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Game Photography: What did you think the Prt Scr button was for? [NSF56k]
Darth Nathan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The Scoop:
Ever since I've been gaming, one of my hobbies within my hobby has been in-game photography; finding aesthetically pleasing areas within a game world and capturing them from a particular angle that makes it look just right, the same way one would go about real-world photography.
For all we go on about how wonderful games can look, I have never really seen much effort put into capturing this. The same way that photographs of the real world can become iconic and pieces of art in and of themselves, with a little effort, the worlds of games can become canvases for the photographer's imagination as well.
Some of my favourite examples I've captured over the years (spoilered for enormous):
Guild Wars:
Bioshock:
Left 4 Dead:
Garry's Mod:
As you can see, the concept works in a lot of different games and engines. Whether it be capturing panoramic landscapes or chance shots of combat, or even composing your own photos using tools like Garry's Mod, your imagination is the only limit.
What this thread is for:
In this thread I hope that everyone can share their own experiences with game photography, post some examples, and hopefully some guides as to how to get photos out of various titles. Different games may require different techniques in order to adjust field of view settings, hiding of HUD elements, etc., to get the perfect shot. It would be very much appreciated if, when you do post photos from a game, you explain how others may do the same.
Sounds interesting. How can I get started?
Well the first step is figuring out what machine your game is running on.
If it's a PC or Mac game, the process is rather simple. A lot of PC games have inbuilt screenshot functions, and if not, pressing the print screen key, then alt tabbing and pasting the results into Paint will do the trick. Different games will also have different methods to remove the HUD and any player models on the screen. Beware that not all games have these functions, and as such, screenshots from said games that do not include the player character may be difficult to obtain without careful cropping. Of course, you should feel free to work your character into the shot if you feel it adds to the piece.
A console game may be a bit tricky. The simplest way I can think of is to feed the video output from your machine into a video capture card in your PC, and then record the stills using video capture software. The really cheap option is of course to just take a photo of your television screen using a camera, but this almost always looks incredibly tacky. If anyone has a better method of taking screens of console games, let me know, and I'll add it to the OP.
A few thread rules before you get started:
Whelp, that about wraps it up. I look forward to people with undoubtedly better photographer's eyes than me to show us some great work.
Ever since I've been gaming, one of my hobbies within my hobby has been in-game photography; finding aesthetically pleasing areas within a game world and capturing them from a particular angle that makes it look just right, the same way one would go about real-world photography.
For all we go on about how wonderful games can look, I have never really seen much effort put into capturing this. The same way that photographs of the real world can become iconic and pieces of art in and of themselves, with a little effort, the worlds of games can become canvases for the photographer's imagination as well.
Some of my favourite examples I've captured over the years (spoilered for enormous):
Guild Wars:
Bioshock:
Left 4 Dead:
Garry's Mod:
As you can see, the concept works in a lot of different games and engines. Whether it be capturing panoramic landscapes or chance shots of combat, or even composing your own photos using tools like Garry's Mod, your imagination is the only limit.
What this thread is for:
In this thread I hope that everyone can share their own experiences with game photography, post some examples, and hopefully some guides as to how to get photos out of various titles. Different games may require different techniques in order to adjust field of view settings, hiding of HUD elements, etc., to get the perfect shot. It would be very much appreciated if, when you do post photos from a game, you explain how others may do the same.
Sounds interesting. How can I get started?
Well the first step is figuring out what machine your game is running on.
If it's a PC or Mac game, the process is rather simple. A lot of PC games have inbuilt screenshot functions, and if not, pressing the print screen key, then alt tabbing and pasting the results into Paint will do the trick. Different games will also have different methods to remove the HUD and any player models on the screen. Beware that not all games have these functions, and as such, screenshots from said games that do not include the player character may be difficult to obtain without careful cropping. Of course, you should feel free to work your character into the shot if you feel it adds to the piece.
A console game may be a bit tricky. The simplest way I can think of is to feed the video output from your machine into a video capture card in your PC, and then record the stills using video capture software. The really cheap option is of course to just take a photo of your television screen using a camera, but this almost always looks incredibly tacky. If anyone has a better method of taking screens of console games, let me know, and I'll add it to the OP.
