Picture Perfect Studio LIght Effects

If you asked me not that long ago if I would ever make content in SL that I'd actually sell I would have said, "No way, I'm no content creator."

But I've done it now, which surprises me.

It started when I saw Roslin Petion of Tete a Pied taking pictures for her new in store displays. She had a pretty standard background type thing and pose stand, and had a plywood box prim set up to provide extra light. Now I knew there were top of the line setups with lighting devices but I didn't reacall seeing something cheap and simple. But since I didn't creat content I put the idea in the back of my mind.

Maybe about a couple of weeks later I was in Willow Zanders skybox and noted her obviously top of the line studio, even I recognize a full N30 Modeling studio setup when I see it. So I was looking at it (and did a few quick shots on it) and noticed the light thingies seemed to be made of a lot of prims. So I checked and it was 33. Even landless moi knos that 33 prims is over 1/4 the prim alottment for a 512. So I started thinking, that it should be possible to come up with something simple and low prim for fashionistas that may not have 33 prims (or a lot of money) to spare, if they set it up permanently. So I started playing with the building tools, which I haven't used much and built myself a light source that looked liks a simple basic photographers studio lamp. And it was only 4 prims. At that time it output white light and I thought, hey, I bet it would be possible to use a color change script to change the light color.

So I bought a script (from Sol Columbia) and put it in it. And it worked, to change the color of the "bulb", but not he light itself. So I had to figure out how to do that with my nonexistant scripting skills. I then loaded up the LSL Wiki and began searching. Now, I may not know much about LSL, but I have played a little with Python and I'm able to edit 'nix source code configure scripts and Makefiles if I have to, using google, helpfiles and whatnot. So I could figure out the basic structure of how the color script worked and knew where to put the code I needed in. I just had to figure out which code. The fist bit I tried didn't work, and I messed with it a bit to see if I was doing it wrong and then went back to the wiki. I found a different function that seemed "right", put it in and it didn't work, but did compile. So I went back to the code and realized that I had done the "color vector variable" wrong, that I had put it in the light changing function improperly. A quick edit and it worked. 66 colors of light with a simple chat command Just turn on local lighting in preferences and rez in world.

/4 color goldenrod gets you goldenrod

/4 color white gets you white

/4 color black turns it off.

No tiny buttons to push, no cycling of colors with a touch, instant access to any color and the light bulb changes color to match the actual light.

So I told someone about it, and they said I should sell it. But I thought it was too simple, it only took me a few hours to make, total. It's only 4 prims, it's not beautifully textured, it's just simple shiny metal that looks like a light.

This person told me that not everyone could do what I did, that even making changes to pre-existing code to do something different was beyond a lot of people.

Since I designed it for use with portable modeling studios, like Sabrina Doolittle's Picture Perfect I gave a copy to her and asked what she thought of it. And she asked if I sold it, and I said, not yet. So she offered to sell it alongside the Picture Perfect. It's a good deal for both of us. I don't need own land to sell it or anything, and it gets sold alongside the device it's really good to be used with, (and increases the appeal of the Picture Perfect) and we both make money.

How much? only 150$L It's simple and it works. Gets rid of annoying shadows really well.

Here's a picture of it, it's not beautifully made, but again it does the job it's supposed to do.:






It's available at the Picture Perfect store in Calla. I don't have the Slurl at the moment but you can check my picks in my profile for the TP. And yes, a few have sold already. :-)

I hope it's buyers get good use out of it.