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Skyrim Screenshot Stories Guide

Alter Native

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Alter Native

Alter Native

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This post tries to be a guide on the most important concepts and methods for the creation of Skyrim screenshot stories. This is a very niche thing of the Skyrim modding community and only a hand full of people if participating in this. This guide tries to help newcomers and share some knowledge about Skyrim screenshot stories. The following is for the most part based on my personal experiences and personal style of doing stories that you can find on my Blog Of Blood and Pleasure.


This is in no guide on screenarchery and general, but instead focuses on the specific needs of skyrim screenshot stories. 

In the first part I will give a basic overview on how to approach skyrim stories that should be sufficient enough to get started and in a second part I will go deeper into more advanced topics and common problems you will encounter.

 

 


Basics

In order to get started with Skyrim stories you need
1. A way to capture screenshots
2. Some kind of poser mod
3. Basic knowledge how to use skyrim Console commands


1. Screenshots
The easiest way to capture screenshots is just using steam, (default F12). You can access the screenshot folder of a specific game in the steam client by right-clicking Skyrim->View screenshot folder.
Other ways are using your ENB, Skyrim itself (print key) or an external software such as Fraps.


2. A Poser Mod
The default animations of Skyrim allow for little more then standing and fighting, you will need some kind of poser mod that lets you arrange NPCs and your player character in certain poses as gestures. There are a couple of options available, but the most straight forward and easy to use one is Pinup Poser by Halofarm. It provides a lot of different poses in various positions and unlike most others the poses are ordered ingame, meaning you have subcategories for standing, sitting lying poses etc. This is really handy when starting out. There are larger posers with many more poses such as Halo Poser, but Pinup Poser is a simple and straight forward. There is an image gallery reference that gives you an overview over all poses available, so you don't have to cycle through them ingame.
Almost all posers come with rings and spells. The rings are equipped and let you choose a certain pose. Using the second ring lets your player character perform the selected pose. Using the spell on an NPC lets them perform the selected pose.
While an NPC performs a pose, their default AI-Package is overwritten. This means they won't go back to the place they are normally found ingame or walk through the room in order to sit down somewhere.

The Mod Poser Hotkeys allows you to flip through several posers quickly without having to mess around with a menu.


3. Console Commands
You have to get good at using console commands in Skyrim. Have a look here in case you don't know how to use console commands.
The most important ones are:

 

  • tfc 1 - (toggle free camera) let's you move the camera independently from your character while the game is frozen.
  • tfc - (toggle free camera) let's you move the camera but the game is not frozen
  • tm - (toggle menu) disables HUD. You enable the interface again by writing tm again. Note that everything is hidden, even the console.
  • sucsm [number (float)] - sets the speed of camera movement. The default value is sucsm 4. For me typically a good value is 0.5 and 1. Note that the camera speed depends on your framerate so sucsm 1 is much slower on 20 fps than it is on 60 fps.
  • getpos [x,y,z]  -  Gives you the position of an object or an actor on a specific axis e.g: "getpos x" gives you the x position of the actor. Make sure you have an actor selected with your mouse button.
  • setpos [x,y,z] [float] - let's you set the position of an actor on a specific axis e.g. "setpos x 1000" sets the actor to position x=1000 this can be used for arranging Npcs and objects, even though "moveto" is typically better suited for this. 
  • getangle z - Gives you the z angle for an actor. Since Actors can not have a x or y angle the z axis is the only relevant here.
  • setangle - Sets the angle of a specifc actor. Note that while in tfc 1 mode or the you have to type another command such as setscale or setpos afterwards in order for the 3D Model to update. 
  • moveto player - Sets the x,y,z position and the z-angle of the selected NPC to your Players current coordinates. Really handy for a rough positioning of a scene.
  • tai - (toggle AI) Disables the AI of an actor so he/she becomes frozen. This is super important to use after you have posed and moved an actor into position so they don't move afterwards and ruin your hard work. Only move one actor at the time and use tai on the other. Move the player last.
  • fov [float] - This command lets you change the field of view of the camera, which is really useful when shooting details in scenes or setting the focus of the camera on specific actors.
  • tcl - (toggle collision) Turns of all collisions in the game, which let's you move the player character freely. It's important that no object in the skyrim console is selected in order for this to work.
  • coc ID - (center on cell) Teleports your character to the cell specified afterwards. E.g. "coc DragonbridgeFourShieldsTavern" teleports you to the "Four Shields Tavern" in Dragonbridge. Use "help" in order to get information about certain places/items/NPCs. The names listed with "cell" are IDs that you can coc to 
  • help +any word - Prints a list of NPCs, Items, locations etc. that contain the name after help. This is helpful for spawning NPCs or moving to certain locations via coc. With "" you can search for specific expressions like -> help "healing potion", that will print a list of all objects that contain the expression "healing potion"


 

Basic Workflow

In case you have never done something like this, the following provides you an idea of the basic workflow that is commonly repeated for every scene your going to shoot.

