Hey friends and fellow virtual photographers! It's an honor to be asked to write one of these.

Like a lot of you, gaming has been a part of my life since I was young. I started on the NES and the family PC to everything in between up until today where I primarily game on my trusty PC. I've always been big into the visual arts such as traditional/digital art, photography, film and animation, amongst others throughout my life. All of those have inspired and influenced me in my journey with virtual photography. I think I initially became aware of this hobby in the early days when I first saw Dead End Thrills and the amazing shots they posted.

After that, I started to look into how it was done and over time I started to learn more and more as this new community grew. I'd already loved playing games and experiencing the stories and visual beauties inside these worlds, but now we had the tools to capture moments in these virtual worlds ourselves from new perspectives not possible before. I thought that was amazing and a lot of fun.

When I first started, I mainly took pictures for myself just for fun and it was like a visual memento of all the cool and goofy moments I experienced in the games I'd played. It wasn't until later when I started to find and join growing communities, such as on Flickr, Discord, or here on Steam itself, that I started to post more publicly. Seeing all the amazing photos that the community has posted was and still is a great inspiration.

Among the few tools available back in those dark ages were cheat engine tables, console commands (for naughty skyrim pics amirite???), ENB, SRWE for hotsampling and early camera tools by HattiWatti although maybe that came a little later. Nowadays we have a lot of amazing custom camera tools, mods and photomodes built right into the games! Technology!

The main tools I use today are Otis_Inf's game-specific camera tools, Universal Unreal Engine Unlocker (UUU), IGCS DOF, ReShade and its many shaders. Cheat Engine I use less nowadays; only for games that the previously mentioned tools don't work with. Besides the free-cam that Otis_Inf's tools unlock for Unreal Engine games, it also allows you to hotsample, add custom lights and adjust many post-processing options.

Most of the time I don't like in-game photomodes by themselves because of the camera restrictions but combined with free-cam tools to get unrestricted camera movements, then it can become more useful with all the extra image/animation/lighting adjustments and settings the in-game photomodes can offer.

Some games with big modding communities, such as Cyberpunk 2077, also have great mods specifically for photography like custom lighting, poses and all sorts of other utilities for you to get really creative with. So, all of that along with ReShade, you have plenty of ways to experiment and adjust the image to your liking. Outside of games, sometimes I'll do some post-processing in lightroom or photoshop if adjustments are needed or just to experiment with different looks.

As I mentioned earlier, a big influence of mine comes from my love of film and animation. I really admire the beauty of great compositions and framing in film cinematography; and in animations, the creative, extreme and sometimes almost impossible perspectives that are able to be rendered in that medium. I like variety so I try not to limit myself to any one visual style by experimenting and taking pictures of all types. Sometimes I'll have an idea already in my head of a scene I want to set up and capture and other times I'll just play until I see something interesting that makes me bring out the virtual camera.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3052027831

It was a lot of fun setting this picture up. I chanced upon this location just walking around the city and thought this overpass with the mega buildings in the background would make for a very cool picture. I wanted to fit the whole skyscraper into the shot to show the sense of scale of this city, so I decided to shoot it vertically at a low angle with an ultra wide-angle fisheye lens effect (done with ReShade). For the high-res final shot, I used Otis's camera tools to resize the window to a 4:5 aspect ratio that's small enough to fit my monitor resolution while I set up the shot and when everything is set up, I will resize it into a much higher resolution, while keeping the same aspect ratio, to render and take the final shot.

For this, I also had a lot of mods installed such as character poses, item spawning and custom lights. After a good long while of character positioning, trying different poses, setting up a couple of lights and then readjusting the camera again to get it just right; I noticed a flying vehicle that kept circling overhead in and out of frame that I decided I wanted in the shot. A nosey cop also happened to wander into the right side of the frame while I had the world unpaused and he would not leave. He stayed there in an idle animation leaning left and right checking out what we were doing. So, I ended up having to time the pause just right for the vehicle to fly into the right position and for the cop to lean away at the same time. Parts of his shoulder and helmet are still visible on the right side but you'd never know it if I didn't point it out. Shhhh.

