 to the 8.30 a.m. to 9 a.m. session of the 2023 Open Similar Community Conference. In this session, we are pleased to introduce the presentation, Expanding Virtual Experiences with EEP Creations. Our speaker is Nick's Breen. Nick's is known for fine art photography for over 30 years, private and commercial from traditional to modern. He is a founding member of the Revere Public Arts Commission and Fort Point Arts Community Member. Please check out the website at conference.opensimilar.org for speaker bios, details of the session and the full schedule of events. The session is being livestreamed. Please let us know if you have questions at Pound OSCC 23. Welcome, everyone. Let's begin the session. Hello, welcome to OSCC 23. As Lear said, my name is Nick's Breen. I'm a virtual 3D artist who creates immersive art experience. This means your avatar can enter into a 3D immersive space and be part of the art. Your view of the art experiences changes every time you look, move, fly or change your viewer perspective with distance or direction. There's no longer just a 2D piece of art, but an immersive piece of art on the image that you see on the screen. That's a long shot inside of an 8x8 var where the sky is moving and the reflection on the ocean is moving itself. And that's all created by using EEP. I was asked by Thursday the following question. EEP is a great creative tool because. And I have to think about that for a bit. And I came up with the EEP project is one of the last unexplored artistic possibilities for creators in virtual worlds. Individuals constructed environment that enhances the theme or mood of the type of creation that they're currently building. You could have a standalone as an arbitrator for the desired perception of what the effect can be. You don't even need prems. You can make an environment that is not seen usually in virtual worlds. Ready? These are a couple of different looks. And all I'm doing is changing the EEP effect from the same location where the last shot was. And you see that the sky has changed what's in the sky has changed how the lights look upon the prims that I do here have and the water effect itself. We'll give you one more to the point where you can have three dimensional looks down into the ocean as you fly over or go over it in any vehicle, a boat, a car, or just walk across it itself. Come on with the hood. All right, half of what you see in the screen is sky and water. This leaves a massive creative possibility that's unchanged in artistic ways. It seems like a loss of creating a comprehensive immersive virtual experience. So today's discussion examines something other than the steps to create EEP effects found available at either the SL community or the Firestorm Quick Preference, the Firestorm project. You need to go in and read them and learn the basic fundamentals. That's not what I'm going to address today. I'm going to address beyond that. So if you'd like to visit, make sure that you have all of what you need on. I'm getting lost with people talking. Excuse me. On a personal note, I utilized a Firestorm viewer, so I follow the Phoenix guidelines is what I did to help augment after I'd learned this process and they came up with a process that was a little more inclusive and how to do it. The step by step tutorials will introduce the fundamentals to required, read them, learn them, apply them, experiment with them, explore them. All right, I'm going to focus on the creating EEPs that produce artistic moods and effects beyond traditional sky and water environments. And as you can see, same place, a different look and how the sky moves, the water moves and what I've got up in the sky itself. The critical process steps and how I interpret them in an artistic mindset addressing the pre effects required with texture creations and applying post application effects settings will affect what it looks like and how it affects the look of your builds. Ready? The challenge is that OSCC version open Sims 0910 does not support EEP. So what I'm going to ask you to do is during the lunch break, come and visit me over at Pangea to experience the actual effect itself. Looking at a photo as we all know is not the same as being immersed into the space. There is the hop to get there. If you ask me later on during lunch, I'll be here going over to the Pangea Sim to show people this, you'll be able to experience a lot more of what this looks like. When you get there, though, you're going to have to have a shared environment on max draw particles, music, the higher settings, the better your viewing experience and immersive experience will be when they're. Alright, let's get to the creative process itself. Think of the approach as creating an environment that accentuates or even conveys the mood of theme of your build or theme on the land that you have itself. I started the process to create a distinct art gallery style that fits the type of 3D virtual art I create. I used images of the artist's textures while applying them to the sky and ocean. It was basic and fundamental, but then I started to work with them a little bit more and more and applying them up in the sky and it created a great working environment. So when it's combined with mesh, prims and particles, I