M-o-o-n. That spells moon.

[Macphisto Angelus]

For anyone who ever saw the outstanding Mini-Series "The Stand" based on Stephen King's book by the same name, you are likely familiar with the character Tom Cullen. Tom would often make observations by saying M-o-o-n spells whatever he was speaking of. It could spell his name or even a toolkit. A touching moment came when Tom was hiding out and looks up and sees the bright moon and says "When the Moon is full. M-O-O-N… spells "moon". So, why am I talking about Tom Cullen and Stephen King and moons? Well, lately I can't get enough of watching the Underworld series of movies. They have been inspiring me to create a few things one of which I am done with which is a skin based on the vampire clan's "Death Dealers'. OH! You say, this is an advert!! No, not at all. What it is though is what I hope to be a good tip for those of you who like to take snapshots in OpenLife.

One thing I have missed in the official viewer has been the addition of Torley Linden's Windlight settings. There are some amazing settings that can render themed pictures in a much more dramatic way then the normal default scene. For instance this picture was taken using Torley's "that spells moon" setting.

Below find a tutorial I posted in the OLX Shutterbug club of how to get the settings and how to install them in your OpenLife viewer. If you are someone who likes to take pics of your OpenLife please feel free to join our group and share your pictures in the group area and on the OLX Flickr group. Details can be found in the club area. :)

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For anyone who uses windlight when you take pictures in OpenLife I thought I would mention that Torley Linden made a bunch of windlight settings when the tech came out. We can use those settings in OpenLife but we have to install them manually. Torley has no copyright on them, in fact he says "I don't have any use restrictions on 'em, so go wild .." so I am going to attach the settings to this post for easy download and put the step by steps instructions below for install. Note the MAC and Linux instructions and the how to use at the end below are cut and paste from the SL WIki for your convenience.

If you have never used windlight here is a video teaching you what it is all about by Torley.


There are two videos available if you want to watch the process. I will be installing under Windows XP. Be sure you are running the latest OpenLife viewer and that you do not have the viewer open while making these changes.

1. Download the attachment on this post (NOTE: Attachment can be found in the group area) or use this link to get them directly from the SL wiki.

2, Unzip them to your desktop (or wherever you want to unzip them to).

3. Navigate into your hard drive into "C:\Program Files\OpenLife R16_3\app_settings\windlight" (Note in the future the R 16_3 may say something different after OpenLife. Just be sure you navigate into the OpenLife folder.

4. The files we are interested in are the skies and water folders.

5. Now open the folder you unzipped with the Torley settings inside. Again, we are interested in the Skies and Water folders.

6. If you have never saved personal windlight settings, just drag the skies and water folder from the Torley file into your C:\Program Files\OpenLife R16_3\app_settings\windlight folder and let them overwrite the existing ones. Now you have about 100 new windlight settings to play with. :)

7. IF you have windlight custom settings saved you will need to open the skies and water folders in the Torley folder one at a time, select all and drag all the files over manually. Skies into skies and water into water.

Visual instructions for Windows users:


MAC users: Mac - In Applications folder, right-click "OpenLife", select "Show Package Contents", then open Contents > Resources > app_settings > windlight


Linux Users: * The folder that contains the "OpenLife" boot script (example: "~/Desktop/OpenLife-i686-1.21.6.99587/"). Its exact location depends on where you extracted the viewer .bz2 archive after downloading it.
* You'll only be asked to replace files if you already installed some or all of these settings.
* IMPORTANT: WindLight settings will be saved to the "user_settings" folder so they are not overwritten when you upgrade versions. Dragging them to the above application directories will still work, though.

How to use

* Login to OpenLife.
* In Edit menu > Preferences > Graphics tab, set "Quality and Performance" to High, or check Custom and make sure "Atmospheric Shaders" is checked.
* Go to World menu > Environmental Settings > Environment Editor.
* Click the "Advanced Sky" button.
* Click the drop down menu next to "Sky Presets". You should see the many new skies starting with "[TOR]" in the list. It should look like this:

* The same steps apply for the water settings — in the Environment Editor, click "Advanced Water", then the drop down next to "Water Presets".
* Select a preset and watch the sky and water change instantly.
* ENJOY!

Here is a picture I took using Windlight just now:

[Samarah Nightfire]

Lawdy...that is sooo awesome!!! Yessir..M-O-O-N..that spells Kewl!! :)
Thanks so much for this info Mac!! :)
I will have some of them biscuts and mustard now Um huh.