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The NeoGAF Screenshotter's Compendium Thread

scitek

Member
This is a bit of trick, doable in a lot of games. Let's say you don't have a good way to remove the weapon, or maybe the HUD. Make sure to look for what you can do just within the constraints of the game's timing and mechanics. For instance, in many FPS's, you'll get a brief moment in between weapon switches or melees. If you time things right, you can get a weaponless shot. Same sometimes goes for the HUD, such as with Need For Speed: Most Wanted, in which you get a small HUDless moment after un-pausing. Good thing to try!

Yeah, I know how to get HUDless screens in MW, but I'm more interested in making a follow-up video to the one I did with Hot Pursuit.
 

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
Yeah, I know how to get HUDless screens in MW, but I'm more interested in making a follow-up video to the one I did with Hot Pursuit.

That's a pretty sweet video, but I'd hope your NFS:MW would have some more AA applied :p

Edit: Also, it could potentially be frowned upon by some people, but if you already own NFS: MW on PC, there aren't really any moral qualms to just downloading a pirated version that still works with the NoHud and camera mod.
 

Shaneus

Member
Yeah, I know how to get HUDless screens in MW, but I'm more interested in making a follow-up video to the one I did with Hot Pursuit.
That's impressive! Choice of music leaves a lot to be desired though ;)

How long did something like that take? BTW The Twitter account you mentioned in the description of that YT video... is that really you?



Actually, I know it's a screenshot thread but would it be worth mentioning a brief thing about how to capture video and audio as well? I don't know whether it would fit as a "generic PC gaming tools for capturing images and footage" thing, but it might be. Just an idea.
 
Hud Hide, Free Camera, Timestop, FOV

You can enable the dev menu for this game which gives you a ton of usefull commands.

  1. Go to the "CoJ2" directory ingame installation directory.
  2. Use "WinRAR" or any other RAR/ZIP unpacker and open "Data0.pak".
  3. Find file"DebugConfDefault.scr" and rename to "DebugConf.scr" - close the archive afterwards
  4. Play the game!

Once in-game, here are the relevant controls you'll want to be using:

* (NumPad) - Developer menu
Pause/Break - orbit\free camera (when clicking RMB you'll see red arrow that allows you to pick up and move phisics objects (LawmanASP, NewAIHuman, Horse), with LMB you can damage objects marked by arrow)
F1 - Spawn player in current free camera position
F9 - Pause game (can still use camera)
+/- to change free camera FOV
PgUp/PgDown - move free camera up and down
Q - toggle DOF in free camera mode
P - toggle camera fast move mode
H - toggle red arrow visibility
J - toggle orbit around marked object
NumLock - toggle slow motion
/ to toggle turbo mode
NumPad 3 - spawn LawmanASP crate

Another way to remove the HUD
Download this. Drop the "debugconf.scr" into your "\Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood\CoJ2\Data\" directory. Press F10 in-game to toggle HUD on and off.

Example screenshots:
8684530452_1dc46f2595_h.jpg


8764472637_181a17dfc3_h.jpg


8759772370_e44ab9ead3_h.jpg


8793171660_27bcdd82ab_h.jpg
 
Excellent stuff Neo. You're really bangin em' out, I am impress.

Also, poifect way of referencing earlier posts.

Alllso, I realized I can bookmark the single post of the compendium, and edit it. So I can just have that tab open. Very handy, haha.
 

iNvid02

Member
nice thread, subbed

remember, be considerate of others bandwidth and use compressed jpegs wherever possible (preferably hosted on a free imgur account)

pm me and i can provide more info on how to compress jpegs really well
 
nice thread, subbed

remember, be considerate of others bandwidth and use compressed jpegs wherever possible (preferably hosted on a free imgur account)

pm me and i can provide more info on how to compress jpegs really well

Hey man. Where've yer screens been? We're GPU-bros.
 

iNvid02

Member
Hey man. Where've yer screens been? We're GPU-bros.

been busy and havent had much time to dig into anything. thought tomb raider looked nice in motion but wasnt a big fan of its stills so i never took many shots of that.

with infinite im trying to do a full playthrough and really experience it, will prob go back and screenshot half the game down the road
KuGsj.gif
 
been busy and havent had much time to dig into anything. thought tomb raider looked nice in motion but wasnt a big fan of its stills so i never took many shots of that.

with infinite im trying to do a full playthrough and really experience it, will prob go back and screenshot half the game down the road
KuGsj.gif

Mm, word. Infinite is great for screens. Also, as I was trying to construct the OP for this, I came across your AC: Revelations thread. Holy shit dude.
 
