Screenshots retouched

[rivalin]

More presentational stuff;

VS doesn't seem to be the most screenshot friendly game so I though I'd have a go at doing some post processing on some to pretty them up. I was fairly liberal with the effects but with the lack of engine aliasing/ low background resolutions/non spherical planets/flat planetary rings it was sort of necessary




















Again, sorry to be so incredibly unreasonable, but if someone could take the 5 minutes or so required to tell me if I'm wasting my time or not that would be great.

[Phlogios]

I hate to be negative, but it looks like you just blurred them.

The one with the Llama approaching the station looks good - but not as a screenshot. Screenshots should always be 100% real - it does look good as a promotional picture though.

[rivalin]

I hate to be negative, but it looks like you just blurred them.

probably cos that's all I meant to do , to cover up the rough edges while still looking like the game. Retouching is meant to be, well retouching, bit of colour correction, some highlights, some post processing dof and motion blur, bit of bloom. Guess it was a degree of subtlety too far.

The one with the Llama approaching the station looks good - but not as a screenshot. Screenshots should always be 100% real - it does look good as a promotional picture though.

Well i don't think they go in for the whole boy scout routine at most game companies but hey.


pr guy: those screenshots look boring, make them look better.

game developer: What!? That would be dishonest, I refuse!

pr guy: .....you're fired.

Just kidding, I wasn't suggesting some kind of immoral trickery, just making something a little more polished to show off the game. Anyway I guess it was a bit of a dumb idea.

[ace123]

The proper way to fix the jaggedy edges is by turning on "FSAA" or Antistropic Filtering and those sorts of settings that you can find in your graphics driver settings...
They will make it run a few times slower, and make sure you turn them off when you are done or it might cause problems in the future.

Also, it would be nice to post some of those pictures in the gallery--you can now use your Forum login there.

[rivalin]

np i'll post them up, which album should they go in? Anyway they're screenshots that I saw listed in the screenshot sticky post and did some work on so the aliasing artifacts were there to start with unfortunately.

[pyramid]

i'd suggest to make a new album with postprocessed images = wallpapers

[rivalin]

i'd suggest to make a new album with postprocessed images = wallpapers

tried that and the somewhat obtuse manner the gallerys oftware operates in... well I probably messed something up; the album works fine and shows thumnails, but when clicked they give this error message

Error (ERROR_MISSING_OBJECT) :
in modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage/DatabaseStorage.class at line 384 (gallerystatus::error)
in modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage.class at line 118 (mysqldatabasestorage::loadentities)
in modules/core/classes/helpers/GalleryEntityHelper_simple.class at line 87 (gallerystorage::loadentities)
in modules/core/classes/GalleryCoreApi.class at line 2186 (galleryentityhelper_simple::loadentitiesbyid)
in modules/core/classes/GalleryTheme.class at line 1164 (gallerycoreapi::loadentitiesbyid)
in themes/classic/theme.inc at line 182 (classictheme::loadcommontemplatedata)
in modules/core/classes/GalleryTheme.class at line 906 (classictheme::showphotopage)
in modules/core/classes/GalleryView.class at line 285 (classictheme::loadtemplate)
in main.php at line 287 (showitemview::doloadtemplate)
in main.php at line 87
in main.php at line 80

I've probably made some kind of elementary mistake but if someone could take mercy on my ineptitude and tell me how to fix it I'd appreciate it.

[pyramid]

Nevertheless, the images went in. Probably it's safe to just ignore the errors.

[rivalin]

I probably didn't explain too well; what I meant is that the album works, as in you can go into it, and the thumbnails work, but when you try to click on them and show the images full size you get that error message. I don't really get it as I used all the default settings when creating the album.

[ace123]

Ugh the gallery software is so complicated and buggy.
I think the images are actually there but it's something else related to a theme.

I'll look into that error tonight

[charlieg]

The idea is a good one for creating good promotional images for VS, but I agree with a previous poster - some of the blur is just way OTT. You only really pulled off the last one, where the main subject is still fairly sharp and you've only really blurred out the BG.

[ace123]

I fixed the error--the gallery software is so complex and weird (you saw how many of those errors had line numbers above 1000).

Apparently in one place, it was actually doing a query for multiple types at once which I didn't account for.

Also, I fixed the annoying "Thank you for calling VS&S error" so now the gallery is smooth and there's no excuse for anyone not to use it.

[rivalin]

made a couple more showcasing some of Fendorin's models and uploaded them to the gallery;







Still having a bit of trouble lighting space scenes but I don't think they came out too badly.

[loki1950]

Are you using screen shots as your source images if so try one of the test missions with a lighter background they are in the data/mission/test folder just start vegastrike with the mission name as an argument from a cmd line if you are on windows or in a terminal under Linux the model view mission has a nice background just edit the XML to include the ships you want to get pictures of then it just a matter of getting in to a good camera position you can use the keyboard to move the external camera as well with the bindings that pyramid added a while back and toggle the "i" key when you like the composition if you have problem with the procedure just or PM me

Enjoy the Choice