Whoa..Photography in Exodus Viewer

I was checking email this morn and found a message from James OReilly linking a rave about the Exodus viewer for virtual worlds. I’d already downloaded a copy, but hadn’t gotten around to checking it out. Since I was avoiding getting down to work, I decided to install and have a look. And whoa, is it loaded with photography features. I’m going to have to pull out some photography manuals to figure out what they all do, but right off the top I was impressed with the results I got.

Texture and shadow rendering is amazing. The above picture was reduced in size by 50% which creates a loss, but the results were still pretty good. Below is a crop from that image before resizing.

I could tweak and get better highlights and contrast, but I’ve done nothing to the image at this point. All the images here are unaltered, just as I took them with the viewer snapshot feature. Even after saving and uploading, you can still almost make out the lace in the bra. I’m not using a face light but the cast light of the laptop screen appears to be reflected.

Again this image was resized down by 50%. In the original you can see the detail of the overhang in the upper window and the wood texture in the base of the statue outside. A crop of the original is below.

Note the cast shadows of the avatar’s hands on the laptop keys. I’m hoping that means no more time spent creating shadows in Photoshop. I’ll have to experiment more to see what’s possible.

Last up–Media on a prim. The laptop is displaying my blog, the post just prior to this one. Not crisp from this angle but a fair representation of what you get when viewing a laptop screen at an angle and from a distance. I’m looking forward to digging in and learning how to use all the features in Exodus.

 ***Another interesting note: I’m on a WiFi connection and was able to stay connected to Second Life with graphics settings at full throttle without crashing. That’s something I haven’t been able to do with the SL viewer. The viwers look very similar, so I’m not sure what the difference might be in that respect. Things were crawling with graphics high, but speed returned when I changed to more moderate settings.