Elanso

A facelight, in its most basic form, consists of an invisible prim (object) which is attached to your Second Life avatar, via one of your face's free points — perhaps chin or nose, but not skull because that's often where prim hair goes. This prim has a feature called light (aka local, or point lighting) enabled, so it'll cast light in the general vicinity of your face, upper torso, and if it's brighter, your immediate surroundings. Exact positioning can vary depending on what "look" you're going for.

Back in 2006, I was one of the first to popularize facelights. I thought to myself while playing in various public areas, "Wouldn't it be grand if I lit myself up like a big watermelon and also basked those nearby in my fave colors?" The result ended up predating and closely resembling one of my earlier profile pics.

I came up with all sorts of variations, like a "lightbeam" which was 3 prims: a long, 10m one in the middle linked to a pink and a green one, respectively, on each end.

My excitement was motivated by the release of Second Life 1.9, which changed the lighting model so that it now used your graphics card instead of being a big CPU hog (you old-timers like me — gosh, still kinda strange to refer to myself as such — will remember that). I had the pleasure and opportunity to write the guide and teach many Residents about it. I even made a couple videos, the first being a demo of local lights and the then-new flexiprims… my very first video uploaded to YouTube! (I now have 259.)

and this one @ 2:36 here is one of my first video tutorials:

In hindsight, it's no surprise that moving around and lighting the way forth caught on very quickly. A simple practicality which needed to be fulfilled. I received a large volume of correspondence on the topic, and a lot of fashion enthusiasts dove into the possibilities too. You know when those uber-social, ultra-glamorous avatars catch on… it's got to be a hit! Within a few months — and it's a growth which continues today — facelights became a popular cultural item to have. They're even listed in Ordinal Malaprop's "Cosmology of the Grid", and altho some will say they belong more in the "Hell" section (let me get to why), there's no doubt they're a staple accessory.

Facelights, like PKD's Screamers but without the rending of flesh, have evolved to a very sophisticated level. There are complete, compact systems you can buy which are scripted — so no need to tinker with editing objects, a touch dialog makes it easy — and I've kindly received some of these from the creators, as sort of a joyful followup. This picture to the right, by Gaynor Gritzi, is a good example of a facelight system. You may browse for more facelight systems on SL Exchange and OnRez.

If you get involved in avatar modeling (in the "pose and look pretty" sense), you will, sooner or later, hear about facelights. The introduction of WindLight atmospheric rendering and its physically-accurate modeled lighting have urged further exploration — it's one of my favorite feelings when two or more Second Life features complement each other so nicely. Also have a look at Caliah Lyon's "Optimising WindLight for Avatars 2.0", which has both a facelight and a complementary WindLight setting — now that's resourcefulness!

So why might facelights be a problem? Facelights in themselves, like many tools, aren't inherently troublesome, but careless usage is: a lot of Residents don't know that only the 6 nearest lights to you will show, due to an OpenGL limit (the other 2 are the sun and moon backlighting). This means if you wear 6 lights (excessive but perfectly possible) and approach others wearing the same amount, not all of yours will reliably show. This photo by Stein Shilova shows gray-ish orbs which have yet to load their transparent texture, and become invisible facelights.

Worse still, if there are other lights in the scene (e.g., part of a lamp post or chandelier), you won't see those if they aren't the nearest, diluting your experience. In the future, especially for those who don't want to worry about tech details, it'd simply be more carefree to find a render-cheap way of displaying all viewable lights (dynamic and static) within a scene. Until then, like many other tools, it's good to be aware of what's going on so you can make good choices about your creativity.

One of my new video QUICKTIPS (which I'll be introducing on the Official Second Life Blog next week) happens to be precisely about how to make a basic facelight in a focused and fun way, so if you're curious and would like to learn, have a look:

Furthermore, if this piques your interest to do some model photography, you'll want to see my Guide to High-Quality Photography!

And if you have facelight stories of your own, please do share in the comments!