Video Settings for Costume Screenshots

rabenschwinge

WIth the current video settings there are certain options which appear to be mutually exclusive, at least on my GeForce GTX 660 under Windows 8 (don't ask me for the driver version, I have no idea).

I can't use both anti-aliasing and effects like comic outlining and depth of field at the same time.

For screenshots comic outlining would be important so that the screenie looks comic-ish, though that's the least problem. An exception to that would be if the character's primary color is black, because then comic outlining does more harm than help. I would be curious if anyone knows a good filter for the GIMP to mimic the effect (using a layer with "find edges" or something like that).

Anti-aliasing would be important because often only a small portion of the actual screenshot is important, and I don't want that portion to be overly pixelated. An exception may be in cases where I intend to cut the actual motive out of its background and put it into a different one, because anti-aliasing makes it more difficult to separate anything from its background - an individual pixel may contain a blend of background and foreground colors.

Depth of field is. Hm. Difficult in video games anyway, because it's way too low for a photograph anyway - ideal would be if only the character itself was sharp. The current setting would be nice for landscape shots, but, speaking in photo camera terms it's like being forced to use a lense opening of 8 when you want an 1.8 or so. Anyway, if the background is particularly distant it can be of (limited) help.

So I am wondering which settings you guys use for screenshots.

kaiserin

It has something to do with DX11 for Windows 8, I don't know the details.


Turn off anti aliasing in CO.
Go into your Nvidia control panel (Start>Control Panel>Nvidia Control Panel) and click on Manage 3D settings.
Add Champions Online to the list. Make sure you add gameclient.exe, and not the patcher.
Twiddle with the settings. You can tell your card to use anti aliasing in the game.


Once you're happy with the game appearance you can make it look a little shinier using the in game command /renderscale.

I don't know the quality of your machine so start off low like /renderscale 1.5. I would not recommend going above 3, your machine will most likely detonate.

/renderscale 1 to reset it.

rabenschwinge

Thanks, I can't try right now because I am at work, but that sounds extremely helpful. I'll try shutting down every process I don't absolutely need before I try this renderscale option to free every last byte of memory I can.

PS: I have tried it out now and works pretty well. For the record, my computer makes about 91 fps (theoretically, my screen can only display sixty of course - I should enable vsync to conserve power) on FullHD with all in-game options against the wall, forcing 16x anisotrope filtering and 8 sample anti-aliasing on the client. With renderscale 1.5 it drops to fifty samples, 31 samples with renderscale 2, 20 samples with renderscale 2 and about 13 samples with renderscale 3. Since this is only for taking screenshots, it's actually quite alright. I don't need a high frame rate for that.

However, the screenshot file it saved didn't seem to be antialiased, even though the image I saw on screen appeared to be that way. Is that normal with oversampling?

It may of course have been just an impression that the image was anti-aliased since the displayed image was downscaled of course. Downscaling an oversampled image is pretty much the same as anti-aliasing, depending on which interpolation algorithm is used.

http://ubuntuone.com/7IXofeqiF3rclkxCswQrf8 (renderscale 2, 3840x2160 1,4MB JPEG)

kaiserin

There's probably a smarter way to do this, but I've never been happy with anything generated in the screenshot folder so I take a screenshot then paste the shot into an art program like photoshop or gimp and save it that way.

rabenschwinge

Erm, I don't get it. When I press ALT+PRINT my computer puts a screenshot into the clipboard (the client runs as borderless window, having trouble with full screen). But only at screen resolution... You mean you don't use the feature with /renderscale or am I missing something here?

Screenshots with fraps don't seem to work while using /renderscale.

PS: I noticed that if you press ALT+PRINT, the game client stores a (lossless) TGA file, which looks just like what you see on screen quality wise, but at the resultion set by renderscale.

kaiserin

I just use Print Screen

rabenschwinge

I use ALT+PRINT by default - that's a normal Windows shortcut for a screenshot of the current active window. I rarely need a screenshot of more than one window.

kaiserin

Just saying what I use, I get nice screenies via print screen and pasting it into a paint program.