[TUTORIAL] How to make a beautiful Second Life panorama in 15 minutes

2006-12-19

What's below is outdated. For the latest on how to make Second Life panoramas, see this guide!

I love sharing what I know, and over the last stretch of days, my enthusiasm for crafting Second Life panoramas has been at the forefront of my creative passions. In 15 minutes (or less!), you can make one too.

These aren't the most elaborate steps, and are focused on a pragmatic-yet-fun way to get panoramic. Your results won't be as pristine as the panoramas by Panogames, but they will have character, and you'll feel good having made it yourself!

Log into Second Life. Find a location which inspires you!

Position yourself. You can either stand — or sit, but the important thing is apart from looking around, you'll want to stay still.

Open the Client menu. Press Ctrl-Alt-D (you may need Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D on some PCs). It appears at the top of your screen, next to the Help menu.

Select Client menu > Quiet Snapshots to Disk. This assures you can take many snapshots without bothering those around you with the whirr-click! noises, and it also feels more responsive.

Set the tone. World menu > Force Sun has several options. Night shots have a dramatically different feel than day scenes. If that's not enough control, Client menu > Mouse Moves Sun lets you fine-tune it. You can also use lights to enhance ambience — for more on this, see my Advanced Snapshot Magic video tutorial.

Go into Mouselook. Press "M" key when the chatbar is closed, or select View menu > Mouselook.

Press Ctrl-`. It's the shortcut for File menu > Take Snapshot. The first time you do this, it'll ask you to save it to a directory. Go ahead and choose a new folder.

Start taking snapshots like crazy! With the mouse, take overlapping pictures in a complete circle. You can do several passes while looking high, mid, and low, to cover your complete 360° field of vision. I find 50+ snapshots works pretty well.

Log out of Second Life.

Convert your BMPs into high-quality JPGs. Many utilities can do this: Picasa is a good, free photo organizer with a slick design. XnView can also do it. I use both.

Open Autostitch(TM). There are a number of panorama-making programs on the market, but I like Autostitch(TM) a lot: the demo's straightforward, pretty fast, and it's free. Alas, it only opens JPGs, which is why you did the previous step.

Change your Autostitch(TM) settings. Edit menu > Options shows you a lot of choices. According to the inventors, the documentation for this will be improved in the future. In the meantime, what I did:

Set "Output Size" to something much larger, e.g., "Width (pixels)" = 3200
Set "Other Options" to use more "System Memory (Gb), and important, I set JPEG Quality to 100 so the final image looks clearer and has less nasty artifacting.

Select your files. File menu > Open and find the directory you saved all your converted JPGs in. Hold Shift while clicking to highlight a range of them.

Stitch menu > Start. This starts the rendering process of stitching your images together. It may take awhile depending on the speed of your computer, the resolution you chose, and other factors.

After that process is complete…

Look at your finished "pano.jpg" file. It'll be in the same folder as your JPGs.

YAYZERAMA!

You can always take this further…

see?

Some additional things to consider:

Quick-and-extensive postprocessing. Adjusting hue, lowering brightness slightly while increasing contrast and saturation heavily makes a large difference in terms of apparent dynamic range and the richness of your colors. Playing with various plugins, filters, and layering can lead you to more fascinating results. You can also crop out black areas which didn't get fully captured.
Second Life's Client menu > Rendering > Types has some interesting options not available in offline life. For example, if you turn off Character (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-4), all avatars will disappear. This can be useful because a lot of motion in a panorama can make the end result look iffy or artsy, depending on your intentions. Experiment with other settings.
You may also want to turn particles off via View menu > Beacons > Hide Particles, which has a shortcut of Ctrl-Alt-Shift-=. Particles are a lot of fun to capture sometimes, so try this on and off and see what you like.
Turning your avatar around in non-Mouselook and assembling snapshots for a panorama can result in some totally trippy effects, as this work shows.
If you want a more precise, automated way to move yourself around, try this script by Dolus Naumova. Put it in a prim inworld. Thanxies, Dolus!
I've uploaded all the source images, the result, and the post-processed final final version to Flickr. » Have a look!

That's a few things to get you rolling so you get rocking! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Please let me know of the panoramas you come up with, I'm looking forward to seeing them.

