TES Skyrim

[Goatroach]

@Saltr:
That was the best depth of field profile I could find. I would like even less depth of field, but I don't know how to manually do it myself. I hear people say edit it with a text program such as Notepad or Notepad++, but I have no idea what the numbers mean in the actual document. I want a very soft depth of field that maintains most of the detail, but provides a slightly soft blur outside of the focal target. So soft, that it's almost indistinguishable from depth of field being turned off, but still there if you look for it.

Edit:
By the way, I love those HD textures that you guys have! I'd be running with more HD textures, but I only have a 4GB GTX 770, and no additional expansion slots on my motherboard, so my VRAM gets eaten up pretty quickly, and I get CTDs because of the stupid 3.1GB system RAM bug. Amazingly, however, my ENB preset runs 35-45fps in exteriors, and a solid 60fps in interiors at 1080p (my 42" Vizio only goes up to 1080p). Plus my load order has over 150 items, and has retail level stability, so it's all good.

Side note:
The picture quality has some artifacts due to Facebook's JPEG compression. It actually looks sharper in game.

[Kermles]

I keep seeing people say they cannot take good screenshots and think they don't have "the eye", but there are some conventional guidelines in photography/drawing that they usually break in most of their shots. They're pretty simple, I'll share.

Really easy ones:

Keep everything that you want to be seen in the frame, away from the border by a little margin. If there is movement of a subject, try to give space in front of where it's going for it to look like it's moving into. Same with where people are looking.

Keep everything that isn't important out of the image! Images get confusing and boring very fast when there's too much going on. Imagine if there is a parking lot at night with a bunch of different cars of different makes and models scattered around randomly in no order. You see it every day! But then imagine that there is just one car, and it's totally empty, or all the cars are the same. Way more interesting.

Avoid "white space" unless you are trying to emphasize something inside of it. If there's nothing interesting in part of the image, people will just wonder why it's there and totally ignore it, and it throws off the balance. This happens a lot when people cut the image in half with a horizon or something, it looks empty.

Those three things are the main reason an image will look good, cause it's simple and easy to tell what the heck you're supposed to look at and what's happening and the space is used well. And it's easy to do these, there's really no excuse for breaking these without a reason if you know about them.

More complex ones:

Rule of thirds: imagine that the image is split up into thirds vertically, and then again horizontally, like a # symbol was overlaid on it. Try lining up distinct sections of the image (like horizons and shores) with these lines, and try putting the focal points or subjects right where they intersect.

Leading lines: See if you can use frame the shot to have converging lines drawing the eye toward an interesting part of it, or parallel lines to create sections or patterns. Example: Roads curving off into the horizon to lead you to the sun, rows of crops in a field.

Focal lengths/field of view: Commonly pictures of people are taken with long focal lengths/low fields of view, because it avoids messing with their proportions and doesn't stretch their face up and stuff. Landscapes often are taken with high fields of view because it exaggerates distances and space. Change fov in the console using "fov #". fov 40 and below will work well for portraits and 90 and above will be good for landscapes. In the middle/default fov can be good for things meant to look atmospheric, as human field of view is in the middle also and it will feel more like you are "there".

Patterns: Patterns are great, because humans love rules. But more interesting than rules to us are the things that break them! Find broken patterns!

Always have a foreground if you can help it also. A scenic mountain range is great, but a scenic mountain range in the distance with a tree in the foreground is often better because it creates a better sense of space, distance and scale. Or find a person or animal to turn it into an epic portrait instead of a boring landscape!

I know that's overdoing it a bit for games, but it still applies and it's bugging me that people don't do those things and then mope about their screenshot skills! It's easy if you think first.

[Asgaard]

Night Time in Whiterun par Asgaard Ov Nord, sur Flickr


The Heat of The Fire par Asgaard Ov Nord, sur Flickr


Breezehome Bedroom par Asgaard Ov Nord, sur Flickr


Cold and Warm Lights par Asgaard Ov Nord, sur Flickr


Dragonsreach Fire par Asgaard Ov Nord, sur Flickr

[Goatroach]

I keep seeing people say they cannot take good screenshots and think they don't have "the eye", but there are some conventional guidelines in photography/drawing that they usually break in most of their shots. They're pretty simple, I'll share.

Really easy ones:

Keep everything that you want to be seen in the frame, away from the border by a little margin. If there is movement of a subject, try to give space in front of where it's going for it to look like it's moving into. Same with where people are looking.

Keep everything that isn't important out of the image! Images get confusing and boring very fast when there's too much going on. Imagine if there is a parking lot at night with a bunch of different cars of different makes and models scattered around randomly in no order. You see it every day! But then imagine that there is just one car, and it's totally empty, or all the cars are the same. Way more interesting.

