Note for extra credit seekers: I'm still roughing this draft up, so no credit for my flubs until I remove this statement :D
If you want to get a photograph in Second Life to use for the final project, I recommend one of two methods. I do not recommend the old "save to hard drive" technique, since then you must edit the photo before you can bring it back to Second Life. Uploading it would cost 10 Linden Dollars to bring it back into SL, just as do the better methods below. Note that "save to hard drive" is still great for images you do not need inside SL but, say, for a wiki or blog outside it.
The first method is best, in my opinion, since you can resize the snapshot without a photo editor.
- (Recommended) You can "save to your inventory." This is a lazy avatar's dream...you'll have a snapshot that is ready to go for the final project.
- (Second Choice) You can choose the "send via email" to yourself. Then you can edit the photo later and upload it (for 10 Linden Dollars). This method creates a compact .jpg file, the only format that SL will accept (as far as I know!) for an upload.
Example:
Jezz Enoch is very lazy. She's camping, and she spots a fashion disaster sitting next to her. She uses her camera very carefully to get his head lined up, then clicks the snapshot button at the bottom of her screen:
Note that you can set the size of the image! The IDEAL SIZE for a snapshot you will use as a texture = 512x512. You may be able (as Jezz did) to use the pull-down size to get to 512x512. Some versions of the SL client software have that “size” option available only when you click a “More” button in the snapshot window.
You'll see a preview, with crop-marks indicated when you switch the size of the snapshot.
Then all you have to do is find the image in your inventory when you wish to hang it on your virtual wall:
- Snapshots go to a folder in your inventory called "Photo Album." Find it and then we'll consider how to put it on a prim.
- Jezz checks her inventory's photo album and sees this:
- Jezz can then double-click the snapshot to be sure it's the one she wants to use for her photo...in this case, it's a hat that she thinks would look great on Pappy Enoch's head (with the fuse lit, of course):
- Jezz then visits Pappy's junkyard, makes a prim that she shapes like a picture frame, then opens her inventory again
- She simply drags the snapshot to the frame, like dragging a file from one window to another on your computer:
The next tutorial will show how to take such an object and link it to a Web page.