Tagged as: General, Pictures

{ 4 trackbacks }

Kisa Naumova Fisheye Panorama « Torley Lives: 2006-12-21 at 11:05 PM UTC
Second Life Tutorials: i segreti di Torley Linden per ottenere il massimo da foto ed i machinima « Obiettivo Zhong: 2008-06-08 at 3:39 AM UTC
Panoramas and real time shadows in Second Life «: 2008-07-07 at 12:37 AM UTC
My yard, July 10 (panoramic) « Lorimae Undercroft: 2008-07-10 at 9:05 AM UTC

{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }

Dedric Mauriac 2006-12-21 at 1:34 AM UTC: Wow. This is a nice walk-though tutorial. Maybe it could go on a wiki too. Anyhow, I saw your post about this the other day and checked out autostitch. I found that panarama images like this are really great for snow globes.

Hollow out a sphere, put the texture inside and a transparent texture on the outside. add a base, a little snow and a figurine and wamo! A cute snow globe.

I blogged with a youtube video of some of my first attempts. I also thought I'd try to do it with just a few images, but AutoStitch got confused and the image turned out funny.

It's also a good idea to make sure nothing is animated. People, objects, textures, particles. If there is a way to freeze the scene for multiple pictures, I haven't found it yet.
Signore Iredell 2006-12-21 at 2:50 AM UTC: Hi Torley,
thanks for your work!
The tips you give us often make Second Life funnier

I love the Client menu > Rendering > Types effects.
CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-[number from 0 to 9] rules!

I had a lot of fun while doing this short machinima, where I give a sample of the strange effects you can see tweaking Rendering settings:
http://signore.wordpress.com/2006/10/05/melting-pixels/

Since Second Life Linux client doesnt'yet support native video recording (nor playing), I had to manage to make it with third-party (open source though) apps. Torley, please help Linux users get video support!

——————————————————————–
Italians are coming == http://secondlifeitalia.com/blog
Torley 2006-12-22 at 8:24 PM UTC: Signore, you're welcome! Hehe — ohhh nice video! I was trying some of that "melting effect" myself. The smears remind me of some 80s music vids, particularly when a drummer is letting loose and jagged synth chords are stabbing away.

Re: Linux video support, last I checked on that, Tofu Linden was evaluating various possibilities, but there were some licensing complications. It's still an open and ongoing possibility.
Dell Wilberg 2007-01-08 at 11:39 AM UTC: Hey great article on panoramas. Ive found some clever programs to make them and will be adding them to our website.

However your script "Panoriffic". Im not sure it works. Am I doing something wrong? I tried it and it did not work.

Dell
Torley 2007-01-08 at 7:54 PM UTC: Dell, thankya! What's the "Panoriffic" script? I haven't heard of this myself.
fragghetto 2007-02-16 at 4:48 AM UTC: Hi all,
happy to see a great tutorial on how to do some stunning panoramics inside SL.
I was thinking on making a small contest on panogames, so if you are interested please drop a comment @Torley blog.
Best five panoramas will take place inside the SL related page:

http://www.panogames.com/games/second_life.htm

Hey Torley, contest is not open for you…u are too good now…;)
Full credits for sure…:)
Torley, if you have more ideas on contest, drop me a mail.

cya all

panoramically yours
Johnny
Torley 2007-02-18 at 10:56 AM UTC: ^ Hey Johnny aka fragghetto, "panoramically yours" is a great way to sign off! As you may know, I've enjoyed the Panogames Panoramas, and hope to see more Second Life ones. Thanx for the kind words too — I gotta keep observing, learning, and moving from the fine work of my fellow avatars!
fragghetto 2007-02-19 at 2:01 AM UTC: What do you think about making a contest?
Torley 2007-02-21 at 8:24 PM UTC: At first glance, I think it'd be fun as a contest! (Alas, I don't have the personal bandwidth to organize it myself, if that's what you're wondering.)
Funky Jerbil 2007-03-04 at 10:00 AM UTC: Hi, thank you very much for the panorama tutorial.

When I use other software to render spherical panorama qtvr or 360, I get a horrible pinch effect at the poles.

Just wonderfing if you top picture is a spherical panorama, as it has quite a lot of blur on the top and bottom. This is brilliant as it doesn't produce pinch! It's just that i'd like to use other programs and build my own panoramas, but i'm getting lost in the techincalities.

