In-game Photography

dead rising 1. the camera is one of the main parts.

Most of the Metal Gear Solid games have a camera at some point, thought I usually just used it to take pictures of the pinups in lockers and unconscious guards in funny positions.

Loading screen tip #24: Running around in Gmod with Super DOF enabled is a great way to induce eye strain!

I want instagram filters for game screenshots. You did a good job but something other than black and white would be cool.

I hear there's this awesome Pokemon game...

In game photography can be a fun thing, though I'm not a fan of B&W photography 99% of the time. It just feels like it tries too hard to me.

Anyway, I haven't done it in a while but Uncharted 2&3 and Wipeout HD both have some decent options for taking shots. I know I've done it with more but those are the only two that I can remember right now. They are both PS3 games, of course.

Some of theses are striking and quite beautiful. A lot of style and elegance. I feel like you captured the look of despair on the faces of the City 17 citizens and the oppression of the Combine.

@hsvlad: Unfortunately you can only do it in the multiplayer portions of Uncharted 3, which don't look nearly as good as the SP.

The issue that I've found with doing this before is textures. You may get the angle, the lighting, DoF and everything else right but fact is that 90% of the time the shot will be spoiled by an ugly texture, unless you have a monster PC with crazy mods, anyway.

The Fatal Frame series of games revolves around using a camera and using upgrades to it to take better pictures. Some of my favorite game moments were behind the camera lens with these games.

I think you did a great job. You really capture the dire state of city 17, and honestly capture a real human vibe from a lot of the shots. Keep it up duder.

Nicely done mate! Keep it up.

@Rabid619: I know what you mean about the texture detail. I thought about downloading the Super-high res texture mod for HL2, I think its called cinema or something, but decided to just go for it the first time around. I'll get it installed if I decide to do any more stuff in Half Life

The Combine with the light above him is fucking amazing. What resolution are these in?

Some sadly still scream VIDEOGAME to me but there's a few cool ones in there.
 
Keep it up, art saves!

@Inkerman: They're all 1920x1080

@TaliciaDragonsong: Yeah I know what you mean. I'm having trouble putting my finger on it exactly but I'm going to experiment with the aspect ratio and field of view. I don't want to do anything to the images in photoshop if I can avoid it, otherwise these stop being in-game photography and turn into Bull-shots in my mind.

@hsvlad: Yeah it's more fun to just go for it. Half Life 2 seems like a great subject to do something like that, too. Maybe I'll have to try it myself sometime.

@hsvlad: Love the idea of this too in games, sadly not a lot have been done. Only ones that come to mind that I've played where the photography has any kind of relevance to it are: Fatal Frame series, Silent Hill Shattered Memories (camera phone but still neat mechanic in game), Dead Rising 1 & Afrika (link to quick look on site). Out of all of them Afrika is probably the closest I know of to play with the options of all the gear you use in photography.

I'm glad someone mentioned Dead End Thrills, 'cause that always does look gorgeous.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

@hsvlad: Well my opinion on it is try to avoid known characters. The moment I saw Barney or Alex I lost all immersion because I know they are videogame characters. Its good though, there's a lot happening around the player and its a worthy thing to capture on digital image!

This didn't happen for me, but it's a good point nonetheless. Lord knows I'd be distracted if the same were true with a screenshot of Jenny Romano or Oleg.

Holy cow these are awesome! Just looking at them reminded me of the confused panic-y feeling I had when I first wandered around City 17. Well done sir.

Those look quite good. Good job!

Very well done. It would be great if more games had camera/dof tools.

Hey thanks for doing this -- just read your post, really cool. Hope you do more in the future.

@hsvlad: Pretty interesting stuff here.

This is now promo'd on the front page of the site.

Hate to hijack your thread but I also have a strong interest in ingame photography - I actually have a tumblr over at hiddenbeautyofgames.tumblr.com

I find some games are really beautiful when you take the time

@hsvlad said:

For New Vegas, there's this:

http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/39619

The Imaginator.

ENB is available for both New Vegas and Skyrim. Installation is simple and there are a lot of settings to play with. Not my screen shot, as mine are all pretty boring, but one from the ENB thread.