  1. Go into tcl mode (collisions off) 
  2. Choose a pose for the NPC and cast the poser spell on them
  3. Move your character to the position you want them to be
  4. Select the NPC in the console and type "moveto player". The NPC should now be teleported to the exact position as your character, while still performing the selected pose. You should be clipping into each other. If the NPC bounces of you're not in tcl mode. If the NPC is not moving his/her AI is still disabled (console command tai to unfreeze them). 
  5. [Optional] Adjust the facial expression of the NPC if necessary
  6. [Optional] Adjust the lightning for the given NPC if necessary
  7. Move your character to the position the NPC is supposed to be looking at (such as your character or another NPC etc.) in order to change their look direction. The head of the NPC should follow your character, if not you can talk to them and exit dialogue mode again.
  8. Hit "tai" in the console in order to freeze the NPC. You're now done with this guy.
  9. Repeat the steps above for every NPC in the scene
  10. Position your player character, select a pose etc.
  11. Console Command "tcl 1" and take screenshots.  
  12. [Optional] You can always use getpos x,y,z and setpos x,y,z and getangle z/setangle z in order to change the NPCs position via console, even while their AI is disabled. This is especially useful for scenes with paired positions (like combat or sex)

 

 

General ideas:

  • Don't play the game! Never! I recommend creating extra saves/extra characters for your stories. Use the console in order to change locations, outfits, add objects etc. Don't craft an outfit, or travel to a location via the normal rules of the game. Using the console or special mods such as the "additem menu" mod. This will be much faster once you've gotten used to it.
  • Always disable the NPC AIs when done setting them up (select in console, type "tai")
  • Always only work on one NPC at the time, the rest is tai-ed up.
  • Always position your player character last

 


Changing facial expressions
In order to change the facial expression for NPCs I recommend using the MFG console.

I also recommend using the 
Facial Expressions Project  for using premade expression presents.

The basic function of the mods are explained on their respective download page:

 

 

Quote

- Expressions
Select character (include player) at the console and type "mfg phoneme/modifier/expression [Number] [Strength]"


Strength is a Number between 0 and 100 that deteramains the strength of the expression selected in [Number] Number is a list that you should see when you select a NPC in the console.
Hit Tab if not.

 

If you want to save expression, enter "mfg save 'filename'".
Saved file is 'filename.txt' in Skyrim directory.
To revert expression, select character at the console and enter "bat 'filename'".

 

- Alias
This already sets some command-alias, "me","mp","mm" to "mfg expression","mfg phoneme", "mfg modifier".
If you enter "mp 1 100", execute "mfg phoneme 1 100".

So if you want a character to open the mouth type.

mfg phoneme 1 50 

1 selects the AHH emote and 50 determines the strength of the emotion.
Or quicker:
mp 1 50

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

Advanced Tips


Other helpful console commands

  •  sgtm [float] - sets the speed of the game to certain value, default is 1. For example if you write "sgtm 2" the game runs at double the speed. sgtm "0.25" quarter of the normal game speed.

There are a number of possible applications for this in the game. For example it can be used to stop the game at just the right moment in a quick moving scene such as combat.

You can use "sgtm 0.00000001" or something other, really small, to basically stop the game and achieve the effect of tfc 1. Except the game is still running and not frozen.

This is for example handy when you want do some changes that require the AI to run without messing up the whole alignment of the scene because you know that a specific actor is going to bounce of as soon as you enable the AI again. For example change the facelight (see below) or the facial expression. This is also a useful way to fix the alignment of sexlab scenes, using the default sexlab hotkeys.

Moreover it's a great way to have rain and snow show up on screenshots. When you use tfc 1 with these particle effects they are only going to show up in the direction you are looking at when you went into tfc 1 mode. With sgtm 0.00001 the game still runs so you have particles in every direction.