A few thread rules before you get started:
- Please, please spoiler your images. A lot of people don't have huge monitors.
- Feel free to post screens that other people have taken, but post a link to the source and do not try to pass them off as your own.
- Finally, a minimum of bickering with each other about the quality of screens would be great. Different people may have different concepts of what makes a great photo, and I don't want the thread to devolve into arguing.
Whelp, that about wraps it up. I look forward to people with undoubtedly better photographer's eyes than me to show us some great work.
Darth Nathan on
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Posts
Wipeout HD
Garry's mod:
hopefully im doing it right
Read my book. (It has a robot in it.)
Let's see what I have in my photobucket account:
Some GT4
TW: Medieval II
Who broke the rule? I don't see any random gaming screencaps.
CoD 4
WiC
LOTR:O
Screencaps of racing cars or games with the HUD enabled may not exactly be game 'photography'
If any caps like that show up, we'll be sure to let you know.
No, no don't take them down or anything.
It's just that I was waiting for something more... I dunno... artsy?
@EVERYONE: if you can then please turn on AA, highest setting as possible. It makes a WORLD of difference and if you are taking caps framerate shouldn't be worrying you that much
Crysis Warhead
In the first picture, the shadowy thing that's partly obscuring the sun is the ice sphere. Number 3 is from inside the ice sphere, looking at the crashed alien ship at it's centre. The final one is a better shot of what the ice sphere looks like from the outside.
These ones have spoilers, so avoid if you haven't played Crysis Warhead. Or not, they're not really major spoilers, just stuff that happens in the last level and the final boss.
Most of those are from the last level, since that's the only time I took any time to take proper snapshots. Really there are a lot of awesome vistas and scenes in Crysis and Warhead. You need to disable the HUD, I can't remember how but I can look it up again if anyone's interested. To get rid of the weapon IIRC you just switch to fists and stand still, the character should put their hands down.
It's maybe not the best angle, but I'm lazy.
Steam - Minty D. Vision!
Origin/BF3 - MintyDVision
I took a whole load of snapshots from Episode 2 back when it first came out.
Then I forgot about them, reformatted my PC and lost them. :x
I posted some pretty good Guild Wars shots over in one of the threads in the MMO subforum, let me see if I can just copy part of that post:
When I get home I'll take some more, along with some shots with some other games.
Yeah, I noticed that after I had taken the pictures. I'm not sure what's up with that. I didn't notice it while in-game, but then again, it is constantly pulsing.
It amazes how gorgeous Crysis can be and yet they didn't include a screenshot key...
Print-Screen saves to the copy/paste function of windows. You still have to open up paint and paste it.
Some more general pointers I can think of;
And finally just experiment with angles and field of view settings. Try and work with the rule of thirds, which always works a treat. use focal items in the foreground. All solid tips that can help out. For example, check the Bioshock shot in the OP. Bottom right of the shot is a foreground object that I wanted to highlight (the diorama with the plaque) and then the attention is drawn away from that diagonally up and to the left.
Simple photography techniques really work wonders.
I certainly didn't like the game overall, but damn it looks good.
Love dual sun systems.
Spent ages trying to get a good shot.
Also my katamari ship.
yeah this. i find that the more money they pour into a graphics engine the shittier the narrative is.
Could try that out for firstperson AC shots.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
DoW2:
WiC:
I've always thought stalker was gorgeous
Stalker:
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
Some games have it as the screenshot key. For example, in WoW pressing Print Screen will automatically save the screen in a screenshot folder inside the folder the game is installed to. The pausing made me think this was also the case with Tomb Raider Underworld. There doesn't seem to be any save files at all for the demo, so who knows, maybe screenshots are saved alongside your saved games in the full version.
Lord of the Rings Online
World of Warcraft
And some (a lot of) Forza 2:
Whabam!
Not particularly artistic or anything, but I thought it turned out cool and epic looking.