Avoid "white space" unless you are trying to emphasize something inside of it. If there's nothing interesting in part of the image, people will just wonder why it's there and totally ignore it, and it throws off the balance. This happens a lot when people cut the image in half with a horizon or something, it looks empty.

Those three things are the main reason an image will look good, cause it's simple and easy to tell what the heck you're supposed to look at and what's happening and the space is used well. And it's easy to do these, there's really no excuse for breaking these without a reason if you know about them.

More complex ones:

Rule of thirds: imagine that the image is split up into thirds vertically, and then again horizontally, like a # symbol was overlaid on it. Try lining up distinct sections of the image (like horizons and shores) with these lines, and try putting the focal points or subjects right where they intersect.

Leading lines: See if you can use frame the shot to have converging lines drawing the eye toward an interesting part of it, or parallel lines to create sections or patterns. Example: Roads curving off into the horizon to lead you to the sun, rows of crops in a field.

Focal lengths/field of view: Commonly pictures of people are taken with long focal lengths/low fields of view, because it avoids messing with their proportions and doesn't stretch their face up and stuff. Landscapes often are taken with high fields of view because it exaggerates distances and space. Change fov in the console using "fov #". fov 40 and below will work well for portraits and 90 and above will be good for landscapes. In the middle/default fov can be good for things meant to look atmospheric, as human field of view is in the middle also and it will feel more like you are "there".

Patterns: Patterns are great, because humans love rules. But more interesting than rules to us are the things that break them! Find broken patterns!

Always have a foreground if you can help it also. A scenic mountain range is great, but a scenic mountain range in the distance with a tree in the foreground is often better because it creates a better sense of space, distance and scale. Or find a person or animal to turn it into an epic portrait instead of a boring landscape!

I know that's overdoing it a bit for games, but it still applies and it's bugging me that people don't do those things and then mope about their screenshot skills! It's easy if you think first.

YES!!! Finally another person who's studied composition!
I find, like with most 35mm film cameras, if you want a good general FOV for full body, or "mid-range" shots (like in a town), use 55 degrees.
I typically shoot portraits at 30-35 degrees, depending on the subject. I personally hate wide-angle, or "GoPro" cam fish-eyed shots, which is why I go no higher than 70 degrees for landscapes. I know people with tiny little monitors have to play with their nose against the screen, which means they play with wide-angle FOVs exceeding 80 degrees. That's fine, but for the love of Talos, change the FOV when taking pictures!

Anyway, even if one is great with composition, they still need good subject matter, aka something of interest. That can be a person, animal, waterfall, lone tree, building, etc.

Edit:
Has anyone made a large poster from one of their screenshots, and framed it on their wall? I'm thinking of doing that. I'll just get a cheap muted frame and do the matting myself... maybe.

[saltr]

[Kermles]

Goatroach
Yes, good advice. I was wondering if you had some kind of experience, since your screenshots were nice and you mentioned the crushed highlights and shadows and stuff, that also really bugs me. Once you lower the highlight or shadow clip point at all, or do any kind of unscaled brightness addition/subtraction, you have just successfully limited the amount of detail and range of colors you can express significantly and negated much of the benefit of HDR. Yet tons of presets do it! Totally radical, man. Adjust your tonemapping settings or lower your contrast instead, or better yet just make your lighting values a little brighter everywhere. I remember, hidden in HD6's code, there was a little line like this:

Code: Select all

color.xyz += 0.0005

With cameras, I often prefer as wide an FOV as possible before it starts fisheyeing noticeably, but I also cannot stand the shots taken with fisheyes generally. For certain subjects like the sky or the corner of a room, things that wrap around the wide angle or lack tons of detail, those are sometimes well served with a fisheye in my opinion.

I think that depending on how the game decides field of view though, most people would want a higher FOV with a larger monitor, especially higher aspect ratio monitors. A small monitor would start shrinking things too much and making the fish eye effect more noticeable with high FOV's.

[Insomnia]

Kermles
Great writing mate! Thanks!
I'm far from a photograhper, and equally far from a screen archer. I just don't have "it" to do a spectacular shot.
When shooting close ups I use FOV between 20-35. Everything above makes the characters face distorted. Landscape shots looks best at 60-70. But sometimes I use as high as 110 when shooting mountain ranges, but this is because I'm lazy to setup a good wide resolution.

I agree with you Kermles about placing objects in different locations in the shot. Everyone has heard about "the Golden Ratio", which basically means placing the "object of interest" slightly off the center. You can read a little here.

Also when making a portrait, the face must have some sort of expression. Or it will look like a doll.
Take a look at SkyrimEros fantastic shot "William":

Imagine his eyes would look straight forward and this character would look less alive.

But as I said I'm far from being a pro at this... Wish I was, cuz some people do absolutely MARVELOUS things with such a simple game.
I also don't know jack shit about shaders and how to optimize a preset.