have a completely immersive environment that expanded and complemented the build, i.e. the gallery I had where pictures were displayed in unique ways, not usual. It's a picture frame up. I use holograms, I use projections, I use mesh, prims or I alpha it a bit so you can see through it. It's a unique experience that is not seen a lot in virtual worlds. Alright, once I mastered the required basic skills, I expanded the style and effects by combining different textures and settings selected when adjusting the textures themselves. Combination of different sky and ocean EEP selections will change the look of two textures that are sets of the sky and ocean created the match. So I've got, you know, Bizarroland is the sky and a Bizarroland ocean or sea effect. But I might change that with moody gray or whatever I want either the sky or the sea and it makes them different. So you've got a large combination of what you can do and create once you start this process. You'll need to have a photo editing program to create compelling effects. But even with basic photo manipulation skills, one can create a dynamic effect inside of their region where they're working. The view allows you to manipulate the settings producing multiple effects to the texture or textures you apply to the sky and ocean settings. Basic steps for textures are simple. One, find the images that fit the theme. Maximum effect required are four textures to create the broadest range of multiple derivative sky, ocean, sun and moon is what you're going to be working with inside of the fixed environment HUD that changes those features inside of your SIM. With a JPEG ensure it's tiled so it has a clean look when applying. JPEGs allow for essential looks that work well with the sun and moon application. An example could be an artist portrait as large as from the ocean to the top of the sky as part of it or for different regions in the sea or ocean. Ready? So let's move to the next texture. PNG at target textures create wonderful sky and ocean effects. Cutting out portions of the PNG background allows the sky, sun and moon to shine through and when it flows across because you control the speed and how it looks and where it goes is dramatic and dynamic looking. As you can see on the screen, the EEP process is all in inventory. So it's basically assets that you're working for. So you open up your inventory and you go down to settings and you click on it, open and you create a new setting. So what occurs is you get a look like this. I always start off with the clouds first and I recommend for more advanced looks that you use PNG or alpha textures because they're just going to be more traumatic. So your settings right click, select the sky, water, day, cycle, eye open and did sky first. Alright, then I'm going to take and pull my texture in and apply the effect settings. You've got your coverage, scale, variances, directions, the density and the cloud details. All of these information, the details of what they are and what they do are in the tutorials from either second life or from the Firestorm viewer. Not enough time to drill into all of them. Alright, the process I use activate the fixed environment HUD. Start with the clouds, put a PNG texture in there and start playing with the effects. Learn how they work, how they move back and forth, how you see depth perception, the density, all of that's important. You've got to do that by trial and error at first. Stand in the middle of your pot is a good trip tip, forgive me, and then select fly and move up to about 1000 meters so that you can see how it looks at different heights and what it looks like from the land. My tip is to type GTH, then a space and then the height you want 1000 in local chat and hit and enter the keyboard. Make sure you're flying, otherwise you'll start falling when you get there. When you hit it, it will bring you up to the meters in the sky that you had designated. I usually do about 1000 because that gives you enough to see the whole area at one particular time allows you to view area horizon viewing from above and looking down. It's a helpful way to build this. I usually just build a platform, put a temporary LM, throw it up in my toolbar, you know, favorites across the top and you can go back and forth. It's a process to do this, but once you get it down, it's not that hard. Alright, the cloud tab, the settings you can change the size, depth and direction of how the cloud apply texture looks in the sky. Practice and discover what the effects are. Coverage and scale should move in small amounts. In most cases, variants can be applied in a much broader range and it sounds like what's he mean? Do it and you'll see. It helps a lot. Alright, let's go to the next one. Cloud density in detail changes the X and Y axis and D the density position of the applied textures and the density of how it looks when you look at it. By density, I mean fuller or less of what you're looking at. Alright, important. Cloud applied textures, speed and directions are critical. Too fast to speed can be uncomfortable to observe. It makes me ill and usually I can go and I do a lot of 3D art stuff that's crazy looking, but it's just a little too much. So the speeds tend to be a lot smaller