cumbrianlad Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 Hi. I'm close, so very close, to releasing my first mod. One problem that remains is that I've run around in-game and taken screenshots for the description page. I've sometimes used 'tcl', I've often used 'tm', depending where I wanted the screenshot and if I wanted the 'Search: Weapons" etc to be displayed or not. External screenshots are great, but the interior shots look way darker than they do in-game. I could edit the brightness of these screenshots in paint.net, but I wonder if there's a better way to take the shots in the first place? What I see on screen and in-game depends on my monitor settings. I use a Ben-Q monitor and play using the 'Gamer-1' setting. That was how it was when I took the screen-shots. How can we take account of everybody's monitors when making a mod and how can the screenshots thus reflect what any player will see? I don't want to con people into thinking that my mod will be darker or brighter than they see in my screenshots! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsharaMeradin Posted February 28, 2020 Share Posted February 28, 2020 I have a Ben-Q monitor and I just set it at neutral values. I used the game itself to tweak anything as needed. Plus I don't think I have a "Gamer-1" setting (the monitor is 4~5 years old). That said, interiors do tend to be darker because of the limitation of lighting. I'd recommend, if possible, adjusting character position and camera position so that any light source is coming from behind the camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thumbincubation Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 Don't forget that you can also use TFC 1 to freeze all action and move the camera into places your character couldn't go. If you're in 3rd person at the time, you'll be visible in the picture. In 1st person, you're invisible. You can sink or fly, like with TCL, but much more quickly and smoothly. TFC returns you to normal. Alternatively, using just TFC the first time will do the same but without freezing the action, and TFC again returns you to normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cumbrianlad Posted February 29, 2020 Author Share Posted February 29, 2020 Thanks for the tips. I'll tinker around. IsharaMeradin, that's a good point about the monitors. I'll set my monitor to standard and take a look in-game. I may need to tweak the brightness of the lights up a bit. I should really have been testing with the monitor on standard, anyway. It could be genuinely too dark for players who haven't got all the flexibility of my monitor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyRJump Posted February 29, 2020 Share Posted February 29, 2020 Screenshots are always darker than the actual view in-game. A frame in the game acts like a one-sheet poster for light-boxes, if anyone remembers those. A one-sheet is a poster that has a print on both sides to eliminate a white-out when the poster is lit from the back. A regular poster is white at the back and when a backlight shines on the white back of the poster, it results in a white mist effect when seen from the front. The print on the back (in mirror, of course) elliminates the shine-through of the white and keeps luminosity high and colours vivid. A screenshot frame in-game is like a coloured-in transparant lit from the back and as such has a higher luminosity than the resulting screenshot, which is also lit from the back by the backlight of the monitor but doesn't have the same transparancy than an in-game frame and has less luminosity as a result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cumbrianlad Posted February 29, 2020 Author Share Posted February 29, 2020 JimmyRJump, That's useful to know. I'll just adjust the screenshots in paint.net until I think they roughly match what I see in game with my monitor on standard settings. Thanks for the info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c0ax599 Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 I edited my screenshots in GIMP. I got paint.net installed too.. I just wanna learn more about gimp, so that was my choice. ;) I didn't edit all of them, just the ones I thought looked a little too dark. I don't think that would be considered "misrepresenting" your mod's look. It's probably gonna look a slight bit different to different users anyway, depending on their graphics setup and or mods/enb's they're using. One more thing, for the outdoor shots, I usually did the wait thing, till it was afternoon and brighter outdoors, and also that there was no snowstorms, overcast weather etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cumbrianlad Posted March 2, 2020 Author Share Posted March 2, 2020 Thanks for that c0ax599. The exterior shots are all fine. I also waited for good weather. I got a really good shot last night that I won't probably use... ... I have a dragon landing marker on top of my player home and a dragon crash marker that I've put in the neighbouring cell. I was about to wait for daylight when a dragon attacked. My screenshot is of Shadowmere and my player horse Gwilin attacking the downed dragon. i was too busy taking the shot to help. Shadowmere's pretty hard to kill and Gwilin is essential and deals as much unarmed damage as a frost troll, so I could just stand back and admire! I was lucky to get it. Gwilin had knocked the thing from 25% health to what you see. If I'd had more time I'd have positioned the shot better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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