One of the beautiful things about games on the Source engine is that they mostly share the same console commands. Sometimes a game will require at most -usually its just an option in controls - an .ini edit to enable the console (~), but once accessible these commands should work in most Source games:

No HUD

cl_drawhud 0

No Weapon

r_drawviewmodel 0

NoClip

Usually cheats needs to be enabled first:

sv_cheats 1

then simply:

noclip

FOV Settings

The source engine does not seem to have any fov limitations, unlike some others, so you can enter whatever sort of values you want (instead of 90):

cl_fov 90

Timestop / Slowmo

Default value is 1, 0.5 would be 50% speed (obviously heh):

host_timescale 1

Other Useful Things

I have to do a bit more digging, but one useful bit I found for sure in Portal 2 is how to disable the distance fog, which is quite heavy:

fog_override 1

then

fog_enable 0

Fog vs. No fog:

Here's a list of portal 2 commands, many of which should be applicable in Source Games:

Portal 2 Commands
 
nice thread, subbed

remember, be considerate of others bandwidth and use compressed jpegs wherever possible (preferably hosted on a free imgur account)

pm me and i can provide more info on how to compress jpegs really well

Not sure if that's a dig at me, or if you're being serious. Internets...

But yeah. didn't think this was the place to come for max quality in your face eye pooping crisp PNGs. So I am using compressed JPGs here for the example screenshots I'm posting. They're just to show what's possible with the tools =)

Excellent stuff Neo. You're really bangin em' out, I am impress.

Also, poifect way of referencing earlier posts.

Glad I can help :)

I'm planning to do a write-up for Cheat Engine and SRWE (Simple Runtime Window Editor) - allows you to take screenshots at crazy high resolutions (4800x2700, for example) if your heart desires.
 

iNvid02

Member
Not sure if that's a dig at me, or if you're being serious. Internets...

But yeah. didn't think this was the place to come for max quality in your face eye pooping crisp PNGs. So I am using compressed JPGs here for the example screenshots I'm posting. They're just to show what's possible with the tools =)

you know im more direct than that neo
KuGsj.gif


there was a major compressed jpeg/host phase gaf went through, think its over now. it was great

swre sounds delicious, i think i heard my 690 squeal or something
 
Download link - go to the files section and grab the misc file "Simple Runtime Window Editor 2_2"


What is this thing and why should I care about it?

Good question. Simply, it's a tool that can be used to resize any running window. As for as screenshotting games is concerned, this will allow you to render games at resolutions such as 8K (or higher\lower). Depending on how the game renders in a window.

Scenario 1:

The game will re-render to any window size. Meaning you can use SRWE to change the window to 7680x4320, take a screenshot, then resize back to your gameplay resolution. The game will be running at that resolution, so your framerate could be very slow will trying to capture a screenshot.

Scenario 1:

The game does not properly re-render to the new window size, and instead just stretches. If this happens and you still want to run the game beyond your highest downsampling resolution (usually 3840x2160), then you'll need to force a custom windowed resolution in the game's configuration file.

I did this for Watch Dogs. I forced 6400x3600 and forced the game to run in windowed-borderless. When the game launches, the window is much larger than my desktop, so I can only see a small portion of it. You can use SRWE to resize the game back down to your monitor's size. Because the game doesn't re-render, it will still be running at the higher resolution and therefore screenshots will be captured at that resolution.

