#also god the textures are so beautiful in my 1080p file

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

196. The Endless (2017) -- a rewatch

bonus:

[witchdoodle]

a few people have asked me how i take my screenshots so i thought i'd share my general like... process

so first things first i do not have the greatest rig. i wouldn't even call my rig good. what i DO have is a decent gpu -- i was lucky enough to get my grubby little goblin mitts on one when cryptocurrency mining was just starting to create a shortage, this was a few months ago when it wasn't as bad as it is now... anyway i have the gtx 1050 ti, i think 4gb?, which is a good card! it lets me run dai at a stable 40-60 fps on mostly ultra/high settings. the rest of my rig is garbage tbh. it's a cheapo dell i grabbed off the rack to replace my dying laptop years ago. a decent gpu will make a huge difference is my point. i chose to spend a little extra money to get something i wouldn’t have to replace for a while.

i have a 1080p monitor and run the game fullscreen to get the biggest screencaps i can. the bigger your resolution, the bigger your screencaps, the more detail you can jam in there. it's always better to have to scale an image down than up.

for purposes of portrait screenarchery in dai you only need to worry about 3 settings really: mesh, texture, and shader. if you want to cap scenery or combat shots etc you will probably need high settings on other options but for just portraits of faces, those 3 are all you need. you can always hide ugly background textures by making everything in the bg really blurred out. don't neglect shader. that's what gives things like hair a higher resolution so it's not this super shiny metallic oilslick look.

now, tools. you'll need the dai cinematic tools and some screencapping software. i use fraps, which i paid for, at the cost of about $37. i think you can still take screencaps with the free trial version, you're just limited to certain filetypes and you can't take video? there's free screencapping software but i thought fraps was the most intuitive and simple that i tried so i bought it. (i think dai has a built in screencap feature on pc...? but i have never used it if so. in-game screencapping usually saves as compressed jpegs which i Do Not Want.)

the cinematic tools are a free third party software you can download above. download the zip and extract it into its own folder somewhere you can easily find again. when i run the cinematic tools, i first boot up the game, then either completely load a save or a new game, then alt-tab out and boot the cinematic tools (RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR). two windows will eventually pop up. don't touch anything until the black box says something like "gui found." then alt-tab back to the game and you can start playing with the tools.

i used this tutorial as a basic how-to guide for flycamming, and this tutorial to start figuring out the settings of the cinematic tools. from there it was just playing around with the settings and trying things out.

for the most part, i usually just change the depth of field to get a nice crisp shot when i zoom in with a blurry background to bring the focus more on the subject of the picture. i also always use the cinematic tools to hide the hud (delete key) and temporarily upscale the resolution. sho talks about that in their tutorial. otherwise, i usually don't make many adjustments. i prefer to post-process my screencaps in photoshop. you can also use a reshade, but those are VERY labour-intensive on the ol' gpu, and i find the drop in framerate is a hassle i'm not willing to deal with.

i have fraps set to save screenshots as png files. this produces absolutely huge filesizes but they retain their quality without jpeg compression which is valuable to me.

there's a few other tricks i do with the cinematic tools, aside from the simple tip of going under 'misc' and setting the resolution to '2' to temporarily upscale the resolution and then returning it to '1' when you're ready to play the game again --

1. when i flycam to take portrait shots, i usually do so during cutscenes. this will give you slightly better detail on the textures and such, but it also lets you get much closer to the character. for whatever reason in the overworld if you zoom in to a certain point your character just vanishes, but in cutscenes you can get so close to them you can literally see the inside of their head and their creepy realistic teeth and eyeball models. also, overworld characters have resting bitch face somethin' fierce. cutscene shots will provide more variety of expression.

2. take several different angles, and take more screencaps than you think you'll need. you can weed them out later.

3. a good Tip to take portrait-oriented... uh, portraits (you know, vertical and not horizontal) is to use the flycam to just rotate the camera 90 degrees, take your screencap, then rotate it in any basic image editing program. this will give you a much higher resolution portrait-oriented screencap than just taking a landscape-oriented screencap and cropping it. it's the exact same thing as physically turning your camera to the side in your hands.

i also use a lot of high-resolution mods in my game. i have a list of recommended mods here, but if you just want a mod experience that's "the vanilla game, but improved," i'd recommend this mod to lessen the shininess of the vanilla skin, this one to enhance the resolution of the eyes, this one for vallasin, this one for hair resolution, this mod that slightly elongates the vanilla eyelashes (elongated lashes v03, and this eyebrow mod that totally overhauls EVERY eyebrow in the game. i can give a tl;dr about what makes some mods (imo) better than others, but basically what i prioritize is 1) realistic, 2) lore-friendly, and 3) high-resolution. in that order.

so that's how i get the quality that i do when i take screencaps -- using a decent gpu to run the game at ultra settings when possible, prioritizing mesh/textures/shader, and using the cinematic tools to take clean screenshots with the hud hidden and flycam to zoom in on faces and frame them better.

when it comes to visual interest that's a little trickier. the biggest thing i'd recommend is studying photography. that's why i got into screenarchery, i have a background in photography which i studied until i had to sell my camera due to unemployment. specifically read up a little bit about photography composition and try to apply that to your screencapping. general art composition will also apply here.

do not be afraid to experiment in terms of composition. if you “break the rules,” take a long look at your composition and think about whether or not you think it works, and why. study other people’s compositions and think about how that contributes to the feeling of a piece. some stuff is obvious common sense stuff -- want to create a feeling of loneliness and isolation? make your subject very small and off to one side so they seem almost drowned out by all the empty space... want them to look powerful and imposing? put them at a high angle so they look large. 

really pay attention to your lighting. take a couple screenshots of your character in different lighting situations and try to figure out where they look better and why that is. light will bounce off your character’s face in different ways at different angles and enhance or detract from their appearance. that’s why all the youtube beauty gurus have ring lighting... because it’s SUPER flattering, unnaturally so.

angle will also affect how people see your character’s facial features. you know how when you accidentally turn the front camera on your phone on and you’re like OH GOD I’M A MONSTER? it’s bc that angle from below is ridonkulously unflattering with human facial features. it’ll make everything look bigger and bloated. remember the myspace days, when all the scene girls took selfies from like a foot above their heads pointing down? that’s bc that angle made them look thinner and longer. 

i love dutch angles but uh, be careful with that. dutch angles impart a sense of drama into a picture that can be kind of out of place if you're taking just some casual chillin' shots. but you can pry them out of my cold dead hands...

that’s about it, if u have any other q’s send me an ask