 

  • disable - Disables (removes) the selected object or NPC. This is for example useful to remove certain items or objects that might not fit the scene or location. As look as you have the disabled object selected you can enable them with "enable".
  • enableplayercontrols - In case you can no longer access menus or cast spells or something is bugged try using the command before restarting the game. 80 % of the menu bugs that can appear by using tfc 1, tfc, tai etc. can be fixed by this. 
  • kill - Kills the selected actor
  • killall - Kills all actors in the loaded area or current cell, including followers etc. 
  • setfactionrank ID Rank - Adds the selected actor to a faction. A faction in skyrim is a group of people that share a certain aggression level towards each other. This is useful when you're trying to shoot scenes with NPCs that would attack you typically, such as bandits. By adding yourself to the bandit faction they no longer see you as an enemy.

A complete list of all factions can be found here at the bottom of the page.

  • setalert 1 - lets you have the NPC draw their weapon
  • set timescale to [float] - This command lets you set the timescale of the game. "set timescale to 1" means one minute of real times equals 1 minute of ingame time. The default value here is 20. Using really small value lets you freeze the time of day. For instance this is really useful when working during dusk or dawn, when small changes in ingame time mean large changes in the lightning. By "freezing" the time you'll have all the time you need to work in the given light and shoot your scene. If you change the timescale this way, the change will be saved in your savegame.

 

 

 


NPC management
If you don't know how to deal with NPCs properly, they can take a huge chunk of your work, so here are some tips how to work with them.
First, and I can't emphasis this enough, you don't need any special mod such as "puppeteer master" in order to make NPCs do exactly what you want. All you need is a simple poser mod such as halo or pinup poser
and the skyrim console. The current NPC AI package is going to be overwritten by the having them perform a certain pose.


Spawning of NPCs and Objects
In order to use any NPC

  1. Type "help +NPCNAME" in the skyrim console with +NPCNAME being the name of the npc you want to use. This command should provide you with an ID of the NPC. 
  2. Use "player.placeatme +NPCID 1" in order to spawn in a copy of the NPC next to your character. Don't bother with recruiting Followers or NPCs the proper way, that's just a waste of time. 
  3. Cast one of the poser spells on the newly spawned NPC in order to overwrite their normal AI (AIpackage).

 

 

You can do the same for non items and objects if necessary.
Use the additem menu mod  to get Items/Clothes etc. for your character.
Besides the nexus search function, a very good, but of course uncompleted overview over available clothes mods can be found here.


Changing the Outfit of a NPC

  1. Use the "unequipall" command on the NPC. 
  2. Type "help [NAMEOFCLOTHES]" to get the IDs of the clothes you want the NPC to wear. 
  3. Type "equipitem [CLOTHESID]" in order to equip the NPC with the chosen Clothes ("unequip +ID" to unequip). 
  4. Most NPCs switch back to their default outfit when you do this, simply use the uparrow key to select the old used commands and quickly repete steps 2 and 3. They should never to this more then once.
  5. When you change the cell of the NPC they revert back to their old outfit. You can type "showinventory" with the NPC selected in order to quickly get the IDs of the clothes. 

This may seem a bit more complicated then using a mod in order to do the NPC outfit management, but for me this is much faster. You can even unequip part while the NPC is in "tai mode".

 

 

How to efficiently move an NPC to a new cell (location)

  1.  Select the NPC in the console, 
  2.  Move your character to the new cell via the "coc" command
  3.  Use "moveto player" in order to move the NPC to the player. 

 

 

Other helpful tips and mods for working with NPCs

 

  • If you are working with NPCs/enemies that are typically your enemies in the game such as bandits or falmers I recommend adding your character and all used Followers to the faction of the enemy. That way they won't attack you and you can work normally. See http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Factions Complete Factions List below. Type player.setfactionrank ID 0 in order to add your player to a faction.
  • The mod Puppeteer Master is also useful for getting NPC's to do the vanilla animations, if you combine that with "tai" then you get them stopped in a particular pose you may want.
  • Directors Tools is another mod in order to have NPCs perform vanilla animations and even kill moves (including ki llmoves and such).

 

 

 

 

Manipulating Objects
The easiest way to manipulate objects is Jaxonz Positioner. You can move selectable objects around. Via the creation kit you can turn ANY Object into a selectable object.
You can move objects into NPCs etc. but if you are not working in tcl mode, they are changing their position when you enable their AI again (exit "tai" mode). Moreover, you can also move NPCs using this mod.

