On Second Thought

Previously, I posted my thoughts on Windlight lighting & skies, and I showed a few pictures that I took in Windlight with various presets and parts of my day cycle.

When I was creating my presets, I was basically trying to strike a balance between the old viewer and the new. Pretty skies, pretty lighting effects, but not quite so hyper-realistic shading on avatars. I think I succeeded; it’s a day cycle that I really like! And hey, maybe no one else agrees, and that’s ok, but since a few folks have asked me if they could try them out themselves, I thought I’d offer them up for download. :) You will have to extract them into the x:\Program Files\SecondLife\app_settings\windlight\ folder (where “x” is your primary hard drive, or whatever drive you have SL™ installed on). Don’t worry about extracting them into the “skies” folder, because they are already setup to go there.

So here you go - you wanna try my WL settings for yourself, have at it! Not all of my presets are included, just my day cycle keys. For those of you that don’t know how to set up a custom day cycle, read on. :) For those of you that already know how, just skip the rest of the post.

Creating A Custom Day Cycle:

1. Open up the Day Cycle Editor by going to World -> Environment Settings -> Environment Editor -> Advanced Sky -> Day Cycle Editor (boy, Linden Lab, you really need to put in a shortcut to access this. That’s buried pretty deep!)

2. In the Day Cycle Editor, you will see a “timeline” for a 24 hour period. Each “key” time of day can be set to a preset of your choice.

3. Click on the little wedge-shaped piece for 12am. Below the wedge-shaped slider there is a “Key Preset” drop-down box.

4. In the Key Preset drop-down, with 12am selected on the timeline, choose “SCMidnight.”

5. Repeat this steps 3 and 4 for 3am, 6am (sunrise), 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm (sunset), and 9pm, except in the “Key Preset” drop-down, choose the appropriate preset. (SCSunrise, for example for 6am).

6. Fiddle with “Length of Cycle” if you are so inclined, but when you are done press “Save Test Day.”

7. Close down all your environment windows, and try forcing sunset, sunrise, noon, or midnight. ( World -> Environment Settings -> [choose time of day you want to force], or use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl Y for noon, or Ctrl N for sunset.