pulling down the zoom as you move forward – this is a trick done in scary movies where a hallway looks like it is stretching away from you. a camera has a high amount of zoom and as it moves forward you steadily decrease the zoom and it makes the hall seem to move farther away from you
when i lived in Texas, i lived in a tiny town that was only a few miles from where that old TV show called Dallas was filmed, the opening shot for that TV show was from a helicopter that made the front yard of that mansion look about three time longer than it really was. it was done with that same zoom technique (who ever did shoot JR?)
i don’t think you can smoothly zoom like that in OpenSim or Second Life but you can use that trick to make things look larger than they appear *resisting making a joke about that* =p
yesterday i finally added sidewalk ramps to my truss bridge and anytime i do detail work i fly up to my “OAR Generation Station” to make a backup of that sim. the OAR dealio is an automated backup device that James of SimHost made for me (he understands how obsessive i am and is gracious enough to indulge me). the device fires off every night around 10 PM and writes an OAR of its region to our server. however, it is also made so that i can touch it anytime to create an OAR right then – it’s peace of mind that i really like (or that feeds into my paranoia?) =D
anyway . . . these OAR stations are way up at 400 metres and i wanted to take some pics (document?) of my finally done walkways for flickr
you can see in the first pic below what it looks like at the normal zoom default. the bridge is between the white water tower and the red and white lighthouse
to make the bridge look larger and still frame the shot in a similar way, you just zoom way in and pull your cam way back. the zooming in “compresses” the entire distance and makes the bridge seem much larger
as an exaggeration, the last shot shows the opposite with being way zoomed out but having the camera in closer. you can imagine how the combination of zooming and moving the camera make what was close seem to be moving away
this is also a way to make silly pics where you have a friend far away past you, zoom way tight and make it look like they are tiny and standing in the palm of your hand =)
eh, that’s way clever!
Must try that
Gaga
21 Aug 11 at 11:20 am
Amazing! Txs a lot for all tips an trixx <3
Mera kranfel
22 Aug 11 at 1:03 am
Nice tip! Funny how a little change makes so much difference.
I sometimes use this page to make my SL/Open Sim shots look like “miniatures”:
http://tiltshiftmaker.com/
And while we’re on subject of camera locations, here are some tips on setting your cam defaults to a more natural position (instead of the default god-like overhead angle):
http://archsl.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/tips-for-improving-camera-position-for-viewing-real-life-scale-architecture/
You could also change your settings to get an over-one-shoulder view, such as seen in many video games these days. (you have to restart your viewer to see the changes). There are also plenty of ways to change your view on the fly with scripted attachments, of course.
DreamWalker
22 Aug 11 at 8:54 pm
[...] by zoom level and applies equally to Second Life. a few weeks ago i wrote about the effect that zooming has on apparent distance between objects, in that case it was simply making something far away a [...]
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1 Oct 11 at 10:30 am
[...] by zoom level and applies equally to Second Life. a few weeks ago i wrote about the effect that zooming has on apparent distance between objects, in that case it was simply making something far away a [...]
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1 Oct 11 at 10:31 am