of a “3D” environment, be it SL, WoW, or first life.

Complaints about graphics quality in Second Life are common and understandable. Linden Lab made a big tradeoff in putting the ability for users to generate content ahead of graphics quality.

In a virtual environment where users can create the objects and textures, the processing power required is so great that it ultimately limits the graphics display. When you add in the vastly varying skill levels of second life residents, most being at the novice level, you get a lot of “poor” graphics.

In a virtual space where the parent company controls nearly every aspect of the design, such as WoW or any of the high-end console games, graphics quality can be maintained. Not only because the designers are professionals who spend countless hours refining images, but because the processing power of the servers, software, and users’ computers is not compromised by also having to keep track of user generated content that is malleable and constantly changing.

However, in those environments, you don’t have the ability to build a house, texture it, retexture it, tear it down and build another, all the while changing your avatar’s outfit so that you can go from your construction foreman clothes to your entertaining-in-your-new-pad-cocktail-hour look. All this simultaneously for 40,000+ residents online, plus keeping track of all the content of the other half-million who have contributed who aren’t concurrently logged in. If SL didn’t need to keep track of all these constantly changeable parameters, a lot of processing power could be dedicated to simply presenting rich graphics. At present, Second Life’s less-than-perfect graphics capabilities include actual hardware limits, not just coding.

Some (many?) images may be so striking, or have a certain rawness that is desirable, that using Photoshop will not help. Almost all of the pics we use here at M is for Myg are nearly untouched. Typically we:

1. adjust levels
2. adjust brightness
3. adjust contrast
4. resize

Most of the pics are decent. We work hardest at composition of the shots inworld. And we try to have good costumes and sets, which means good textures. The difference between a good texture and a crappy texture is the difference between a good photograph and shit.

For example a good (and funny) photo Myg took of herself:

And a crappy photo I took without much thought:

Both of these were used on the blog. Myg took care with the setting (place, textures, costume) and with the position of the camera. The second was taken by me, on the fly, without much effort (too great a distance). And the textures are crappy. Dull, and boring. Neither of these photos was enhanced beyond the aforementioned adjustments.

Now take a look at the original of the photo Myg posted in the previous post about Photoshop and Second Life. Please click through to examine the large sizes of the images.

Because we’re writing a graphic blog serial, eventually Myg and I would like to have the skill and time to have images like the following enhanced version accompany all our story posts:

While the most obvious change is that the background was swapped out for a “real” background, a close examination shows that significant work was done to the image to improve it. The background has been blurred to give the impression of depth we are used to in first life photos, an effect that is a result of the focal length setting on real camera but is not present to the same degree in our eyesight (hopefully) nor is it in a 3D virtual environment.

Adjustments have been made to the color balance, brightness, contrast and hue, bringing the fore- and mid-ground into alignment with the “evening” lighting.

A lot of work has been done to the edges to smooth out roughness in the original. This work is one of the most effective uses of Photoshop for SL images. Vint has a good video tutorial on how to use liquefy to smooth edges here [link] and a text tutorial on using gaussian blur to add that sense of depth that you see in the shot of Myg on the roof of her loft (above) and in the shot of Lisa and Vanny below. One of my all-time SL faves. Check out the image below that is a RL photo of a print of the SL shot:

The end result is one that looks significantly better than the original, yet still looks like a snapshot of Second Life—meaning that it hasn’t been transformed into an art image beyond its original state. Such transformations are also wonderful applications of Photoshop—really using the tool to its utmost to create original art. Here are some examples (they’re on others’ Flickr accounts, please click through):

Stella Errans - Pokinoï
oxoc - thirdeyeblackwall
nathaliebee

This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Burgess, Second Life.