 

 


Lightning
Getting the right lightning for your scene can be a bit tricky at times. Some ENBs are a bit more forgiving then others, but here are some general tips and ideas how to adjust the 
lightning in your scene. 

  • The mod facelight allows you to add a light to a character via a spell. I recommend using the console and setting up .bat files in order to do this quickly (see below)
  • The mod SSAssits allows you to drop gems that emit light of a certain color. They can then be moved via getpos/setpos. 
  • With Jaxonz Positioner you can make existing lights visible and move them around via console.
  • The Creation Kit: If you want to have the lightning in a scene exactly as you imagine it you won't get around using the creation kit and changing the light of the location and place new lights. This is by far the most powerful tool when it comes to lightning or setting up very specific scenes. Of course you need some basic knowledge of the program and it's controls. Bethesda even made a short tutorial on working with light in the creation kit. 

 

Getting good lightning in a scene is not always easy, but it's well spend time as I feel this has a huge impact on the quality of the final.

 

 


Sex Scenes


Using Sexlab
Sex scenes can be a bit annoying to deal with, especially when you are using Sexlab. For starters you use Sexlab, SLAL and some way to start sex scenes such as "Sexlab match maker".
Make sure you turn off the auto progression of the Sexlab scenes in order to have complete control over what animation is playing. If you made it so far into this guide and this form you probably know the basics of Sexlab.

It comes with a number of problems tough.
- It can be very annoying to position actors correctly. When the scene starts you only have a rough idea on where the scene is going to play. Depending on the animations the scene might even rotate by 90 or 180 degrees. Fixing this with the adjustment keys of Sexlab is a nightmare.
- It is very hart to control facial expressions of the actors, as they reset on every moan, even if you are in tfc 1 mode
- Using tfc, tfc 1 in combination with Sexlab often leads to camera bugs, such as not being able to go back into First person mode or not being able to cast spells. 

 

How do we fix this?

 


How to not use Sexlab (Advanced)
Another way of playing sex animations is 0sex. Even though the mod itself is outstandingly well done it comes with very little animation variety and you won't be able to use most of the animations of Loverslab animators without including them into 0sex yourself.

There is another method in order to fix the problems mentioned above. It's a bit more time consuming then just using Sexlab, but it gets rid of all the problems mentioned above. Still, this is a 20 80 thing, you can get 80 % of the result by just using Sexlab in 20 % of the time, so keep this in mind. 
Instead of using Sexlab you only use the animations of sexlab and of the slal packages of modders and play them via the poser mod of your choice. Find the .hkx files of the animation you want to play in meshes\actors\character\animations\ and rename them overwrite existing .hkx files of the poser mod. Since I never use the threesome files of halos poser mod I replaced those .hkx files with the ones from Sexlab and SLAL packages.
That way you can access them via the normal spells and rings. You see the animation beforehand, can adjust facial expression etc. and work with them like normal poses. The renaming part can be a bit tedious, but something like a python script for renaming helps a lot. 
This might seem a lot more work and unnecessary complicated, but for me this is the way to go. Sexlab can be a total a nightmare when it comes to details of a scene. 
Might not work for creatures though, never tested it.

 

 

 

Adjusting poses
I highly encourage you to try out the Nioverride-pose-adjustments. This mod allows you to access individual bones of your characters skeleton and move and rotate them around. This is one of the most powerful tools available for these kind of screenshots stories. 
You can fix clipping in sexlab scenes, modify some poses in order to perfectly change them to what you want. It requires a bit of practice to get natural looking changes, but this tool is incredibly powerful.
This works in tfc 1 mode as well!

 

 


Shooting combat scenes
I'm far away from an expert on this, but I personally have the best results when letting the NPC actually attack me and freezing their AI in an animation I like (tai). 
The sgtm command really helps here. Afterwards I place my character or other characters accordingly, often times using vanilla attack animations. 
I my personal experience, the vanilla combat animations are quite good compared to the poser combat ones since they are based on motion capturing instead of posing NPCs in an Editor which is apparently hard to do when the hole body is moving in a fast animation.

 

Moreover there is a full tutorial on the creation of combat scenes by ther1pper.

 

 

ENBs

Use whichever ENB you want. There are a couple of interesting features of ENBs.