Step by Step guide:


  1. Download SRWE from here
  2. Set the game to run in windowed mode. Turn off fullscreen. Varies from game to game
  3. Launch game
  4. Click "Select running Application" and find your game's running executable
  5. The window will update with some numbers. You'll want to resize and reposition your game's window, as well as clicking "remove borders" if you want the borderless fullscreen look.

You can also save resolutions as profiles. Then you can load them from a file rather than entering the resolution manually. After you load a profile, it will appear in the quick profiles menu. Much easier to switch that way!

Here is an archive of all my custom profiles so far. Extract them into the same folder you keep your SRWE.EXE. That way you can find them much faster from the "load profiles" button.
 

Shaneus

Member
Holy shit, that's awesome. I wonder if it'll work with my GPU, given I can only tradtionally downsample from 1440p. Time to find out!
 
Holy shit, that's awesome. I wonder if it'll work with my GPU, given I can only tradtionally downsample from 1440p. Time to find out!

I would say the only time you want to use SRWE is if downsampling at your desired resolution isn't possible. Either your monitor just won't accept the resolution, or you want to go EVEN HIGHER than the maximum of 4K (I haven't seen downsampling higher than 3840x2400).

I've successfully used SRWE in:
  • Skyrim
  • Fallout 3
  • Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
  • Dead Island
  • Most Unreal Engine 3 games should be possible - I tested Bioshock Infinite which worked
  • Dead Space 2

There's probably a bunch more. If people feel like posting games they've used successfully with it, I can add it to the SRWE post.
 
Pretty much every tweak needed to get Crysis looking amazing is done via the dev console in dev mode. So first up you need to get Crysis running in dev mode. Head to the Crysis directory (likely in Electronic Arts, Steam, or Origin Games folder), create a shortcut of Crysis.exe (feel free to rename it to something like Crysis DevMode.exe). Right click on it , select properties and add "-devmode" (without quotations marks) to the target box. You should now have a target that looks something like this: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Crysis\Bin32\Crysis.exe" -devmode

Now that that is out of the way let's get to console commands.

Hiding HUD, weapons, free camera, etc.

Crysis' devmode has some conviently pre-bound commands:

F1 toggles between first and third person
F2 skips to the next checkpoint
F3 Enables fly mode (hit once to enable, hit twice to disable)

So that takes care of free camera.

To access the dev console simply hit the ~ key.

Here are a bunch of commands that you will probably need to get the right screenshot:

ai_ignoreplayer 1 AI will ignore the player.

g_godmode 1 Enables god mode.

r_displayinfo 0 Hides the dev info being displayed on the right hand side.

cl_hud 0 Hides hud.

r_DrawNearFov 10 Hides your weapon and hands.

e_time_of_day Allows you to change time of day for any single player level. Uses 24 hour clock. (ie. e_time_of_day 6 for sunrise, etc.)

Screenshots

Still inside your Crysis directory? Good, now head to Crysis\Game and right click to create a new .txt file and name is autoexec.cfg

Add the following:


e_screenshot_height 1080
e_screenshot_width 1920
e_screenshot_file_format=tga
e_screenshot_quality=100


This sets up the size and format of your screenshot. You can replace 1920 and 1080 with just about any value you want, I've been using 15360 x 8640.

As for format you can use .png, .jpg, .tga, .bmp though .bmp doesn't seem to work for me so I've just been using .tga

Now when you get your perfect frame, open the dev console once more, type in the following and hit enter and let the game render your screen. Don't worry about the console showing up in the screenshot, Crysis know better:

e_screenshot 1

I think that is about it. You should now be able to take some pretty stunning screens of vanilla Crysis.

 

Spazznid

Member
When I try to use SWRE on Skyrim, it resizes the window, I think, but I can still only see a small portion of the game in said window...
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
'don't we already have a thread for this'
'oh'

Carry on. I mucked around with this stuff for a bit, takes a decent amount of time. Good shit to all who post.
 
When I try to use SWRE on Skyrim, it resizes the window, I think, but I can still only see a small portion of the game in said window...

I think there was a trick to Skyrim. Had to muck about in one of the child windows as well. Hard to remember. I'll see if I can't muck about and remember how I did it.