The base ENB settings are fairly taxing, if you're pushing 60fps+ fps now, expect performance to drop about 20fps. Some ENB settings are faster, some tax even the most powerful of systems.

That's one of my shots of a chain... for some reason.

Edit: Forgot to post the site for ENB.

http://enbdev.com/

Make sure you check the instructions. For the most part, you just extract the files to the game directory, make the tweaks, and run the game as you normally would.

You're a good picture-taker-person...

I prefer this to moving machinima by a factor of a billion. :) I think if you keep doing this you might wake up one day with an offer from Valve. ;)

Last time I checked my PC screenshot archive, it was over 2,000 culled pics since the late 1990s, but 95% are documentary, not composed for an artistic purpose. It is a personal crusade for me to play any and every game with a photography mechanic. From Snap to Fatal. From Rising to Afrika. It basically guarantees I will at least try it.

Holy shit dude these are fantastic.

@EVO: Thank you :)

Real good work OP. I studied photography as well and I'm currently working for a studio in Chicago. Even when I'm entertaining myself with video games I find myself composing screen shots and bringing them into Photoshop and editing them further. I really enjoyed Rage for that because of the texture depth, as well as red dead redemption, and really any game I get my hands on. I should really put some of it up in this thread to show you, but I'm always on my mobile when I'm browsing.
My friends always give me a hard time because when we used to play San Andreas together, (we'd play until we died, then switch) but I would never get into any trouble because I'd be in the slums with the in game camera trying to get some nice shots.

Games with in-game cameras (Afrika, Dead Rising) don't really do it for me for some reason, but I absolutely loved the camera on the Forza series. You have some really yummy options in those games.

Keep it up buddy!

These are great pictures, thank you for sharing.

...makes me want to fire up HL2 right now!

I think the first photo, the one of Barry on the bench, and the one of the combine under the light are by far the strongest. The one you mention as your favorite is one of the weaker ones for me. It 1) looks like a video game screenshot and 2) isn't a very interesting picture. I think some of your landscape ones would be improved with color. Since you obviously have the technical training, the skills, and the desire, I wonder if maybe you could try some color effects. Something like over saturating or bringing out the lights? Maybe finding a way to simulate the long exposure digitals that are currently popular. Best, this probably doesn't even require hardware, just outside software. Regardless, these are fantastic. Seriously wonderful.

worse yet i had a dream of some place in a game i played long ago and i realized that when i'm really old that may be a real memory of a place i've been.

scary[and yet i guess i was really was there ;) ]

I think there would be a huge difference if the blur created for the depth of field effect would take into account the shape of the aperture of the lens. This bright spot for example should be taking the shape of the aperture (which would depend on how many fins the aperture has).

@toastface: Yeah it would be great if the DoF in Garry's mod could simulate that. The way Gmod renders it is by rotating the parts of the image that are out of focus and blurring them together, it looks very odd buts its quite a clever way to do it. In theory it could create the bokeh effect you're talking about if it moved the image in a hexagon instead of a circle. It works great in Crysis 2 although it tends to exaggerate the effect a little.

It would be cool to see a camera realistically simulated like you describe. I'm supposed to be learning how to use Unity 3.5 for work so we can use it for interactive walk/fly throughs, I might look at building a camera simulation once I've got to grips with it.

That one portrait one and the 4 below it are great!

Anyone who dismisses these because they look video game-y is missing the point. I think it's a noble pursuit to try and simulate real-world aesthetics in video game photography (you're always limited to the graphical quality of the original game), but I'd be more interested in seeing what fantastic things in-game cameras are capable of that real cameras can't do. Most "artistic" game screens are of environmental architecture, which rarely does anything for me with real-world photography, so I think the trick is actually finding subject matter in games that's worth taking pictures of. I think you're on the right track with images like 2 and 4 and the vertical one. Interesting stuff.

These are really good.

This is pretty damn good :)

Also the ENB post up there^ +1 some ENB settings make skyrim look so nice, but my system can't run it very well.

It's fun also playing with the immobile Garry's Mod ragdolls. Little more easy to get the right pose you want when they're not moving.

I wonder if a mod exists to get the camera to act like a real camera. I'd love to download and play with that.