Screenshots - How to get cool ones
Greetings my friends,
here's a little advice (One day I might make a full-blown tutorial) on how to make good screenshots - both with the movie_cam or with the ordinary RTW or Total War camera.
RULE 1: Take your time, be patient and plan ahead.
Getting good shots takes time, and sometimes meticulous planning (ask anyone who's ever done a movie, no matter how big or small). On a good day, you find a cool motif through serendipity, on most days, you have to carefully search for it. I find it useful to plan ahead. If I need a screenshot of a cavalry unit charging, I set them up during battle set-up so that I can expect the best lighting and background scenery from the angles I plan to make the screenshot. Yes, that's right, In order to get a cool screenshot, it's legitimate to set something up just for that one shot, like in a movie.
RULE 2: Avoid flat lighting.
Again, this is a movie rule. If you observe visually rich movies (try James Cameron, Ridley Scott or Peter Jackson, for example), you will notice that almost every scene is filmed with a real (or virtual) lightsource that's anywhere but directly coming from behind the camera. Learn to appreciate the interaction of light and shadow, and how backlight or ambient light brings out the silouhettes and details. This sort of lighting always looks more dramatic, no matter what the scene, than does flat lighting that illuminates everything in the frame with only a minimum or merely a hint of shadow.
RULE 3: Mind the composition.
What's in the frame, what's the central motif or the eye-catcher, and where is it located within the frame? You might have a cool scene with two warriors engaged in a cool animation of fighting as your eye catcher. Putting this in the middle is not always the best option. Explore the frame with the in-game camera - more often than not you will discover that your central eye-catcher looks even better or more dramatic if you shift it from the center to the left or right part of the frame, and allow some frenetic background action into the remainder of the frame, or a cool landscape vista.
RULE 4: Avoid the game's graphical shortcomings.
This refers to clipping (parts of the models intersecting becouse there's not much of a collision control), awkward limb distortions because of extreme animations (such things become noticeable if you move in close in movie_cam mode), or moving the camera partially inside a model, like a tree trunk, for example. These flaws are often obvious, but on many occasions, you will notice them only after you've taken the shot, so carefully examine your frame beforehand. The >pause< button is your friend. Hit it and hit it right again until you have the perfect frame of an animation or get rid of the flaws described above.
That's just some quick advice, I hope it proves helpful. Bring on your screenies!
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