MUCKING IS THE SOURCE OF ALL THINGS
 

Sethos

Banned
Just tried that SRWE on GTA IV, does "Fake Fullscreen" remove the effect?

Because I set my GTA IV to 5120x3200 and it made the window huge. Set it to fake fullscreen which resized it, game ran like shit and I assumed it was running that resolution. Was snapping pictures with Bandicam and they came out in 2514x1593 ( The window basically ).

EDIT: A lot of games seem to do that
 
Just tried that SRWE on GTA IV, does "Fake Fullscreen" remove the effect?

It might? I don't use fake fullscreen, as that wasn't how Midhras originally explained it to me. I manually put in the dimensions of the window in order to make it the same size as my monitor. Then I hit "remove borders." That has worked in all games I've tried so far. I'm not really sure what "fake fullscreen" does.
 

antitrop

Member
Trying some of the methods here -

Chivalry - bicubic sharper - tiledshot 4k to 1080p and no hud

How does it look?

I'd say you figured it out. Now that the silly technical aspects of taking a good screenshot are over, you just have to work on composition. And that's the fun part.
 

Sethos

Banned
It might? I don't use fake fullscreen, as that wasn't how Midhras originally explained it to me. I manually put in the dimensions of the window in order to make it the same size as my monitor. Then I hit "remove borders." That has worked in all games I've tried so far. I'm not really sure what "fake fullscreen" does.

Weird. when I put in any dimensions bigger than my monitor ( Which I suppose is the idea? ) it just makes them ... Bigger than my actual screen real estate and all I see is the left corner of the game.
 

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
Weird. when I put in any dimensions bigger than my monitor ( Which I suppose is the idea? ) it just makes them ... Bigger than my actual screen real estate and all I see is the left corner of the game.

You're supposed to set the game to render at whatever resolution you want the screenshots to be, then you set SRWE's width and height to be that of your monitor as well as removing borders.

Then, you should be playing the game at your monitors resolution, but screenshots should still be at the resolution you set for the game.
 

Sethos

Banned
You're supposed to set the game to render at whatever resolution you want the screenshots to be, then you set SRWE's width and height to be that of your monitor as well as removing borders.

Then, you should be playing the game at your monitors resolution, but screenshots should still be at the resolution you set for the game.

Ah, so something extremely few games can actually do, then it's not very useful.

Thanks for the explanation.
 

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
Ah, so something extremely few games can actually do, then it's not very useful.

Thanks for the explanation.

Yeah it really isn't perfect, but when it does work, it's a nice treat.

When I heard about it I excited at the prospect of being able to downsample and use 3D because it would be windowed, and instead it just crashed my graphics drivers and I had to reboot my computer, so one less potential use there!
 

Sethos

Banned
To me it sounded like the ultimate Durante™ version of a tool that works in all games, man I'd kill for that. I mean, most games will resize to 8k+ resolutions fine and you can take screenshots but you can only see the corner of the game. You'd think there would be an easy(ish) solution to get around that somehow.

I know lots of games that has resolution settings in the config but I've yet to come across a game where you can set a much higher resolution and it ACTUALLY STARTS in that resolution, so you can resize the window with that tool. Sounds extremely ... limited.
 
I know lots of games that has resolution settings in the config but I've yet to come across a game where you can set a much higher resolution and it ACTUALLY STARTS in that resolution, so you can resize the window with that tool. Sounds extremely ... limited.

SRWE is only useful in games where you can set a custom windowed resolution via a config file, assuming the game will launch successfully at that resolution.

It's limited, yeah. But it's a tool I've used from time to time so I thought I'd share.

I posted this list earlier, but maybe I should add it to the main post and expand on it as people find success in other games.

SRWE has worked for me in:
  • Skyrim
  • Fallout 3
  • Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
  • Dead Island
  • Most Unreal Engine 3 games should be possible - I tested Bioshock Infinite which worked
  • Dead Space 2
 
A lot of info can be found on the DET WIKI for this game - I'm basically rewording and adding a bit of my own for this forum.

