Hey! I love your screenshots so much! Do you have a guide on how you take them? Which mods, if any, do you use? How do you get the camera parallel to the ground at different heights etc? Any help would be amazing. Thank you!
Hey! Thank you! I love them, as well, and it’s always lovely to hear when others do!
Unfortunately, I am not much of a technical writer so I don’t have any guides.The reality is I spend hours and hours taking screenshots and I often feel like I luck into things looking nice.
But I can give you the same tips I give to my friends who have said it’s helpful advice:
Vanilla gpose is very good! You can do a lot in it without the need for 3rd party tools and I’ve found having a good, solid understanding of how gpose works is what really rockets shots into ‘oh wow’ territory. You really just have to touch all the buttons and see what they do and how they interact with each other.
The main thing is, for re/g-shade users: If it doesn’t look good in vanilla lighting, the preset isn’t going to make it suddenly stunning.
The second thing, for everyone, is: Play. Play is very important. If you’re not having fun you’re probably not gonna love the final result. If it feels like a chore, come back to it later! Play a different game!
The third thing, for everyone, is: These are not rules, these are not laws. Just because I do something a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the ‘right’ way to do it. Your eye is what makes your art beautiful.
I'm putting the rest under a cut because this wound up being three pages without the pictures because I ramble.
The parts of vanilla gpose I touch with every shot:
Camera Position: The first slider is your field of view. For portraits I set it to 200, but I tend to fiddle with it in all other shots until I get something I like. The second slider is rotation, very helpful to get to exactly 45 degrees or 90 degrees for shots. But you should also be able to use Q and E to rotate and this is fun to get neat angles on shots! Play with it!!
Depth of Field: I’ll be honest, I turn this sucker off because Reshade has ADOF which I think is better! But, I still suggest playing with this a little bit.
Lighting settings: You have three lights, each with three levels and each able to be a unique color. USE THEM. Find lighting objects in your setting that you can use to base the colors and directions off of. Is the moon full and above? Use a pale blue light as a rim light.
3a. Also, highly recommend looking at RL photography lighting set ups. This has been the most helpful. You can do a lot with three lights!!!!!
3b. Typically, I am mostly using two lights at type 1 or type 2. Sometimes I’ll use a third light, or that type 3 lighting, but it depends heavily upon the vibes.
3c. On this page there is ‘Character Lighting’ this makes your character brighter. I don’t use this at all because it tends to wash out shadows and shadows are an important part of lighting. I DO suggest that YOU use this to see how it works! A little is a lot, you know?
3d. THE MAIN THING IS TO PLAY WITH IT. Get weird with the lighting. Do really intense close up lights! Do funky colors! Cover them in bi lighting!!!!
Lighting Round Two: The one thing that my friends have said is the most helpful is telling them to use the Manual Birghtness Adjustment. This is on the general tab, not with your other lighting settings (circled in red). This controls the light of the WHOLE setting, including the brightness of your three lights. This is what really makes me go OH WOW. Turn it on, wiggle it around, be amazed. (Say it with me: Play with it!)
ADJUST YOUR LIGHTING.
Vanilla Gpose has a Motion Settings tab. This is what I use for my expressions but also a lot of ‘poses’ are just well captured emotes. A lot of this tab should be self explanatory.
The Eyes: The first eye has your subject turn to face the camera. You can have them look in a direction, turn it off, and freely move your camera around. The second eye is eye tracking. This is your friend! The head will stay stationary and the eyes will follow the camera.
Movement: Walk, run, sprint. Forward, left, right, back. Pause, play, reset.
Lip Movements: This, in junction with expression emotes, is very handy! Type 1 is minimal, type 3 is a lot more head movement. Pause, play, reset buttons.
Emotes: You already know what I’m gonna say. PLAY WITH THIS. Almost every emote can have an expression emote overlaid it and have lip movement added.
A personal favorite is /aback, /beam, lip movement 2, eye tracking.
Now. When you enter Gpose your subject is gonna be doing the animation they were last doing. To stop this, ground sit and stand before you enter gpose to start with a clean slate. However, this is also how you can get cool action shots. Using a dummy you can use an attack, reset the dummy, and enter gpose and your subject will be flailing wildly.
Some of the emotes and actions can move very quickly! To move things frame by frame we’re going to use the Disable/Enable Motion buttons. You have two of these at the top of the gpose settings.
Disable/Enable All Motion - This will pause or start all the motion of all the targets in your gpose! My Keybinding for this is 1 and I think this is the default for PC users.
Disable/Enable Target Motion - This will pause or start the motion of your current target. (Tab cycles through the characters caught in your gpose.) My Keybinding for this is 2 and I think this is the default for PC users.
To go frame by frame by frame through an emote or action you’re going to freeze the character (1) and then, rapidly, you’re going to hit 1 then 2. (1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2) this unfreezes your subject and then refreezes them. Be mindful of your eye tracking and camera!
One last thing: Take a LOT of shots. From all sorts of angles, with all sorts of lighting, with different expression. For every 1 screenshot I post there are about a 100 others that I didn't like as much.
Whew, okay, I think that covers the stuff I tell my friends. Sorry this got kinda long and it might be confusing because, again, I am no technical writer!
Now, I do use 3rd party tools but I’m only comfortable talking about those off anon! Other than Reshade. I understand social anxiety might keep folks from asking directly but I am a nervous person myself and just do not feel comfy talking about that stuff so publicly. But I try to be helpful where and when I can!