Thank you again..

mark
Torley 2007-03-11 at 11:02 AM UTC: @Funky|mark: you're welcome! The method I used to create the panoramas is pretty much described above, so I went into mouselook and started taking pictures. I was pretty pleased with the results myself, so I think a good place is to try those steps that worked for me and see how they go for you.
TigroSpottystripes Katsu 2007-06-22 at 3:59 PM UTC: there is a free program called hdrshop that allows manipulations as well covertion between types of panoramics quite easily (I don't remember for sure, but I think it was windows only, google it and see what you find), also, there is a free set of tools (that I've never been able to figure out how to use it to do what I want, with the exception of the viewer) caled Panotools made in java, it has lots of stuff about panoramics (there are a couple of versions created or modified by different people, all based on an original one I think, and I think there is a comercial thing with the same name, but I'm not sure)
Torley 2007-06-25 at 4:42 PM UTC: @TigroSpottystripes: I have to look those up, I've heard of both of these before… panoramas for the masses!
alienbear Gupte 2007-11-15 at 8:18 PM UTC: hi Torley for your great tutorial. But I have some quires. First I want to say that I don't familiar with the resolution but I apply a rl course about multi media graphic design & plan to use my designed jewelry in Second life as my first project product. So I tried to take the pictures of my jewelry inside game. I used 3200X2400 to take those pictures. When I saved to my computer & check on screen, it is so clear & sharp. But then When I use Photoshop to edit them & then print it out , it look so fade. O yes, it is just in a very small pictures , about a size of an egg. lol & Then I ask my teacher about that & he said the it look fade due to my dpi is just in 72. For print out, it must be higher than 300dpi to make it look more sharp & clear. So I tried to check the pictures I took from SL, no mater it is in 1600X1200 Or 3200X2400, they are all in 96dpi. The question is If I can tune the dpi higher by using PS & it will print out more clear? Or no matter how much the dpi I set, the print out are still in low quality? Thank you so much .

Alienbear Gupte
Daedalus Young 2007-11-16 at 1:05 PM UTC: You should be able to change the dpi with PS. In fact, it doesn't matter much, the image won't change, it just a number so the printer knows at what size to print it out.
For example, if you take a 300×300 pixels image and print it out at 72 dpi, it will be about 4×4 inches, but most likely quite pixely. In PS, change the dpi to 300, the image size stays the same, but now the printer prints it as a 1×1 inch image, and you can't see the pixels anymore!
Torley 2007-11-18 at 7:55 AM UTC: Pretty much what Daed said, thanks for the help!
Sasuka Ultsch 2007-11-19 at 2:46 PM UTC: hey torley i have a problem every time i try to log in on my new labtop it crashes at downloading clothing sence your a linden thought you could help lol it has a intel celeron thing and its a windows vista basic( reading the stickers lol) wondering if you could help :[ ?.
Memory Fairey 2007-11-24 at 5:31 PM UTC: Hi, Torley!

Great to have a real person to ask questions to!

Mine is similar to Sasuka's. I have a desktop, and I use IE7 (I read somewhere this might be my problem).

Logging on to SL is always a crapshoot. Sometimes I can enjoy SL for hours, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes not at all. I employed some of your hints for improving the streaming quality and the FPS, and they work wonders! But it still crashes! Is there something I'm not doing, or is this just the nature of the beast?

My avatar's name is Memory Fairey. See you inworld!

Memory
Torley 2007-11-25 at 1:00 PM UTC: I'm sorry I can't help with that here, because it's my personal blog and not the right place; I recommend going to the official Second Life Support Portal @ http://secondlife.com/support and first and foremost, be sure your computer meets our System Requirements ( http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php ) because I often see instability on non-supported systems. I hope you're able to get inworld smoothly!
Chili Yiyuan 2007-11-30 at 4:36 AM UTC: Hi Torley

Maybe it is a lite late in this blog, but first found it today. I have long been trying to make a holo deck in SL, taking some of my RL panoramaphotos in there, but with little luck. Have tryed to make 6 jpg's inside a cube, but corners looks awful. Any idea how and in which format I should use for inside a cube.

