WANT YOUR OWN PHOTO STUDIO?

(But Can't Be Bothered To Mess About?)

There are several types of photographic studios available in Second Life, but most of them need time and patience to set them up and use them. Many of us prefer to get them straight of the box and get them working straight away rather than go through the tedious job of looking through the instructions. Come on.  Admit it!  We have all done it at some time or other!

Some weeks ago I reviewed the CTS Wardrobe. Although I was not too impressed with the Wardrobe itself, I was impressed with the HUD that came with it.

The primary reason for the HUD is to enable you to don your outfits and through the HUD take photographs to store in the Wardrobe itself. However, the wardrobe only works with certain viewers - mainly the Phoenix Firestorm viewer.  The HUD does come with a number of additional operations.

Firstly, you can rez a pose stand through the HUD. Once done you can easily bring up the installed studio (main photograph).  There are a number of alternative scenes that you can easily select - as I have in these photographs.  The backdrops are somewhat out of proportion to what could be considered to be correct, but this is the case of the majority of the photo studios on the Marketplace. You can add your own backdrops easily by inserting your desired texture into the contents tab on the standard editing system (right-click on the HUD - Edit - Contents tab ).  

The HUD does come with a number of poses, although you can select "No Poses" and use your own. In the case of the smaller photograpgh, I was using one of the poses I bought from MyAnimation (at L$60 each). 

There is a camera tool within the HUD to enable you to save the outfit for the Wardrobe, but I prefer to use the regular tools on my viewer for things like taking photographs and moving items about to get the right poses and angle. The only thing missing from this package is the ability to adjust the lighting of your pose. Also it has to be said that this is a personal studio and is not intended to be used as a professional "photographer and client" set up. However, as a simple system it is ideal. It is just a pity that to get it, you have to buy the CTS Wardrobe - which retails at L$699!

For my review of the wardrobe go to http://meljohaughton.blogspot.com/2013/08/carlyle-theas-solutions-wardrobe.html

* Please note that all posts are unbiased opinions and that I receive no sponsorship from any source whatsoever!  Mel xx