  • They can be used for taking screenshots
  • The depth of field setting in your ENB can also be used to set the focus of a scene on specific actors or objects. I personally advice towards low depth of field settings for stories, since you blur out a lot of the scenery and the background which is always part of the story. But in the end this comes down to personal preference.
  • There is also the FreeFlyCam plugin, that allows you to rotate the camera for more dynamic shots. This is especially useful for combat scenes. Rotating the camera by 90 degrees allows you to change the format of your screenshots to an upright position.

 


Tips on how to work faster

  • Use .bat commands for your often used console commands. For example instead of typing "moveto player" every time, you can just add a bat file to your skyrim directory with "moveto player" in it, that you name mp. Now you can just type "bat mp" in order to move the NPC.
  • Only ever work on one NPC at the time and stay in tcl mode. That way NPCs won't do stupid stuff.
  • Save Regularly in case you need to reshoot something 
  • Don't take too many screenshots, you have to look through all of them again and choose the ones you want. If you take less but good ones, you'll save time. 
  • Practice and get used to the workflow (by far the biggest timesaver)
  • Use the console, don't waste time playing the game

 

 

 

I hope this helps some of you, if you have any other good tips let me know so I can include them into this post.

 

 

42128156821_c4c537172f_o.png

 

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xwhiteninjax

xwhiteninjax

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really good (in the sense of helpfull) guide for screenshots... and as seen with Nora, doable in a very skillfull way... but don't forget, that "life" is outside, too... the unexpected scenes, playing with skyui off, huds more or less not visible the simple "print"-key is there, too... just as an alternative, too

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Crw0

Crw0

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Thank you wery much UwU 

It's wery useful and helpful ^_^ 

I'll take a couple of things for armament, and at the same time I'll try to learn this Nio-pose-adjustment. 

 

More like an option. 

I use player.tc (chose npc) then tc him to directly control NPC to place them where I needed them to be.

Also Poser hotkeys is a wery useful tool if using more than 3 poser mods.  

Imho ofc ^_^

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worik

worik

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Veeery useful! :classic_biggrin:

 

I often stumple upon my ambient light levels while I'm playing and suddenly decide to screenshoot the scene. Especially indoors or in dungeons.

The light level is wonderful for my playin, but not for a surprise picture. 

In the end,  I edit the pictures afterwards and mostly I need to enhance gamma to make them a bit more pleasing to the eye

 

I'm wondering if there's a quick console solution to lighten up the scene ...and maybe to re-darken it after the screenhot?

?

 

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BoLtStEr2002

BoLtStEr2002

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A lot of helpful stuff in here, I need to use some of the stuff, this was very helpful, Thanks!

 

Also, I don't think I saw this in there (Apologies if it is) , but I'd advise putting DEPTH OF FIELD on your ENB as well, it makes sure that only the characters that you want are in focus and blurring out things you don't want. But it does kill your framerate (drops mine from 60 to 40)

 

Field of View as well is important, I don't think this was mentioned (Apologies if it is.) Lowering shows less of the surroundings and it makes the characters appear closer. To change it open the console with the tilde key (or regional equivalent) and type fov # and the # is a number. I use fov 40 in most of my shots or 30 if I need to. And to reset to normal just type fov into the console.

 

Apologies if this stuff was included (I had a late night)

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Alter Native

Alter Native

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4 hours ago, Crw said:

I use player.tc (chose npc) then tc him to directly control NPC to place them where I needed them to be.

Also Poser hotkeys is a wery useful tool if using more than 3 poser mods.  

I'd love to add this, but I have never used Poser hotkeys. If you write a couple of sentences about the mod and the advantages of it I'll add it to the post :).

3 hours ago, BoLtStEr2002 said:

Also, I don't think I saw this in there (Apologies if it is) , but I'd advise putting DEPTH OF FIELD on your ENB as well, it makes sure that only the characters that you want are in focus and blurring out things you don't want. But it does kill your framerate (drops mine from 60 to 40)

 

Field of View as well is important, I don't think this was mentioned (Apologies if it is.) Lowering shows less of the surroundings and it makes the characters appear closer. To change it open the console with the tilde key (or regional equivalent) and type fov # and the # is a number. I use fov 40 in most of my shots or 30 if I need to. And to reset to normal just type fov into the console.

I completely missed fov! I use it all the time and it's super important, I'll add that in a second. Thanks for that.

As for the Depth of Field I'm personally not the biggest fan of it. While a small dof helps to turn the focus of the reader to the right persons I'm no fan of the strong dof settings. It might look great on individual screenshots without any context, but you loose the whole environment, the setting, the location and a lot of the atmosphere, because everything is just blurry and you see nothing but one character.

