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Screen Archery: The Basics

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An open discussion I'm starting to share screenshot taking tips and ideas.

There's a handful of topics I want to touch on, probably one post at a time for the sake of making it manageable for me :) 

 

Getting Started: Console Commands

Here's a quick list of console commands that I use every time I take screenshots.

TFC / TFC 1 (Toggle Free Camera): Gives you free control of the camera using WASD and mouse 1 & 2. (TFC 1 also pauses time)

TM (Toggle Menus): Shows or hides menus.

TAI (Toggle AI): Freezes the selected NPC, helpful when characters aren't doing as they're told.

Set TimeScale To x (x being a number, default 100): Fast or slow time, helpful for holding time when you want specific lighting.

Set GameHour to x: Changes the time.

FOV x (Field Of View, default 60/70): A really important one that I'll explain later in this post.

 

Using The Basics

So you've got your character in place and you want to take a shot of him. You rotate your camera around to his front and end up with something like this:

20180301001741_1.thumb.jpg.5b9effa25ed72a8895b6175352efaab0.jpg

The basic camera that rotates around your character isn't much good for taking screenshots so let's use "TFC 1". With free reign over the camera you can easily position your character in the frame.

20180301001901_1.thumb.jpg.be11e5da7dc30bdd9e780856793d80ed.jpg

Already looking better but it still looks a little odd. I tried to get the camera as close as I could because it's a close up, right? Get close?

By default the game's FOV is around 70, for gameplay this is perfect because it shows us lots of the world but for screenshots it looks bad.

 20180301001948_1.thumb.jpg.84c972111fbbb3144abf50cd792bf31f.jpg

Here's the same shot at FOV 30. See how much better it looks. The character fills the screen nicely and his proportions aren't all distorted. The camera is actually this far away:

20180301000716_1.thumb.jpg.0954ba3eb03fc5b097d36dfa899f8513.jpg

The lowered FOV means the "lens" (as much as virtual cameras have lenses) gets closer but the actual "camera" gets further away. Kinda like the optical zoom on a real camera.

To finish up just use "TM" to remove the HUD and menus and you've got yourself a nice shot :) 

20180301002028_1.thumb.jpg.995acf0f86e93bca3fa5d6f0df31afe6.jpg

 

Kinda a short one for the first post but I just want to test the waters a little, also I find correct FOV to be the easiest way to make a shot look better so I hope you can see the difference.

 

I'm sure this was probably a little insultingly simple but later on I want to cover some more advanced stuff: Facial expression, setting up lighting, posing multiple characters, item spawning, Jaxons Positioner mod + ScreenshotPad, maybe some very basic ingame ENB tweaking.

 

Thanks for stopping by, hopefully more to come :) Let me know what you think and feel free to throw your own ideas in.

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I considered making a similar tutorial myself at some point, but I always put it off :P

Some more useful console commands to use:

fw <weather id> (forces that weather, although mods like weather spell are arguably better)

sucsm <X> (changes flycam speed, 1 being the slowest (don't know how high you can go))

sgtm <x> (manipulates the game's speed, 0.1 being bullet time and anything above 1 fast forward)

csb (clear blood decals)

tcai (toggle comabt AI only)

tc (control NPCs)

openactorcontainer 1

pushactoraway X (X equals force of push)

tg (toggle grass, useful if it's growing through the floor)

EquipItem <itemID>

Poser Hotkey/ OSA along with posers in general might also be worth mentioning. Oh, you could also talk about disabling Steam/ Skyrim controlled screenshots in favor of ENB controlled screenshots for best quality. 

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Author of the topic Posted (edited)
20 minutes ago, Dredd said:

I considered making a similar tutorial myself at some point, but I always put it off :P

Some more useful console commands to use:

fw <weather id> (forces that weather, although mods like weather spell are arguably better)

sucsm <X> (changes flycam speed, 1 being the slowest (don't know how high you can go))

sgtm <x> (manipulates the game's speed, 0.1 being bullet time and anything above 1 fast forward)

csb (clear blood decals)

tcai (toggle comabt AI only)

tc (control NPCs)

openactorcontainer 1

pushactoraway X (X equals force of push)

tg (toggle grass, useful if it's growing through the floor)

EquipItem <itemID>

Poser Hotkey/ OSA along with posers in general might also be worth mentioning. Oh, you could also talk about disabling Steam/ Skyrim controlled screenshots in favor of ENB controlled screenshots for best quality. 