Free camera, Slow motion, Hud removal

These are done via some UE3 commands you can bind to keys.

You will need to add your own key bindings for a few useful screenshooting tools.
On Windows 7, go to:

"\Documents\EA Games\Mirror's Edge\TdGame\Config\" and open "TdInput.ini"

The following commands will work for Mirror's Edge:

  • FreeFlightCamera: Toggles various camera modes, including a free camera
  • TdPause: Enables super slow motion, effectively stopping time. This also affects Faith, so you will need to use the free camera to move around.
  • TiledShot: Used to take high resolution screenshots. Useful in most situations, although it will conflict with some post processing effects. See [[http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TakingScreenshots.html#Tiledshot|this link]] for more information.
  • ShowHUD: Toggles the HUD. This is not necessary as the reticule can be disabled in the options, but it can be helpful if you want to toggle it on/off quickly to line up a shot or if you use it for normal gameplay. Also useful on time trial maps.

Create key bindings for these commands and place them among the others. Some examples are:

Bindings=(Name="MiddleMouseButton",Command="TdPause",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="F4",Command="FreeFlightCamera",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="F5",Command="Tiledshot 4 512",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="F11",Command="showhud",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="NumPadSeven",Command="FOV 70",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="NumPadEight",Command="FOV 80",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Bindings=(Name="NumPadNine",Command="FOV 90",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)

A 360 gamepad for the freecam is recommended if you have one. It moves around very fast with the keyboard, and analog sticks are always more accurate for movement.

Example shots:

Lol. They're all over the internet. http://www.flickriver.com/photos/pix111/
 

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
To me it sounded like the ultimate Durante™ version of a tool that works in all games, man I'd kill for that. I mean, most games will resize to 8k+ resolutions fine and you can take screenshots but you can only see the corner of the game. You'd think there would be an easy(ish) solution to get around that somehow.
I had actually talked to Durante about something like that in the past and he thinks it's definitely possible, and potentially something he's capable of, but unfortunately he doesn't have the time for it now.

So there's s small glint of hope that one day, a DSfix-like implementation of universal downsampling/screenshot capture will one day be possible.
 
Sadly, SRWE doesn't play nicely with Grand Theft Auto 4. When you resize the window, the screenshots come out at the resolution you resize it to. Arg. 5120x2880 would have been nice :)
 

Thorgal

Member
It's limited, yeah. But it's a tool I've used from time to time so I thought I'd share.

I posted this list earlier, but maybe I should add it to the main post and expand on it as people find success in other games.

SRWE has worked for me in:

im gonna need a stronger card
cmon 780 hurry up.
 

antitrop

Member
No HUD, No Weapon, and FreeCam

Chivalry's not too bad to get into a nice setup for screens. The tough part is catching the action.

As with many multiplayer games, simply go into spectator mode. This removes the weapon and allows freecam obviosly, but for the HUD: Press (~) to go into the console, and enter

ToggleHUD 0

Voila.
To add on to this, I was messing around a bit with Chivalry today. Here's my suggestions:
This is only recommendable for taking screenshots of bots in Spectator mode. If you like to play the game, save your bindings because this will fuck all dat up!

-- Once in the game, bring up the console with (~).

-- Type the following commands, you will only need to do this once:

- SetBind X ToggleHUD
- SetBind C Pause
- SetBind V Tiledshot 4


-- Now you can quickly tap X to remove all the UI elements.

-- You can obviously use whatever keys you want, I like X, C, and V because they are accessible without moving my fingers away from WASD and your Pause binding should be in an easy to reach place to get great action shots.

-- Once the keys are bound you can float around in Spectator mode and observe the action, pausing/unpausing to look for interesting combat poses. You can then press the Tiledshot binding while the game is paused, expect significant delays.

** WARNING: Including the skybox in any Tiledshots will cause corruption/distortion. Avoid using the Tiledshot command if the skybox is visible. I leave Fraps open in case for just this reason.

iIMXqjRvBHc5i.png


ibkXknaNDLCGZM.png
 
To add on to this, I was messing around a bit with Chivalry today. Here's my suggestions:
This is only recommendable for taking screenshots of bots in Spectator mode. If you like to play the game, save your bindings because this will fuck all dat up!