After some final adjustments in ReShade, the IGCS DOF and getting ready to start rendering the final shot, there was one final bit of trouble with the strobing lights in the background. They did not pause with the rest of the world, so it caused some weirdness in the IGCS render where the lights bloom kept on growing while the picture was rendering. But in the end it didn't affect too much and I think it turned out pretty well.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2979545374

This one was as much a pain in the ass as it was fun to take. When I first saw the train chug by, I immediately had the idea that I wanted to take a picture of me flying on the Griffin alongside it over the bridge. So, in my head, I had it planned out: get on my Griffin, fly to the train station, wait for train to arrive, start flying alongside it when it arrives, profit! Right??? Nope.

Turns out the train moved faster than I could fly. I had to start way ahead, time it right, and start flying along the bridge before the train caught up quickly. I had to make sure I wasnt too high, too low, too far or too close to the train. I had to make sure to pause at the right time to have the bridge and the front of the train (and the smoke! Don't forget the smoke!) be in frame with the Griffin too. The Griffin also had to be in a good photogenic pose. And when I failed all that, I had to wait until the train came back again which took many real life minutes. Numerous failed attempts were made. Eventually I decided to look up a mod specifically to make the train's schedule restart way faster and that made it easier. In the end, after many more tries I finally got the resulting picture. Goddamn.

P.S. Also the smoke looked like ass so it needed some extra DOF blur and some retouching to fix it up a bit.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3039708552
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029632691

Now switching over to some portraits in two of my favorite games in recent years. These didn't require the kind of posing and positioning that the previous shots did. Mainly just freezing at the right time to capture a good pose/expression, setting up lighting and figuring out how you want to frame the shot. These games have some incredibly detailed character models, so it was great for close-ups. Baldur's Gate 3 is an isometric game, so I was very surprised at how amazingly detailed the character models were, especially when you got up close with the free-cam. It looks just as good as a game like Resident Evil 4 where the camera is always up close to the characters.

For the Ada shot I chose to frame only part of her face, because along with her expression, I felt it kept the mysterious vibe that she has; that you don't know which side she's on. The BG3 shot on the other hand is more straightforward, capturing the anger and bloodlust (from waiting at the DMV for this license photo).

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2980215656

Now, The Ascent is another isometric game with a very detailed world. I really love the sci-fi genre and the incredible worlds that come from it, so it was great to be able to take some cinematic shots from this game. There are a lot of strange and unique architecture in this world and I wanted to get a shot of the exterior of this night club in all of its neon drenched glory. I always like to add depth of field to my shots. In this case, I've adjusted the aperture and focal length to have the foreground out of focus to give the picture a greater sense of depth and space.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3005901802

For this shot, I was inspired by the visual style of the Spider-Verse movies as well as one of the original Spider-Man movie posters. I wanted to create a shot that looked like it came from the animated movies. Therefore, I had to do some color tweaking in ReShade, as well as make use of some of the in-game color filters, to get the purple shadows and orange lights that cover the cityscape. For the more exaggerated style you'd find in animations and comic art, I played around with the FOV and camera angles to get the more extreme perspective.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3261222910

I'm also a big fan of classic black & white samurai cinema, so of course this was inspired by those films. When I saw the gate in this village, it immediately brought to mind Kurosawa's Yojimbo and other movies like that where a mysterious ronin wanders into town and shenanigans ensue. The games photomode already has some nice black & white filters to start off with. So, using that as a base, along with some adjustments in ReShade, got me to the final look.

Most times when shooting, I don't take just one. I'll take many variations with different color gradings. I like to experiment with different colors and tones using the different shaders or LUTs and I'll take shots of each that I like. For example, I took multiple versions of this one with different color grades; one of them with colors that give it a more western feel. At the end I'll try to post one that I like the most. Although sometimes it's really hard to pick and I post a couple of alt versions.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3084228043

Appropriately, my final photo is a shot of an old cinema in Alan Wake II's dark version of New York City. This was an amazing game to play through, with some of the nicest graphics I've seen in recent times and I wanted to capture the feel of the games dark, moody and foreboding atmosphere. I adjusted the colors and increased the bloom to give the lights more glow and later added in the film grain in post to get that filmic noir look. Then, of course, set the DOF, hotsample it and off we go.

So, that's a little bit of insight into some of my pictures! I hope you enjoyed seeing them as much as I enjoy seeing all of you guys' captures and if you made it to the end, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the read and maybe learned a thing or two. I'm still always learning new techniques by experimenting and from you guys in the community as well. See ya around and keep on capturing those amazing shots!

-SweatyPauls

I havent typed up something this long in a while. If Steffa will allow it I will leave this last shot. It's me right now.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1929324467