The attached link is from the Karen Blixen home in Denmark (Out of Africa)

http://www.rungstedkyst.dk/photos/Karen%20Blixen%2001.mov
Torley 2007-12-02 at 9:53 AM UTC: @Chili: It seems to me like you'd need software that can do cubical stitching. I'm pretty sure QuickTime VR offers it: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/tools/qtvr.html What are you using right now?
Chili Yiyuan 2007-12-03 at 4:24 AM UTC: Hi Torley

Thanks, I will have a closer look at the qtvr software. Right now I am using PTGui for stiching pictures into a .mov panorama.
Chili Yiyuan 2007-12-04 at 5:41 AM UTC: Hmmm, the usual barrier The qtvr software is a MAC program.
Nevertheless, it is the picture format to use inside a cube in SL, I am looking for, so somehow I must convert the .mov file into 6 jpg images that can be put on as textures, without distortion in the corners.
Torley 2007-12-09 at 6:49 AM UTC: @Chili: QTVR is actually cross-platform, as QuickTime is… also see http://gardengnomesoftware.com/
Chili Yiyuan 2008-02-22 at 9:47 AM UTC: Hi Torley.

Now I can make VR 3D Panoramas in SL, just like a QTVR in RL. It looks fantastic, but I have one problem. I have to use many prims to make a big box, and therefore I have to slice my images into smaller peaces i RL. I use Photoshop to do this, and then I upload the slices to SL, and add them as texture to my box, on the prims, but here comes my problem. I can see a kind of a gap between the images, and it is not the prims, they are perfect lined up. Got any idea what can cause such lines between images?

Best regards

Chili
Torley 2008-02-24 at 7:44 AM UTC: @Chili: I'm not sure offhand what the cause of those gaps is. Are the texture offsets set correctly?
Pierre 2008-05-18 at 10:38 AM UTC: Hi Torley,

Do you happen to have a copy of the script by Dolus Naumova? The link to it is broken and I can't find it online.

My SL avatar name is Peter McAllister.

Thanks again for another nice tutorial (even though it is more than a year old)!
Torley 2008-05-25 at 6:51 AM UTC: @Pierre: Sorry, I don't have it. Dolus is on Flickr though if you want to try reaching out! You're welcome; I may eventually do an update, but the basics still work.
thaumata 2008-08-21 at 7:19 AM UTC: Hey Torley! Just wanted to tell you I appreciated this tutorial. I've discovered the art of making tiny planets via polar coordinates and want to do a bunch in SL, so this was very helpful.

I wanted to mention that if you are on a Mac, you can use AutoPanoPro (makes watermarked demos, but is awesome at stitching) or Hugin (free, no watermarks) to do the stitching for you, too. I am currently rendering a 100 image pano of Lash Xevious's La Reve, and OMG it's going to be BEYOOOOTIFUL.

What I really want to do is figure out how to do stereographic projections of SL, so that when you make the little planets, you get that insane "OMG LOOK AT THAT MASSIVE BUILDING SITTING ON TOP OF THAT TINY PLANET" effect. I need to read more but it seems most people capture those types of images using a fisheye lens in RL. I don't suppose there is a quick way to fake fisheye in SL, is there? I couldn't think of any, unless you could do something kind of funky with control + 0 zooming… but that seems like a longshot.

Anyway, cheers for the awesome tutorial. I should have some experiments up on flickr soon but any thoughts about this are appreciated, naturally. because OH SWEET JESUS, IT'S A TINY PLANET AND IT'S SO AWESOME.
thaumata 2008-08-21 at 11:36 AM UTC: OMG Torley. I figured it out. (Only took me all day, but hey, look how smart I am now!) Hugin will let you change the equirectangular projection to a stereographic one and then you can just adjust the view in their preview window until it looks how you want. (That part is harder than it sounds.)

But look – No distortion and holy cute!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thestrangestloveofall/2784065731/

Wheee!
tellie jewell 2009-09-12 at 7:15 PM UTC: I did not see this question, after the Panorama is done, is it then uploaded to sl the same 512X512 pixels/cm as any other texture. These are all very cool, I am anxious to try one, or two or three. Thanks Tellie
Galaxy 2010-01-19 at 10:33 PM UTC: Hi Torley!

I wonder if someone stills making the Second Life panoramas. Your page is the one of the pages where SL panoramas are discussed, but it seems that comments are being added once a year )

However, I would like everyone to comment our project, SLPano: http://slpano.com
We are trying to create a replacement for SLUrl which displays panoramas of the SL business locations.
Torley 2010-01-21 at 12:56 PM UTC: ^ Gonna check it out soon!