-- Once in the game, bring up the console with (~).

-- Type the following commands, you will only need to do this once:

- SetBind X ToggleHUD
- SetBind C Pause
- SetBind V Tiledshot 4


-- Now you can quickly tap X to remove all the UI elements.

-- You can obviously use whatever keys you want, I like X, C, and V because they are accessible without moving my fingers away from WASD and your Pause binding should be in an easy to reach place to get great action shots.

-- Once the keys are bound you can float around in Spectator mode and observe the action, pausing/unpausing to look for interesting combat poses. You can then press the Tiledshot binding while the game is paused, expect significant delays.

** WARNING: Including the skybox in any Tiledshots will cause corruption/distortion. Avoid using the Tiledshot command if the skybox is visible.

iIMXqjRvBHc5i.png


ibkXknaNDLCGZM.png
Could you tell me where does the game saves the tiled shots/screenshots?
Forget that i asked. just discovered the location. For others that want to know, it's on: username\Documents\My Games\Chivalry Medieval Warfare\UDKGame\Screenshots\Win32Console
 

Stein3x

Member
Everything you need to tweak/screenshot Rage can be done within the game engine in dev mode. Most of the info is taken from DEV WIKI, i'm just re-writing with little more detail :)

How to enable dev mode

There are 2 ways:

i) Right click the game icon in your steam library and select properties, then click on Set Launch Options and enter +set com_allowconsole 1.Click ok and you are ready, just press the "~" button on your keyboard when ingame and the console will appear.

ii) Navigate to your steam install folder and to => \steamapps\common\RAGE\base. Then create a text file and name it "rageconfig.cfg" (make sure to check the extention of your file is "cfg" and not "cfg.txt").

Paste the following => com_allowconsole 1 and save.When ingame press the "~" button and the console will appear.


Useful commands for Screenshots


- noclip (pass through walls, fly around) . You must have the latest patch for this to work

- g_showhud (Toggles HUD)

- hands_show (what the name says, shows hands/weapons or hide them)

- g_fov (Sets the horiztonal FOV)

- god (Enables god mode. If you don't have The Scorchers DLC installed, use g_permagodmode 1 instead.)


Bind commands to keyboard

To bind any command to a specific key you must write them in your rageconfig.cfg

For example to use the F6 key for the "noclip" command just write the following:

bind F6 “noclip” and save

It's useful to bind both the "g_showhud" & "hands_show" commands to one key to quickly disable everything onscreen

bind F7 “toggle g_showhud;toggle hands_show” and save


How to take screenshots

Similar to Unreal engine were you take Tiledshot (screen rendered in higher resolution prior saving) in Rage you take screenshots with custom Anti-aliasing in the resolution you are playing.

You must use this command when ingame:

screenshot blends 64 <filename>.tga (64 is the amount of Anti-aliasing ,enter the name of your screenshot in place of the <filename> and you can also use other extensions like "png" or "jpg" )

You can also bind the command to a key for a quick screenshot (make sure to enter a name) but you can only use it once because the file will be overwritten since it's uses the same file name when it saves the screenshot.


Graphic tweaks

If you want a quick way to adjust Rage to your system (or just use maximum settings) and don't want to mess with all the commands in console you can use Rage cfg maker ,select your desire settings ,create and paste the codes in your rageconfig.cfg :)


Screenshots

 

antitrop

Member
Can I make a personal request for someone to write an entry for Battlefield 3? It would be greatly appreciated.
 
Can I make a personal request for someone to write an entry for Battlefield 3? It would be greatly appreciated.

short answer -

VeniceFX (free camera)

ui.DrawEnable 0 - no hud (in console)

I've used VeniceFX to take screenshots in SP and MP. For MP, you'll want to ONLY use it on servers that do not use punkbuster. There aren't too many of those. I'll try and write a guide on its quirks when I have a chance. In the meantime, it has a decent readme.
 
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