Hooray! The SAVIAD Spring fair is open! If you like Haute Couture and florals then definitely check it out because it features a lot of SL’s incredible designers from Solidea Folies and Pure Poison to Les petites details and Dead Dollz. Speaking of Dead Dollz, these two gorgeously pastel dresses are available for the duration of the fair and are just perfect for your spring-time formal dos. Dead Dollz also has a super cute ‘hatrella’ (It’s an umbrella shaped like a hat!) gacha to match each dress, so you can step out without worrying about messing up your hair to those dastardly April showers!

I also thought this would be a great opportunity to show off some of the cosmetics you can grab from the skin fair (if you haven’t already spent all your money on skins right?). The blue eyeshadow on the left is Zibska’s Phine eyeshadow. You get all the colours you could ever want in the pack with Zibska cosmetics so you won’t be fumbling around in your inventory for an alternative because you forgot to buy a pink shade! The blue lipstick is Buzzeri’s Sweetheart lips in Oceana. With this pack, you get your chosen colour in multiple shades which will go with any skintone! The blush and shadow on the right is Zibska’s Luce blush and Enji eyeshadow and last but not least, the very diva-esque lipstick is from Nox and is, in fact, aptly named ‘drama lips’. Needless to say they do look very dramatic with the gold cupid’s bow!

We also have two new releases from Cae here! On the left we have ‘Satine’ which is available at this round of Serafilms (kinda like the seraphim social except films instead of books!) and on the right we have Perula which is available at The Liaison Collaborative! Each set has matching earrings you can buy separately or with the necklace and all come with Cae’s signature colour-change HUD!

I reached another follower milestone the other day so that means it’s time for another tutorial! This time I’ll be going over the much-requested, ‘cloning’ your avatar! Thank you all for your undying support, I know I say this a lot but it really means so much to me!

*X*

Location: Paradiso

Cloning your Avatar

So the aim of this tutorial is to create an image where it appears to have two or more people in it without having to call a friend over or boot up an alt account. It’s great for those of you who don’t have a lot of time but want to show off a couple outfits in a creative way or if you’re like me, you have a really rubbish laptop that can barely handle two avatars in a room! Yes you could probably save time by taking the second photo on a green screen, but this might not always be practical especially if you have crazy camera-angles and shadows that cast through the environment.

Do you speak Portuguese? This tutorial was translated by Antonietta Canucci!

Step 1 – Preparation

So to start off with, make sure you’ve saved an outfit for each look you want to be present in the photo, that way you can just replace the outfit, move a bit and snap another shot. You’ll also need to purchase Eve N Better’s Camera Assistant HUD this is an absolute necessity if you’re going to be taking photos in an area where you can’t rezz pose balls/pose stands (don’t worry, it’s only 10L$). This HUD will allow you to lock your camera in place so that you can move around and it won’t follow your avatar!



Step 2 – Say cheese!

You’ve found where you want to take your photo, you’ve made your outfits and you have your camera lock HUD on! Now lets take some photos! Of course this requires a lot of forward-thinking such as how you can frame it to fit two avatars, which parts will be overlapping or behind the second avatar and so on.

So once you have your first shot, lock your camera, change outfits and then move over to the position you want the second avatar to be at (it helps if you look for reference points). For example, I wanted the second avatar to hide that weird diamond poseball in the middle but also because it was nice and close to the first avatar. You want the only thing to change in this image is the position of the avatar and not the scene, others it’ll look messy when you stick them together and you’ll make more work for yourself (like I unfortunately did, oops!).

Step 3 – Cut and paste!

Once you have both of your images, it’s time to stick them together! Open up your favourite photo editing program, I’ll be using Photoshop CC for this tutorial but any program which will allow you to utilise layers will work too. Copy and paste the first image on top of the second image and lower the opacity of the top layer so that you can easily line them up. Don’t worry if you mess up the environment a little bit like I did, it’s still salvageable provided the images aren’t too far apart, but obviously you’ll have an easier time if your images are exactly the same.

Then just use the Square marquee tool to chop off the useless edges on the top image. Once you’ve done that you can start going in with the eraser tool and cutting out finer details such as where the avatars will overlap etc.

When that’s all done with, you should have one image where it appears there are two avatars present! Now you can just go on with your regular editing routine or leave it as-is if you like your raw shots!

Alternative Method

This method doesn’t require you to purchase the Camera Lock HUD but it does require land you can rezz on. Rez as many pose balls or stands for how many avatars you want present, take a seat and then focus your camera on something in the background, do not focus your camera on your avatar or your camera will follow you when you stand. As long as you keep the camera focused on the background and you don’t touch the movement keys, you can stand up and sit on the next pose stand without disturbing the camera!

So whichever method works for you, I hope you can try it out and create some cool images with lots of avatars!

Here are a couple examples to inspire you! This one I did with 4 avatars using the pose ball method. This one is two avatars using the camera lock method (see what I mean when I said if you did this on a greenscreen you’d be sacrificing shadows?).

For Firestorm users

Hey Firestorm users! Did you know you can ‘save’ your camera position? My good friend Monroe Jigsaw on Plurk pointed out that if you press ctl + alt + C in Firestorm viewer, it will bring up the Cameratools window. Set up your angles and then press the button that looks like an eye with an arrow pointing down. This will save your current camera position so that when you press the button next to it (the eye with the arrow pointing up) it will restore the angle and position you camera was at when you pressed it.

This is good if you’re like me and you crash between taking photos because it will still remember the angle even after you log back in after a crash! Helpful little tip huh?