I'll write something to this in the post as well.

 

3 hours ago, worik said:

I'm wondering if there's a quick console solution to lighten up the scene ...and maybe to re-darken it after the screenhot?

?

Not that I know of, facelight is the closest to this, if you add the spells via console and .bat scripts.

4 hours ago, xwhiteninjax said:

but don't forget, that "life" is outside, too... the unexpected scenes, playing with skyui off, huds more or less not visible the simple "print"-key is there, too... 

The unexpected scenes might work for you, but if you have an idea in mind, a script you want to follow, there is only little room for unexpected scenes. But yes, sometimes the best ideas are spontaneous ones and there should always be room to include these. 

 

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Guest

Guest

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I can definitely say that PoserHotkeys is IMMENSELY helpful when it comes to storytelling. It's far less tedious to use than having a bunch of rings and spells as all you have to do to switch between poses and poses is hit keys on your keyboard until you "scroll" to your desired pose.

 

Directors Tools is another mod that can make you or NPCs do vanilla animations (including killmoves and such).

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xwhiteninjax

xwhiteninjax

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since I love to do my screenshots with ingame-functions (not using console-commands) there ARE solutions to "lighten" a scene during animations...

 

if you are playing a vampire-char and have "better vampires" installed, you are able to bind "night vision" to keys... they are working during animations instantly (and reverse back, if you want... the night vision invoked during stealth is lesser, than the normal one (the lesser one has added effects of bloodsigns, though)

 

even better, there are mods like "Rings of Light Enchantment - Dungeon Gear-Pack 1" ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9864 ) with rings in different colors, which will be able to invoke during animations, too (ever tried to open the inventar during animations? it will work and you are able to put the ring on the char)... the sideeffect is like a magiclight coming from the player, thus dimming the face - and facelight will not work with the rings - , but the surroundings will be much more visible... and since it is possible to use different colorrings for different locations it will add to the immersion, not lessening it...

 

even night vision from succubusmods will work.. and yes.. .if you adventurous you might even invoke transformations of the char during other animations (if you have them "keyed")...

 

such is the power of "creative" playing with given mods... or the power of unexpected thinking 

 

p.s.: have forgotten to add mods like "unlimited rings"... so it is possible to use several at the same time, such mixing colors... have fun and try out...

(or make the rings in the mentioned mod without ports inside CK... will work, too)

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Alter Native

Alter Native

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37 minutes ago, ther1pper said:

I recommend a few things to this list.

1. a mod called Poser Hotkeys. Allows you to flip through the posers quickly without having to mess around with a menu.

2. Jaxons Positioner this will allow you to move npc's and objects in to various positions by locking onto them with your crosshairs and using the number pad to rotate them and arrow keys to move them around as well as being able to dupilicate this. It also allows you to hold stuff Mid-air, both Collygon and I have had shots of objects falling thanks to this mod.

3. Disabling NPCs: I've had some issues by disabling or tai'ing multiple NPC's before, this also will vary between games but sometimes they disappear depending on the NPC, though it also depends on how many you need to hold still as well. The poser hotkey mod helps with keeping them still as they won't move away most of the time.

4. Puppeteer Master is also useful for getting NPC's to do the vanilla animations, if you combine that with Tai then you get them stopped in a particular pose you may want.

5. Changing the Timescale is one you can use via "set timescale to 1" which makes time move as fast as it does in real life, BUT!!! and i cannot stress this enough, you must reset it back to 20 before you leave the game, i don't recommend this, i do it because i'm stupid and insane.

6. tfc 1 for the most part shouldn't be required for shots unless you are trying to capture an object in motion, but if you don't need everything in-game paused tfc is good enough.

 

Adding in Stuff for fights in a moment.

 

24 minutes ago, Daedraphiliac said:

I can definitely say that PoserHotkeys is IMMENSELY helpful when it comes to storytelling. It's far less tedious to use than having a bunch of rings and spells as all you have to do to switch between poses and poses is hit keys on your keyboard until you "scroll" to your desired pose.

 

Directors Tools is another mod that can make you or NPCs do vanilla animations (including killmoves and such).

 

Thanks guys, I added PoserHotkeys to the post and I'm going to try this out myself. I also added Directors Tools and Puppeteer Master.

 @Ripper, I also added the timescale, to post, 2 and 3 are already included and I guess 6 comes down to personal preference, I always work in tfc 1 mode, also tfc conflicts with Nioverride-pose-adjustments and causes a camera bug (at least for me, might depend on the skeleton you are using).