Already loving this topic! I didn't actually know about "csb" to clear blood, I usually just equip then remove armor but this is way more convenient, for NPCs especially. :) 

Edited by Guest

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@smidgen Thank you a lot for this tasty piece of heavenly knowledge! You made a very good point about the importance of angle of view in the photography and the use of FOV command. Love it! 

Thank you @Dredd for sharing your set of handy console commands for screenshot taking! Had no idea about pushactoraway x until today.

I encourage every Skyrim player to share your favourite tricks when it comes to catching the best moments of your Skyrim adventures!

P.S.: nice choice of the title! :D

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I've got something handy to throw in here. A plugin that lets you roll the free cam (among some other nifty things, like scrolling to change FOV). Someone on the Nexus told me about it a while back and I ended up using it a lot. Haven't tried them myself, but it's got a version for SSE and FO4 as well.

http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&p=75209

Edited by Chompy

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8 hours ago, Chompy said:

I've got something handy to throw in here. A plugin that lets you roll the free cam (among some other nifty things, like scrolling to change FOV). Someone on the Nexus told me about it a while back and I ended up using it a lot. Haven't tried them myself, but it's got a version for SSE and FO4 as well.

http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&p=75209

I've tried that one as well, but I remember having lots of issues with it. I only wanted to use it for full resolution screenshots in portrait format anyway, so I started to hotsample instead, i.e. run the game in custom/ very high resolution and crop the image to the desired aspect ratio afterwards. I'll go into detail about that now:

HOW TO TAKE SUPER HIGH RES SCREENSHOTS BEYOND YOUR NATIVE SCREEN RES USING SRWE

If you'd like to take screenshots in a resolution that is higher than that of your monitor, this is how to do it. Normally, you are restricted by your monitor's native resolution in terms of how high you can go and which aspect ratios you can use. There are several ways to get around that, one of them being the program SRWE ("Simple Runtime Window Editor"). With that you can go 4k, super widescreen, portrait format, basically whatever you want, independent from your monitor's native resolution.

A fair warning though, I'm not going into every little detail, so this tutorial is geared more towards advanced users. Also, you will need a fairly decent computer if you want to run Skyrim in ultra high resolutions such as 4k and above. Duh.

Step 1: Get SRWE

Get the latest version of SRWE here. It doesn't need to be installed, just put the .exe wherever you want.

Step 2: Make sure you are taking screenshots using ENB or the SMAA injector

Generally speaking, there are up to 5 different ways to take screenshots in Skyrim:

through Skyrim directly (default key: printscreen)

through Steam (default key: F12)

through ENB ( default key depends on the enb preset)

through a third-party app, e.g. SMAA injector or FRAPS

The two best options are the SMAA injector and ENB (here's a rundown of why). All other options should be avoided as they won't work correctly with this setup. If you are using an ENB preset that comes with the SMAA injector (e.g. SnapDragon Prime), simply open injector.ini  in your Skyrim folder and define which key to use for taking screenshots (I personally like to use divide on the numpad, keycode 111). If your ENB preset doesn't use the SMAA injector, you can either just add it yourself if you want or use the ENB screenshot function instead. The key for that can be changed to your liking in your enblocal.ini file.

Step 3: Make sure Sykrim runs in windowed mode

For SRWE to work, you HAVE to run Skyrim in windowed mode. First, turn Onetweak off if you have it installed (check it out if you don't know about it, it's actually pretty nifty). This step may seem odd, but Onetweak will keep you from messing around with windowed mode and screen resolution, so it needs to go for now. You can simply reactivate it when you're done, it's just an skse plugin and removing it won't hurt your savegame or anything. There may be other mods out there that will keep this from working, Onetweak is just one that I identified myself.

Next, open your enblocal.ini and change your window options to this:

[WINDOW]
ForceBorderless=true
ForceBorderlessFullscreen=false

Done.

