High speed screen capping by mashing the button? Dude, you're doing it wrong.
1. Take a demo of you doing the actions with the /demorecord DemoNameYouWant command.
2. Play the demo back using the demo dump option. My demo player (see link in sig) can do that for you, no problem. In the FPS box, put how many screenshots you want per second of the demo.
3. Wade through the thousands of screenshots and find the ones with great action.
I recently recorded the Reichsman fight and got over 30 good shots this way. (Though it works better with easier battles. It's easier to put the camera in good positions when you aren't fighting for your life.)
Makes it easy to get shots like this and this! And I was just taking 3 shots per second. Crank it up to 10 and you won't miss a thing. (You probably won't have any free space on your hard drive, either, but that's what hard drives are for!)
P.S. ImageShack got hacked yesterday. Hopefully these images will still work.
Right on! Thanks.
Should mention that there's always a light source in-game and to keep that in mind when taking pictures.
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Should mention that there's always a light source in-game and to keep that in mind when taking pictures.
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Yeah, I sometimes wish I could put a flash on my screenshot camera.
For the longest time I never did any "arts" with my characters because, frankly, all the screenshots I took were crap (I can't draw). But recently I've got stung by some passing muse or something and starting cranking out these things I call ActionBios and a big part of my producing them has been a purposeful attempt at taking better screenshots.
Here's some of the techniques I've come up with . . .
(1) Location. Unless you have a location in mind for a specific effect, find a nice wall. My best screeenshots are taken in front of flat, non busy, walls that my toon stands out from. Background skylines, traffic, mobs and players, and other hubbaballoo can really detract from a screenshot unless you've purposefully chosen it as part of the overall effect. Also, there's no need to spend an hour finding a good location. Log in, take a look around and use the first thing that draws your attention . . . there's a lot of really good looking spots in the game. Example
(2) High Speed Screencapping. This was my breakthrough "aha" moment. Put your finger over the Print Screen key, activate a power, and spam that Print Screen key for all it's worth. You're pretty much guaranteed to capture your character's animation and particle effects in a screenshot that wows your socks off. I never realized just how beautiful and comic booky the game's particle effects were until I started doing this (screw that other game's hype about comic booky graphics).
Check this Action Bio out to see what I mean. I did no post screenshot processing (other than cropping and resizing image). It looks like a panel strip straight out of a glossy page graphic novel if you ask me.
Note on powers: Some powers are just downright awesome for High Speed Screencapping. Personal buffs (Build Ups) and heals, for example. Also, for melee toons, the PBAoE attacks are nice. Especially since you can activate them without having a mob mucking up your shot. The 4 panels on the right in this Action Bio were made by High Speed Screencapping the PBAoE attack in Dual Blades. Awesome poses.
(3) Camera Angle. Now that you have a location picked out and have mastered High Speed Capping (which takes all of 2 seconds to master) you need to be aware of camera angle. Don't spam out 100 screencaps all from the same camera angle! Move that puppy around. Drag it down to ground level for those intimidating shots, swing it around to at least 2 different postions to keep your screencaps unique from each other . . . use the force, Luke.
Personally, I find that camera angles focused on my toon activating powers are a lot more interesting than screencaps focusing on affecting mobs with powers. Ranged attacks usually go from very little particle effects to blinding overkill on mobs very quickly. But for getting good action shots of melee toons you've got to get in close and personal. I've found placing the camera over the shoulder behind the toon to be a pretty reliable technique. Melee Example
(4) Bloom. I'm a big fan of Bloom and Depth of Field effects, but I know many people aren't. Not realy crucial to good screenshots. Most of the time it's very subtle and not very noticable, but when it is it's really nice. For example, the effect on this toon's hair in the lower left panel of this Action Bio is very subtle yet really nice.
(5) Break your Rules. Once you begin to rely on techniques you've developed, be sure to break them every once in awhile. Most of the time this will just result in crap, but every once in awhile you'll get an "aha" moment.
Not being able to draw my characters has always bummed me out, but making these bio pages out of in-game screenshots has finally let me add a personal touch to 'em and bring 'em to life. If anyone else wants to add some tips to this thread I'd love to hear 'em.