personally for me and for people that visit these things because I don't want anyone to be overwhelmed or feel queasy when looking at the type of things I create. Alright, sun moon tab. We're in the sun moon tab. What it was up here and these work with a few extra steps. You apply the colors. Did I miss it? Hold on one second folks. Clouds, color controls, altitude. It doesn't want to seem to apply, but you put your textures in the sun, moon and tabs. Alright, forgive me if we can't see them. And what it's going to do, it's going to open your map up, look and identify what direction you're looking at and decide if you want to change the east and west sunrise or sun settings in some situations. You might want to bring the sun and moon to overlap each other. There's all different ways that you can apply these effects for the best for your theme. You place your pointer on it, move it or you can take and use the sliders. Always remember that if you want them equal distance from each other, it's going to be 180 degrees opposite. Final degrees of positioning, different looks that can affect when changing the direction of the sun and moon are seen. I usually use artists or artistic looking things that fit the theme of what I'm doing. The azimuth is the location of the sun and moon. Razor lowering the heights produce different effects of the sun and moon or the textures that are in there reflect on the water and the size of it for the horizon itself. Larger and closer to the horizon, the sun applied textures look creates a massive effect across the full height of one side of the sim when you have it set up. You can have both sun and moon, 180 degrees apart. Work with them, see what works best for you. Atmosphere and lighting tabs, that's where we're at right here. Alright, these control the color and effect of how the applied cloud, sun, moon, textures appear in the sky and underneath the water it affects the whole region that you're in. Ambient, blue horizon, blue density controls colors I used to create moves and the color palette that you're creating. I have discovered personally that the ambient color will affect the overall light cast of your builds and on your avatars so you may have a shade of the color that you pick as your ambient color. So you may have a pink cast to yourself or a blue cast. So it's not going to be clear but it's definitely going to be workable for you when you're in your sim doing it. Moving the intensity of the color and using darker colors seems to work best. Remember your color wheel and use complementary or opposite type colors that will give different effects to what you're doing. Then you want to save and name your new sky and water EPP settings. Follow the SL or Firestorm EEP directions to save and apply and you will have the ability to change the effects while you're in your sim in a live situation. Thank you for your time. I'm trying to keep on time here. I want to answer any questions but as you can see you go to your world, you open up your environment, you know use settings and that'll pop open on the right here and these are all the different settings that I have created and you can see that it's dozens and dozens of skies and water effects that are available to you. Yes I will be doing tutorials. I'm inviting you to come visit and take and physically if we can physically do things like that the environment itself. You know Nix we have under Get Involved we have these events and you could schedule a little Zoom session where you talk and demo the settings live on a share and then take them to the reach and then actually experiment with it if you so desire. That's so we're offering those next week and you could schedule that. I will work on that but I am going to schedule and invite people to come to the sim to see this. You just cannot it's just so hard to physically describe this without actually being there. I guess it's the way to put it. So go back to the front of it just imagine this thing moving and it's just it's mind-blowing. It is a different one same place same location but it's just a different effect. Absolutely. It's moving and then finally I've discovered ways where you go over the water and it's a 3D effect that moves as you go through it. That's right. You know in the in the chat I put in the information and during the break which is at 1130 join Nix as he provides this demonstration. Well thank you Nix for an informative and interesting presentation. And thank you OSCC crew for your work. Thank you all that have participated and I'm looking forward to meeting you at the lunch break all. Thank you. Sounds great. As a reminder to our audience you will want to check out the conference.opensimulator.org to see what is coming up on the conference schedule. You won't want to miss our next session which will begin at 10 a.m. in this keynote region and it's entitled kinsugi contemplative pathways for the wounded healer. Also we encourage you to visit the OSCC 23 poster expo in the OSCC expo 3 region to find accompanying information on presentations and to explore the hypergrid resources in OSCC expo 2 region along with our sponsor and crowd funder booths located throughout all of the OSCC expo regions. Thank you again Nix and to you the audience.