 

Thanks for your tips guys :)

 

 

 

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

Oh, I should also recommend including the FreeFlyCam plugin for SKSE here! It can allow for some more dynamic / dramatic angles and shots. It allows you to tilt the camera like this:

 

Spoiler

tumblr_pabwufvtda1wo0oa1o1_1280.png

 

tumblr_p9kjsfFzdD1wo0oa1o5_1280.png

 

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Cema

Cema

Posted
Posted

Advices?

 

General advices

 

  • 1 - Quality over quantity
  • 2 - Be ready to spend a LOT of time on it
  • 2 - Write your story beforehand. Think about the mods you'll need to use beforehand
  • 4 - Prepare some savegames that you will always use as a starter for your galleries. Stable savegames in small cells that you never use to play or erase accidentally.

 

During shooting

 

  • 1 - Work with ENB off and turn it on when you take the screenshot. more fps
  • 2 - Disable scripted mods (especially things like Wet and Cold ... ). more fps
  • 3 - With jaxonz, delete close npcs that you don't need for the gallery. more fps
  • 4 - Don't use dof. It distracts the eye from the plot. This is storytelling not a fucking softporn picture from Tetrodoxyn's blog. more fps
  • 5 - Use close fov. I usually shoot with fov 40 or 45. way less distorsion of characters during action scenes and way better close up
  • 6 - Don't fucking use idle poses or standard walk pose because they are fucking boring. Your characters should ALWAYS be doing something
  • 7 - Don't fucking use the neutral facial expression with only your character mouth open. NEVER ! Because I'll fucking kill you
  • 8 - NPCs have schedule, some can despawn in the middle of scene because it's time to go to bed, remember it
  • 9 - Don't be afraid to move lights with jaxonz
  • 10 - Quality pictures. The better your pictures, the more people will want to read your text

 

 

 

 

Pictures and examples of what you can achieve :

 

 

Very atmospheric picture with a normal fov but roughly 40 npcs striking a pose. This picture took me a bit more than an hour.

 

tumblr_okgrgxQoEd1tl2qjpo4_1280.jpg

 

 

Fov 40 for an action scene. No distorsion and the enemy seems closer than he really is. You feel closer to the action as if you were part of the fight.

 

tumblr_ohghk6Mufl1tl2qjpo1_1280.jpg

 

 

Playing with lights and shadows with Jaxonz. I moved away all the lights from the room and only put a small one in front of my char

 

tumblr_ohghanp41P1tl2qjpo3_1280.jpg

 

 

Playing with lightsources and shadows again. The reader is free to imagine what the characters look like or what they are doing.

 

tumblr_olat4coCRP1tl2qjpo10_1280.jpg

 

 

 

Playing with facial expressions. The camera doesn't move on purpose and the character doesn't either. The goal is to show how her mindset changes between the 2 pictures. In the end her expression changes so much that it nearly doesn't look like the same image.

 

tumblr_p7t4se6aH31tl2qjpo6_1280.jpg

 

tumblr_p7t4se6aH31tl2qjpo7_1280.jpg

 

 

 

 

5
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Alter Native

Alter Native

Posted
  • Author
Posted

@Cema, thanks for your advice/tips this is really helpful. I'll try to add some of your points to my starting post.

I think your post deserves it's own topic in the tutorial category, maybe as a collection of tips. I assume most people won't find it here in the comment sections and you could call it something like "Cema's Screenshot tips" or so. :)

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Cema

Cema

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Alter Native said:

@Cema, thanks for your advice/tips this is really helpful. I'll try to add some of your points to my starting post.

I think your post deserves it's own topic in the tutorial category, maybe as a collection of tips. I assume most people won't find it here in the comment sections and you could call it something like "Cema's Screenshot tips" or so. :)

 

I don't have enough to say to make a topic. It's perfect as it is even if nobody cares. ^^

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ther1pper

ther1pper

Posted
Posted
On 6/17/2018 at 4:06 PM, Cema said:

Advices?

 

General advices

 

  • 1 - Quality over quantity
  • 2 - Be ready to spend a LOT of time on it
  • 2 - Write your story beforehand. Think about the mods you'll need to use beforehand
  • 4 - Prepare some savegames that you will always use as a starter for your galleries. Stable savegames in small cells that you never use to play or erase accidentally.

