RGM?s Tips Tricks and Thoughts on Screen Shooting
First off I need to say I am a little bit reluctant to post this, because there are a lot of other people out there who have been into screen shooting far longer than I have, and I am sure their knowledge is much greater than mine. However, I do have a few ideas on this, so I am going to put them forward.
I am going to assume that anyone reading this already knows how to take a screen shot, and has a reasonable knowledge of console commands, and is just looking for some ways to improve on what they are already doing. I?ll try not to rehash too much of what is already posted in the Screen Shooters Guide, but I will skim over a few things. Mostly I will stick to a few specific techniques that I use.
Pose Mods (skimming over)
One of the most commonly asked questions you see in the forums is ?what Pose Mod did you use in that picture?? Or ?where can I download that Pose Mod?? If you have never used Pose Mods before, the first one you should download and get familiar with is
Actors in Charge. The reason for this is because
AIC has an English language Readme file, and will be easier to learn, assuming that most people reading this cannot read Japanese. Once you learn
AIC you should be able to figure out the others without any instructions.
These are the ones that I am currently using:
Actors in Charge
EFG Add Pose
JOJO effect/Standing JOJO
OSR Pose
Lain Pose
Seph?s new animations
Actors Emotions
Caution: It is possible to have your character stuck in a pose. This usually happens to me when switching back and forth between different pose mods without resetting the animation. It is less likely to happen if you reset the animation for each pose mod.
Example: you strike a pose in EFG but you?re not happy with it and you want to try one of the OSR poses, Reset the animation in EFG before you select a new animation in OSR.
Tip: When working on a screen shot I always have the Pose Mods hot-keyed, it saves a lot of time.
Here are a couple of examples of posed shots with explanations on how they were done.

In the first one, I was doing a series of arena combat shots with my girl
Divinity and the
Gray Prince. At this point I wanted to show a beaten Prince on the ground with my character standing over him. The caption I had in mind was
?Yield or Die?. This was an easy shot to do. I used the
kill command on the prince, but because he was essential he did not die, instead he only went unconscious. He lay on the ground for a few seconds and then tried to get to his feet. So as the Prince raised his head and started to pull himself up, I toggled the console and used the
TAI command on him, freezing him in place. From there it was just a matter of finding the right pose for my character and then maneuvering her into position. In free camera mode I took about ten pictures from different angles. The only thing about this shot that was actually difficult was deciding which picture to post.

In this second picture I was using
Floydian?s Sia character, which I got from a saved game he posted some time ago. She doesn?t look as good on my antique system as she does on
Floydian?s, but she is still an amazing face to work with. I wanted to do a commando type shot where she would be attacking from behind and cutting her enemy?s throat. I was looking at all the possible poses and I couldn?t really find what I wanted. I did come across a pose that gave me another idea. I had planned on having her sticking her dagger into her enemy?s throat, but I changed it to having her holding his head in one arm and holding the dagger with the other. I used the
kill command on the bandit, and as he started to fall I toggled the console and used
TAI on him, holding him in place in mid fall. Next I used
TCL on the bandit. This allowed me to move Sia as close to the bandit as I wanted. I then put
Sia into the selected pose, and while in 3rd person I maneuvered her into position. At this point I should have been ready to take some shots, but the lighting just wasn?t good enough. The solution was to have
Sia cast a
light on self spell. Now she wouldn?t cast while in the pose, so I reset her animation and cast the spell. When I put her back into the pose she went into exactly the same position she had been in, in relation to the bandit. I think it worked OK, and it was an easy shot to do.
A few days later I tried with a different character to do the original idea, still couldn?t get what I wanted, but I did get something I liked.

The techniques used were the same, and of course it was easy.
Levitating Multiple Objects
There are two ways of doing this. The first way you might already know, whereby you use
global TCL and walk/fly around and drop items. I believe this is covered somewhere else in the Guide, so I?m not going to get into that ? it?s pretty straight forward anyway. I want to tell you about another way of doing it, which I haven?t seen mentioned anywhere, so this might be new to you.

Using the
Z-key/grab-key, position an item where you want it suspended. With the object still held in position toggle the console, click on the item to display its
ID. Take note of the
ID;
write it down, you will need to know it later. Now type
disable and the item will disappear from your screen. Close the console. At this point, even though you can?t see it, the item is exactly where you left it, still hanging in the air. Now you can repeat the above mentioned steps to float a 2nd 3rd or 4th item, or as many items as you want, taking note of the
ID of each one. When you have placed all your items, toggle the console and use a
global TCL (with no item selected,
no ID showing at the top of the screen, type
TCL). Now go back to your notes and get the
ID of the first Item and type
<item id>.enable example:
ff013c02.enable and the item will appear exactly where you left it. Enable all your hidden items. If you are doing a serious attempt at a shot, then using the global
TCL and
enabling all your items should be done after you have positioned your actors; it will make it easier to avoid having your feet clipping into the floor. I haven?t done too much with this trick, other than a couple of test shots, but I think if you were willing to put the effort into it, you could get some amazing results.
A Trick Of The Light
This is an easy one. Look at the two pictures below and you will notice they were taken at the same time and the same place, but the lighting is of course different.


