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Advanced Screenshot Question


aboutthe1910s

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I've done a lot of googling and read most of the tutorials I could find, and I've figured out most of what I wanted to know about taking fancy screenshots, but there are two things that I've seen in some of the fancier screenshots here that I haven't found an explanation for: the first is screenshots where the camera angle isn't parallel to the ground (not the angle that FOV controls, wide and narrow, the angle like if someone were actually holding the camera, they would be holding it at an angle). The second is images where the background is blurred to the point of just looking like glittering sparks of color. I now depth of field blurs the background, but in these images it's either far more extreme than anything I've seen relating to depth of field or it's a different effect.

 

Images that demonstrate what I'm talking about:

Camera angle: here

Blur effect: here and here

 

Either a quick explanation of how these effects work or a link to an explanation (I did search, but it's always possible I missed something) would be immensely appreciated.

 

Thanks!

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howdy!

an excellent question

 

I dabble in that moreso in FO4

(print out a screen-cap, damage it up, tea-leaves/"treasure map' distress it, scan it, put it back in game etc)

though it's all bethesda games right? hehe.

 

 

 

good ol' 2D-3D - animation decals are the 'secret' behind a lot of cool stuff.

you can make them looped or keyframe to onCollision events etc.

ie for stuff like liquid metal doors, forcefields 'magic barriers'.

 

 

 

I look forward to hearing more on this and seeing folks exegetical process.

especially from SkyrimVR and '360 vids' etc or holographers.

 

apologies for a long-winded reflection on what the process might be for those images;

 

 

it depends on their framework,

though there's a few different approaches.

I think that they took a still, and then applied post-production effects in an image-manipulation program to it after,

not from 'in-engine' (as is possible in some games like The Order 1886 or Batman etc).

 

some of those are done via 'virtual matchmove' - they do one pass with just the background,

and composite into that...

that's for stuff like "Rotoscope in a Scanner Darkly"/ "Sin City" style stuff.

 

Scott Manley made some exceedingly awesome code for several different frameworks,

which function in other frameworks for post quite well.

There's then stuff like 'filters' in GIMP.

 

Ostensibly, the blurr etc, was achieved via use of a filter in GIMP.

that gradient can also be stuff other than a parabolic or parametric lens...

ie, other geometries, nth dimensional transforms etc which are downloadable pluggins

so, multifocal 3Sphere blurr/aberration

 

the image is a layer, 'superimposed' over a transparent layer...

the opacity of the layer determines which elements from what layer show up in the 'final' image.

so, you can copy and erase parts from each layer...

 

you can nowadays, even GAH AGI automate some of those processes!

in GIMP, the code is known as "Script-Fu" (a variant of python etc)

how awesome is that?

 

-----

the 'specks of color' is ostensibly some kind of bloom filter,

in GIMP Filters --> Light & Shadow ---> Sparkle, Supernova, Bloom, Xach Effect etc

 

to me, it looks like there are ishihara or moira dotplots there too,

that's probably how they generated some of the dots/sparkles...

random seed for the dot placement layer transparency, then bloom on that.

 

 

 

i hope you found this of use,

and I look forward to seeing more screencaps/machinima etc.

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It is very useful! It had crossed my mind that the blur effect was applied after the fact rather than in game, and you've definitely given me some useful information there! (Admittedly a few bits were a little over my head--I have no background in art at all, let alone digital art, and have just been teaching myself a few things on a need-to-know [well, to be fair, a want-to-know] basis, but I'm pretty certain I've gotten the gist of how to go about it.) Thank you!

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There's nothing like posting a question to help one miraculously find the answer oneself: in case anyone else wonders, the camera tilt feature is from an ENB plugin called FreeFlyCam plugins, found here.

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