 

During shooting

 

  • 1 - Work with ENB off and turn it on when you take the screenshot. more fps
  • 2 - Disable scripted mods (especially things like Wet and Cold ... ). more fps
  • 3 - With jaxonz, delete close npcs that you don't need for the gallery. more fps
  • 4 - Don't use dof. It distracts the eye from the plot. This is storytelling not a fucking softporn picture from Tetrodoxyn's blog. more fps
  • 5 - Use close fov. I usually shoot with fov 40 or 45. way less distortion of characters during action scenes and way better close up
  • 6 - Don't fucking use idle poses or standard walk pose because they are fucking boring. Your characters should ALWAYS be doing something
  • 7 - Don't fucking use the neutral facial expression with only your character mouth open. NEVER ! Because I'll fucking kill you
  • 8 - NPCs have schedule, some can despawn in the middle of scene because it's time to go to bed, remember it
  • 9 - Don't be afraid to move lights with jaxonz
  • 10 - Quality pictures. The better your pictures, the more people will want to read your text

 

 

I feel like the dof one is debatable, depending on the scene you are shoting the background is not really important so you don't need to see it, i tend to blur what doesn't need to be seen or i'm specifically hiding for the moment then i can turn off DOF if i do need the background to be seen or everything to be seen at once. I 100% agree that your characters should always be doing something, i try to change position of npc's that i've got posed in between shots as often as i can myself because very few people sit still. Also i 1000% agree with the neutral expression, unless your character is specifically one of those unemotional characters who never changes their expression you should not be doing that.

FXProjectilesItems.esp

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Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

I would also say that some things can happen that cause poses to bug out.

 

If you are in a pose and save your game and when you load a save the posers will be broken. The only way to fix it is to load a save where you are not in a pose or anyone else is in a pose.

 

Hope this helped.

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Tirloque

Tirloque

Posted
Posted

Woav, I learned more things than I expected ! Great tutorial ! :D

 

I didn't knew about sgtm, sucsm, disable and set alert ; never thought that jaxonz could change lights' position ; found some handy tricks to change NPCs clothes or change their location ; and got another advertising for nioverride pose adjustments...

 

I think I'm gonna try to implement those little by little (maybe one per chapter :classic_angel:), but thanks for all this experience gathering, i'll be really helpful. Smiley_jap_HFR.gif

 

 

One question though : on the link you gave, it appears that pinup poser and haloposer are no longer two different entities. Does Halo poser still requires a clean save/new games, or can it be applied right on the fly like Collygon's for example ? million_dollar_baby.gif

On 6/18/2018 at 1:06 AM, Cema said:

4 - Don't use dof. It distracts the eye from the plot. This is storytelling not a fucking softporn picture from Tetrodoxyn's blog. more fps

5 - Use close fov. I usually shoot with fov 40 or 45. way less distorsion of characters during action scenes and way better close up

6 - Don't fucking use idle poses or standard walk pose because they are fucking boring. Your characters should ALWAYS be doing something

Rofl about Tetrodoxyn's...:classic_laugh:

 

About Fov I should get myself to use it, only thing I tend to save my scenes progressively and the game tends to keep fov console commands active over saves. So I'm often so afraid to be unable to get to default fov/bloat the saves that I avoid using it altogether. :classic_blush:

 

Lastly, about °6, welll it so happens that my characters do... walk sometimes. No need for posers to do so, though. ^^

11 hours ago, Alter Native said:

This never happend to me, all the poses get stored into the savegame and continue to play afterwards. If you have used tai on them they might be stuck in T-pose, but you can restore the pose by enabling the AI for a short time and tai-ing them up again.

Excessive and extensive modifications of the environnement and the NPC can lead to bugs. But indeed, you can let the NPC posed on tai, you'll just find her/him in T-pose on reload. Smiley_jap_HFR.gif

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Alter Native

Alter Native

Posted
  • Author
Posted
On 9/25/2020 at 6:08 PM, JyJyporridge said:

Very good guide , i've learned new things very usefull, many thanks ?!

 

I didn't know about sucsm and the getpos/setpos commands.

Moreover i asked myself why i couldn't rotate on some angles to take better screenshots. The FreeFlyCam Plugins will be a life saver :sweat_smile:.

Thanks, I may need to publish an updated version some time, but most of the information is still pretty accurate. 

For lightning I highly recommend the mod "custom light", it's not in the guide yet, but that's by far the biggest improvement. 

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