There is an SL9B! It is fun!

There is an SL9B birthday celebration thing going on! It is great!

Go read what I dunno Chestnut an’ Honour are saying ’bout it, ’cause I am too busy riding around in the lil pods an’ looking at the pretty lights an’ colors.

Altho’ I’m usually due to some quirk of personality seen running quickly in th’ other direction when there are Organized Events like this, for some reason tonight it made me Extremely Happy With SL An’ My Fellow Resies to sit in th’ pod an’ look at all the cool stuff. No idea what 99% of it was, but it was pretty, an’ there was lots of it, and lots of people wandering about building it an’ looking at it an’ stuff, an’ trying to get the media stream working on the main stage, an’ dancing an’ wearing funny clothes.

It all seems just so Well Done, and by so many Good Hard-working People. Made me smile hugely.

The giant water lily is the main stage. I think. :) Hafta go up and explore that train up on the huge giant railroad bridge sometime. Or jes be happy that it is there, an’ other people are exploring it!

Happy Ninth Birthday to SL, everyone! We have made me proud.

Dale meets Dale

An age and an age ago, I made a picture with both Dales in it (or, strictly speaking, both Dale-bottoms), for some pictures (of bottoms) event that has since slipped my mind.

(Oh, right, looking at the text, it was one of them there weblog memes, notable for involving bottoms.)

It was comparatively easy, since I had the two of me almost entirely not touching, so there was just one tiny piece of foot to fiddle with carefully in Photoshop, and otherwise the only hard part was holding the camera absolutely still while I took one picture, stood up, changed shape and skin and hair, sat down again on the other sit-place, and took another picture.

For some reason the other day I wanted to take some more-overlapping Dale and Dale pictures, and eventually I did:

Nice but her face doesn’t show at all. (And there’s that little oops just under his near hand, oops.)

Quite nice, really. :)

This time I was working in gimp rather than Photoshop (for financial and sundry reasons), and it turns out that you can do this sort of thing pretty easily. I’m not going to do a detailed tutorial unless someone wants that, but basically you take two pictures from exactly the same place, layer one over the other, add a layer mask to the top one, and then draw on that layer mask in black or white, depending on which layer you want to show at any given point. It’s a nice forgiving process, doesn’t require an exceptionally steady hand, and so on.

This time I didn’t want to have to hold the camera absolutely still to take the pictures, so I wrote a script. Here it is!

integer SAVE_FACE = 0;
integer RESTORE_FACE = 1;
vector saved_camera_pos = ZERO_VECTOR;
rotation saved_camera_rot = ZERO_ROTATION;
integer have_saved = FALSE;

default {
    state_entry() {
        have_saved = FALSE;
    }
    attach(key id) {
        if (id!=NULL_KEY)
            llRequestPermissions(id,PERMISSION_CONTROL_CAMERA | 
                                    PERMISSION_TRACK_CAMERA);
    }
    run_time_permissions(integer p) {
        llOwnerSay("Touch that one face to save camera position,"+
                   " that other face to put it back.");
    }
    touch_start(integer total_number) {
        if (llDetectedTouchFace(0)==SAVE_FACE) {
            have_saved = TRUE;
            saved_camera_pos = llGetCameraPos();
            saved_camera_rot = llGetCameraRot();
            llOwnerSay("Camera position saved.");
        } else if (llDetectedTouchFace(0)==RESTORE_FACE) {
            if (have_saved) {
                llSetCameraParams([
                    CAMERA_ACTIVE,TRUE,
                    CAMERA_POSITION,saved_camera_pos,
                    CAMERA_POSITION_LOCKED,TRUE,
                    CAMERA_FOCUS,saved_camera_pos+*saved_camera_rot,
                    CAMERA_FOCUS_LOCKED,TRUE
                    ]);            
            } else {
                llOwnerSay("No position is saved yet.");
            }
        }
    }
}

So basically you put that into some prim, you color face 0 some color, color face 1 some other color, attach it to your HUD somewhere, fiddle it around so that you can see both of those faces, put your camera where you want it, touch face 0, take a picture, do whatever you want to, touch face 1, possibly press ESC to make sure you’re on the default camera, and now your camera is back where it was before for taking your second picture.

I could have added a third face case with like llReleaseCamera() or whatever it is on it, but it’s easiest to just take the HUD off when you’re done to free up your default camera. :)

Isn’t nature wonderful! I may get up the energy to put up a real page about it like my famous ExplodingObjects and AvatarFollower pages, but for now I am impressed with myself just for having slapped it up here.

Now I will go back to admiring my pictures; aren’t I a cute couple? :)