Step 4: Define your custom resolution

Open your Skyrimprefs.ini ( remember to open it through MO if you're using it), find these two lines under Display and change them to whatever you want:

[Display]

iSize H=
iSize W=

For example, 4k would be H= 2160 and W= 3840. Go ham. Save and close.

Step 5: Do the thing

Here's a good tutorial on how to actually use SRWE, with pictures and everything. Additionally, here's a basic rundown for your convenience:

Run SRWE, then run Sykrim. If you defined a resolution that is higher than that of your monitor, you should now see only a partial image with the rest cut off. Normally, this would be the point at which you would start to cry and pull your hair out becasue you kind of can't see shit. But hooray: SRWE comes to the rescue.

Alt-tab out of Skyrim and switch to SRWE. Click on "Select running application" and choose Sykrim. Now, play with the window position and size until Skyrim fits your screen again. Save your settings as a profile so you don't have to type in everything again the next time you use SRWE. Boom, you are now ready for glorious 4K screenshots, despite playing on a petty FullHD monitor or whatever.

Running Skyrim in 4K without an ENB preset is actually quite doable. I am rocking a GTX 1060 and an old i5 3570K and I can handle Vanilla Skyrim in 4K at 60fps no biggie. However, add ENB and things will look very different indeed. My framerate drops to well below 20, even in simple scenes. So, the compromise is to disable ENB in-game (usually by pressing SHIFT+F12, can be redefined in enblocal.ini), set up your shot, then re-enable ENB and take the screenshot; turn ENB off again, rinse and repeat.

Finally, check in your Skyrim folder that your screenshots do indeed have the resolution you entered into your Skyrimprefs.ini. If they don't, you did something wrong. If they do, cool.

If you're a fucking pimp who plays on a 4K monitor already, you can ignore all this and simply laugh at the rabble from your high horse. For everyone else, this is how to pretend that you have something nice for once.

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I'd like to mention this mod, SHOT: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/55475

Makes it easier to set up screenshots! You can activate the camera or freeze it with just one button, toggle hours and especially useful if you are outside; you can change the weather as you want. A dark rainstorm at night or a foggy forest dawn will obviously create a very different screenshot  than a sunset afternoon. 

Basically you won't have to write in any commands anymore, just use hotkeys. :) 

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4 hours ago, Kamihana said:

I'd like to mention this mod, SHOT: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/55475

Makes it easier to set up screenshots! You can activate the camera or freeze it with just one button, toggle hours and especially useful if you are outside; you can change the weather as you want. A dark rainstorm at night or a foggy forest dawn will obviously create a very different screenshot  than a sunset afternoon. 

Basically you won't have to write in any commands anymore, just use hotkeys. :) 

Good Mod, combines some console commands. :D 

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Author of the topic Posted (edited)

Being Expressive

A quick note: I highly recommend using MFG Console mod. While everything I'm going to show is basic console commands, MFG adds a proper interface and some command shortcuts that make everything much easier. I also recommend this mod for every aspect of screenshot taking. It helps with item spawning and control as well as anything NPC related.

The command you need to know is "MFG" and its 3 counterparts: "modifier" "phoneme" & "expression".

 

Expression is self-explanatory. There are 7 basic expressions, each represented by a number:  anger 0 fear 1 happy 2 sad 3 surprise 4 puzzled 5 disgust 6 neutral 7.

There are more than this (about 16 in total) but they are essentially copies. Each expression has a 'dialogue' version which is just more subtle version.

 

Modifier is facial movement that isn't mouth related. Eyes & brows essentially.

 

Phoneme is the different mouth shapes we make while pronouncing words.

 

Here's an example of piecing together different phonemes, modifiers and expressions. On the right of the screen is why I recommend the MFG console mod. It shows which parts are activated and makes it easy to keep track of.

20180310122855_1.jpg

To activate these different parts the command is essentially the same:

MFG modifier x x

MFG phoneme  x x

MFG expression x x

The first x is the part number and the second x is the amount (0 to 100).