BTW saltr amazing shots!

[p4ck3tl055]

Also when making a portrait, the face must have some sort of expression. Or it will look like a doll.
Take a look at SkyrimEros fantastic shot "William":

Imagine his eyes would look straight forward and this character would look less alive.

Insomnia Some of the greatest shots I've seen on this forum are yours...yes, you are a screen archer and you do have the "eye".

I agree 100% with you about the face shots - the eyes and expressions are the key, but how does one achieve an expression with this game? Is there a method to it with the poser mods? Or it simply a matter of hitting the tilde at JUST the right moment? If the latter then there is more skill involved than playing the game to grab a great headshot. (sorry bad pun... )

[charlievoviii]

@Saltr:
Edit:
By the way, I love those HD textures that you guys have! I'd be running with more HD textures, but I only have a 4GB GTX 770, and no additional expansion slots on my motherboard, so my VRAM gets eaten up pretty quickly, and I get CTDs because of the stupid 3.1GB system RAM bug. Amazingly, however, my ENB preset runs 35-45fps in exteriors, and a solid 60fps in interiors at 1080p (my 42" Vizio only goes up to 1080p). Plus my load order has over 150 items, and has retail level stability, so it's all good.

you shouldn't get CTD because of 3.1gb limit. You need ENBboost, and SSME, if you already use v1.7 or higher of SKSE than SSME already implemented in it, Google it. But if you ran out of VRAM than no one can help you on that, beside picking your textures wisely, not just dump anything that's 2k or higher, but only big noticeable stuffs.

I keep seeing people say they cannot take good screenshots and think they don't have "the eye", but there are some conventional guidelines in photography/drawing that they usually break in most of their shots. They're pretty simple, I'll share.

Really easy ones:

Keep everything that you want to be seen in the frame, away from the border by a little margin. If there is movement of a subject, try to give space in front of where it's going for it to look like it's moving into. Same with where people are looking.

Keep everything that isn't important out of the image! Images get confusing and boring very fast when there's too much going on. Imagine if there is a parking lot at night with a bunch of different cars of different makes and models scattered around randomly in no order. You see it every day! But then imagine that there is just one car, and it's totally empty, or all the cars are the same. Way more interesting.

Avoid "white space" unless you are trying to emphasize something inside of it. If there's nothing interesting in part of the image, people will just wonder why it's there and totally ignore it, and it throws off the balance. This happens a lot when people cut the image in half with a horizon or something, it looks empty.

Those three things are the main reason an image will look good, cause it's simple and easy to tell what the heck you're supposed to look at and what's happening and the space is used well. And it's easy to do these, there's really no excuse for breaking these without a reason if you know about them.

More complex ones:

Rule of thirds: imagine that the image is split up into thirds vertically, and then again horizontally, like a # symbol was overlaid on it. Try lining up distinct sections of the image (like horizons and shores) with these lines, and try putting the focal points or subjects right where they intersect.

Leading lines: See if you can use frame the shot to have converging lines drawing the eye toward an interesting part of it, or parallel lines to create sections or patterns. Example: Roads curving off into the horizon to lead you to the sun, rows of crops in a field.

Focal lengths/field of view: Commonly pictures of people are taken with long focal lengths/low fields of view, because it avoids messing with their proportions and doesn't stretch their face up and stuff. Landscapes often are taken with high fields of view because it exaggerates distances and space. Change fov in the console using "fov #". fov 40 and below will work well for portraits and 90 and above will be good for landscapes. In the middle/default fov can be good for things meant to look atmospheric, as human field of view is in the middle also and it will feel more like you are "there".

Patterns: Patterns are great, because humans love rules. But more interesting than rules to us are the things that break them! Find broken patterns!

Always have a foreground if you can help it also. A scenic mountain range is great, but a scenic mountain range in the distance with a tree in the foreground is often better because it creates a better sense of space, distance and scale. Or find a person or animal to turn it into an epic portrait instead of a boring landscape!

I know that's overdoing it a bit for games, but it still applies and it's bugging me that people don't do those things and then mope about their screenshot skills! It's easy if you think first.

Some stuffs you said was correct but some I don't totally agree with you. Even though there are some rules, but they don't always have to be apply, since taking shot is a personal reference what the director or person taking shots sees and want you to see in their eyes. I do have a major in Director of Photography. Also why don't you take some picture and demonstrate how it's done so people can better understand than saying how people can't take good shots.

BTW when you mentioned the Rule of Third, it bring back memories, that is one of the first thing we learn in Cinematography.

[--JawZ--]

I would actually call those guidelines to start from rather then saying they are rules to follow.

As charlievoviii said, it's all about personal preference of what to apply and stick too and what to bend on and improve upon from ones own perspective.
Rule of third is the very first or at least one of the first things any photographer or movie maker learns that want to get more involved in the subject