Apologies, anon, if this isn’t what you were hoping for in a reply but if anyone else reads this maybe they’ll learn a new trick or idea of idk something!!!
If you read the all thing that's fucking WILD and the only reward I have for you is my love !!
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Heka -- Fragileshipping
CW: Suggestive, references to magick and witchcraft
Atem was told that paradise was in the Reeds.
It was when his soul was finally at rest, sitting among those he loved with the living world far behind him.
They were wrong.
Paradise was Ryou's body spread out under him on soft sheets, long hair fanning out under him like a halo of white and soft skin all open for his mouth and hands.
Ryou casts a beautiful spell with his voice and Atem is gleefully helpless to respond: he casts spells of his own with his mouth and lips, tracing symbols into his partner that Ryou will never understand and Atem can never read.
Gods above, protect this man. Give his soul the strength that I lacked and allow him to power through all that ails him.
Gods above, let me love this man. Give me time and time and time and time to love him until I lose my breath.
Gods above, let this man join me in the Reeds when I return. Weigh my heart with his so that no matter where he goes, I will follow.
Ryou never understands, but his eyes weave heka like he breathes. Like the circles he casts in his living room to protect them from harm and herbs he sanctifies and puts in their food to keep them healthy, he keeps Atem in the moment.
He keeps him from losing himself to the magic that they weave together and always allows him to go back to what's most important: Each other.
"I love you," Ryou breathes.
"I know." Atem chuckles.
"Kiss me," Ryou whispers.
"Anything for you," Atem murmurs.
Heka blooms around them as their bodies come together, and it will happen again tomorrow. And the next night. And the next. And the next.
Until the Reeds call them both home.
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OH I WILL ! CHECK OUT THE VIDS WHEN I HAVE THE CHANCE.. [the horrors of having no free time nowadays] and. looks at you with my big autistic eyes. tell me more about benny? :0
YAHOO!! I HOPE YOU'LL HAVE FREE TIME SOON ALSO YOU DESERVE A GOOD LONG BREAK!!! STAY STRONG OUT THERE BOSS YOU GOT THIS!!! ok ok so benny AAUGH benny. AGAIN SPOILERS ahead. i guess it's convinient, he has like. probably the most fletched-out story out of all the characters since he's the one you control, even when rodriguez, who is normally the leader, joins your party. although in the rodriguez route benny doesn't reflect all that much on his life from what i remember. speaking of reflecting on his old life! if rod dies and the story kind of, goes how it usually goes, at certain points you get flashbacks to benny's life before the flash. he worked at a burger place with his friends (clyde and liam) where rod was their manager. besides the two guys he was also friends with a girl named amy (at least i'm pretty sure that's her name, based on the fact that a joy mutant called the same thing uses the move "familiar cry" which implies that you knew that person, but also in the hopeless (an in-the-works sequel to the hopeful) it seems like that childhood friend is alive?? idk i'll keep calling her amy it's shorter). she's stated to have friendzoned him and (as i interpret it and i might be a little biased as someone aroace) if im being honest he doesn't really look like he cares that much? if anything clyde and liam (the latter actually called her out for "leading benny on" once) seem to care way, way more.
^i like this dialogue (it goes clyde, benny, clyde btw) i think it's funny but it also serves as an example. he doesn't even get what they're talking about, i think he just doesn't give a shit about "getting their relationship to another level", thruthfully. ok benny aroace icon headcanons to the side, coming back on the tracks um. so benny's like, well he's trying his best as a leader if rod dies, he's pretty much the sole party member to try and support his friends and cheer them on. he tries to help lanks after what happened to him when they got captured by the lovelies at the beginning of the game, even though he doesn't exactly know how to do that. in, geez i think clyde's route? he gets shot through the eye, which either turns him into a joy mutant or eventually kills him later on. i can't for the love of me remember what happens in liam's route but he for sure dies, since it's not his route. in rod's route they just all die at the end. NOW. in benny's route at the sportsdome, he gets shot in the knee, lanks gets taken and clyde gets set on fire but survives (if he isn't joyed). they fight on a little more but both of his friends eventually end up dead, so he tracks the lovelies down and kills them. the final boss is in every route, a guy named hart, the leader of the lovelies. beltboy's run actually has one of the more difficult versions of this fight BUT what is interesting is that for the first part (before hart turns into a joy mutant, beginning a phase 2 of sort) liam and clyde actually ARE THERE TO HELP!!! like. in benny's spirit. this doesn't happen for liam or clyde, they're stronger because of their anger and grief, especially liam, but i think what allows benny to win is his kind attitude and frienship, which is really cheesy but idk what other way i could interpret that. THIS also. allows him to survive in the end! as five is relieved that he's approached her like a normal person and gets him patched up. idk idk he makes me feel so many things. kind of unrelated and again, i'm probably biased cuz i love projecting, but i think reading him as an aroace man like. makes sense. i see a lot of how i think in him. he does make comments about "getting the girl", yes, but i think that's more to like, please his friends and keep their spirits up or whatever. other than that he seems disinterested in a romantic relationship with amy, it doesn't bother him at all it's not sexual or anything, he tells five that "he needs a friend" when he stumbles into her hideout half-dead after the fight with hart. aroace guy TO ME!!
^me right now as we speak btw. more dialogue propaganda also
and he loves his friends!! ok i think that's all i can recall
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