The first picture uses the game lighting as it is supposed to be. In the second picture the background sky is overexposed and the white on the dress is brighter. This is achieved with the force weather command. The overexposed picture isn?t necessarily better, it?s just different. If you don?t know the weather codes, here is a list:
Force Weather - FW
Paradise - 370CE
Clear - 38EEE
Cloudy - 38EF0
Default - 15E
Fog - 38EEF
Overcast - 38EEC
Rain - 38EF2
Snow - 38EED
Thunderstorm - 38EF1
Oblivion sky - 836D5
To return to normal ?
ReleaseWeatherOverride
To get the over exposure, what I did was force weather to paradise, and then force it to oblivion sky.
Toggle console and type
FW 370CE enter and close console. You now have paradise. Open the console again and type
FW 836D5 and
enter, but do not close the console. You should see the overexposed sky. If you close the console it will change to the Oblivion sky, so you have to take your shot with the console open. Clear the screen and move your curser so it is not visible, and then take your shot. Changing the weather combinations can get different types of lighting.
Setting the Global Timescale
This is something I like to do to preserve the light, so a sequence of shots will have a sense of continuity, especially useful with a nice sunset.

To change the time scale to match real life time, type
set timescale to 1 setting the time scale to 0 should stop the passing of time, but I prefer to set it to 1 as it gives it a very natural feel. To revert to normal game time
set timescale to 30.
Using Low Graphics Settings to change the look of your shot
This is simple. Open your video options and adjust the view distance and the faders. Reducing the view distance can give you a more spacious or surreal looking world.
Easy Action Shots
There are a lot of ways to do action shots, but one of my favorites is to just sit back and let the game do all the work. This will work best if you are using a mod like
companion share and recruit, but you can do it without. What you are doing here is creating a clone of yourself and letting the clone do the fighting, you just play the role of cameraman.
Before you clone your character you need to exorcise some inventory control. Strip your character of everything except for what you would want your clone to have access to. Put all the extra stuff in a safe chest or sack. It is very important that your clone not have any pose mod rings. If your clone puts on a pose mod ring he/she will be stuck in that pose until you remove the ring. You can give your clone extra health or skills using the console. Examples:
Setav health 500 or
setav blade 100
Here are a couple of shots I took using this technique.

Unfortunately these pictures were taken in low resolution because I was actually playing the game at the time, but I liked them anyway.
Here is the sequence of events:
1 Entered the Tomb and played it straight until the fight started
2 Used global
TAI to hold everyone in place
3 Removed all undesirable items from my inventory
4 Cloned my character using
player.createfullactorcopy 1
5 Raised my clone?s disposition to my character
moddisposition 14 100
6
Recruited my clone as a companion using Share and Recruit`
7 Moved my character to a secluded corner where I would be out of the way
8
Cast invisibility on myself so my body would not be seen
9 Went into
free camera mode and moved the camera to where I could get a good view of the action
10 Released the global
TAI and let them fight
At various times in the fight I toggled the camera to freeze the action. If it looked like I had something interesting, I
saved the game and initiated
Trollfs trick. Then I moved around the frozen scene and took shots from different angles. When I was done I used the task manager to exit Oblivion
Ctl-Alt-Delete. I then removed the shots I had just taken and put them in a new folder. This was to protect them from being overwritten, because when you exit the game abnormally there is a good chance that your ini file will not be updated, which could cause your screens to be overwritten.
Presentation
By presentation I mean
how you show you screens to other people. There is not much I can say about this because it is really a matter of personal taste. Some people just post a list of numbered shots, while other people write captions or stories to support their post. It doesn?t really matter what you do in that regard, somebody wont like it, but others will.
Important things are to
preview your post and make sure your links are working. A
spell checker is a good idea as well. Keep an eye on your
file size.
Larger file sizes take longer to download, and that is an easy way to turn people off. Do
direct links to your pictures so that the viewer doesn?t have to look at all the advertising and pop-ups that come with so many of the web hosts. I can tell you this, if I get a pop-up when I click on your first link, I won?t click on your second link, and your picture doesn?t have to download in 5 seconds, but I need to see that it is in fact downloading. If I click on a link and it just hangs, maybe because your website is slow, or maybe because you posted a file that is close to a megabyte or more in size, well I?m not going to wait forever, and I suspect I am not the only one.
Getting Comments On Your Post
Careful what you ask for, you might get them. So many times I have seen new posters asking for a critique of their work. Some people will take this as a license to be hurtful. Even if someone is not trying to be hurtful, that won't stop it from hurting. I try not to give critical comment on anything anymore. It?s too easy to be misunderstood. I?m sure I have given what I considered to be constructive comment, and had my words totally misinterpreted. With my own pictures I am sometimes relieved not to get comments; comments require a reply, or the person who commented may feel slighted. I?m not a chatty outgoing person in real life, so it?s not easy for me to do that on the net.
But if you want comments, and you post often enough, you will get them. Keep in mind, if you don?t get a comment on a post, it doesn?t mean that nobody clicked on your pic, or that nobody liked it. I?ve seen hundreds of shots that I thought were amazing, and I never commented on them. Not everyone is inclined to comment, or in the right frame of mind to put the effort into communicating what they think. In the end you have to post pics because it?s what you want to do. If you like the shot you posted, that is what matters. To sum things up, here is one more pic from me. It is one of my favorites. It has been seen by thousands of people and has never been commented on. Other pics in the same series were commented on, but not this one, even though I thought It was the best.

The caption here would read,
?We?re done here, I?m finished with you?. Did the fact that nobody commented on it mean that nobody liked it? I don?t know, but I liked it and I still do, and in the end that is what counts.
One last thing, if you discover new tricks or new ways of doing things, share them here on this thread. Remember, other people shared their ideas with you.