In this shot I wanted him mildly happy so the command was "mfg expression 10 20"

I also wanted the guy on the left to be looking over at the demon guy so the command was "mfg modifier 9 80"

The demon has a toothy smile which is "mfg phoneme 4 100"

Another example of the kinds of things you can do:

20180310123226_1.jpg

As a final note there is a short version of the commands. MM, ME & MP. So "mfg phoneme 4 100" can become "mp 4 100".

Don't forget "mfg reset" which puts everything back to 0. Any sort of loading, either from saves or area loads will reset things too.

Edited by Guest

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Author of the topic Posted

Tips: Our Little Secret

Take a look at his shot, looks normal right? (Besides the comical editing to make it SFW) :D 

To make the shot work how I wanted, I actually cheated a little bit.

39834574955_c690a388f7_o.thumb.jpg.07e034aa9c79083a1c1465551fb47270.jpg

Here is a view from the back:

Horrible clipping, with his right arm going straight through that guys back.

20180310162914_1.thumb.jpg.61764c8a75109ede08b6dd303b80b6ad.jpg

Something else you wouldn't have noticed:

Vincent is a little shorter than the other guys so I gave him a magical little boost.

20180310162930_1.thumb.jpg.b0130d25faee442a6d3ae66aa1e9da57.jpg

My point being that if you can't see it in the shot: don't worry about it.

Don't think about the scene as a whole, you're only going to capture it from 1 angle. :) 

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On 3/2/2018 at 12:46 AM, Chompy said:

I've got something handy to throw in here. A plugin that lets you roll the free cam (among some other nifty things, like scrolling to change FOV). Someone on the Nexus told me about it a while back and I ended up using it a lot. Haven't tried them myself, but it's got a version for SSE and FO4 as well.

http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&p=75209

This is so awesome!  There was a recent update to it so im not sure how much better than before but man I love it.

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Author of the topic Posted

Jaxonz Positioner and Lighting

Just to add a little something to this post I thought I'd take a quick look at adding lighting to a shot. This can technically be done without Jaxons Positioner mod but it's far more easy with it. The same goes for using an enb. It's probably not worth trying it without an ENB active.

There will be some very simple enb editing but it's easy to understand.

The kind of lighting we'll be using is called "point" lighting. Under the "Environment" tab you'll find these values. These top values are basically the strength of the light. Higher is stronger.

20180717211247_1.thumb.jpg.00a92580dc47abfcda312db8815fb84e.jpg

Most of the lighting that you would assume comes from a source, like a candle for instance, is actually faked. If you delete the candle the light would remain because it's actually being produced by an invisible object. Using Jaxonz Positioner we can make these visible:

20180717211312_1.thumb.jpg.0fef45360b4219d75731c493df88582c.jpg

Enabling this setting will create these little orbs to visualise the light source.

20180717211344_1.thumb.jpg.293e29a162dd2edd5de5816a5a4db198.jpg

We can now select and manipulate these orbs using the console and Jaxonz. Click the orb and it will give you a baseID and allow you to move it around.

20180717211438_1.thumb.jpg.22ccac0388daf760fc638e78f13f7f8d.jpg

Jaxonz Positioner uses the keypad and the arrow keys for movement:

20180717211413_1.thumb.jpg.29063522ae84e87c568ecade942a4bff.jpg

It looks like a lot of controls but all we really need for this is "Numpad Enter" the arrow keys and Pg up/down.

One of my favourite light sources is a plain white light that really works for any situation. BaseID "D4809".

Look at this scene and notice how dark it is and how much the character blends with the background:

20180717211730_1.thumb.jpg.c3ef73d5292b6cc5c1d8559f4134e6cb.jpg

To add the light: Jump in the air and open the console: Command "player.placeatme xxxx"

20180717211752_1.thumb.jpg.935e0b958582c3fa84123b0281a9e35c.jpg

It's important to jump because anything you spawn in will appear at your feet and clip into the floor otherwise, making it hard to find.

You can spawn any light source I just really like "D4809".

Now just make light sources visible and move the orb into place and you should have a nicely lit scene with your character clearly defined and not disappearing into the background. :)

20180717211941_1.thumb.jpg.50ef434ebdbdcd4584967bccbdc5fc56.jpg

 

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