Taking A Screenshot

Here are the settings we use when taking promotional screenshots for ETQW:

Before Loading Map

Firstly, make sure you are running the game in a 16:9 widescreen resolution and aspect ratio. To make sure you are using the highest-resolution textures, set this cvar in the console then restart the game:

• image_picmipEnable 0 - This turns off any "picmip" settings that individual materials may use.

When back in the game, set this value in the console:

• r_md5usehardwareskinning 0

After Loading Map

Set these values in the console (or put them all in a .cfg file and exec that):

• image_anisotropy 8 - Uses best texture filtering.
• r_md5LodBias -9999 - Draw models at best detail to further distance.
• r_stuffFadeEnd 10000 - STUFF draw distance end (makes grass draw to a further range).
• r_stuffFadeStart 9000 - STUFF draw distance start (makes grass draw to a further range).
• r_useMaxVisDist 0 - Turn off distance culling. Beware, this may cause "minVisDist" models to be drawn all the time, which is bad!
• r_visDistMult 1.2 - Push detail distance back a bit.
• r_skipImposters 1 - Turns off billboard sprite LODs.
• g_skipPostProcess 0 - Make sure post-processing is on.
• ui_showGun 0 - Don’t draw the firstperson weapon models.
• g_showHUD 0 - Don’t draw the HUD.
• com_showFPS 0 - Don’t show frame-rate counter.
• con_noPrint 1 - Don’t show console output on screen.
• r_aspectRatio 1 - Make sure we are in 16:9 aspect ratio.
• bind F11 "screenshot 2560 1440 8" - Set F11 to take a high-resolution, 8x antialiased screenshot.

Field of View

Lowering the Field of View (g_Fov <angle> in the console) will help fight camera distortion, but lowering the FOV too far from the default 90 will cause the MegaTexture to look lower resolution. This can be countered to some extent by freezing the MegaTexture tile loading at the point of focus of the shot by entering r_skipMegaTexture 1 into the console while hovering over the location you want the most detail, and then tracking back to the appropriate camera position.

Lighting

For tweaking the atmosphere settings of the scene you can type editAtmos while the game is running windowed to launch the Atmosphere Editor. Here you can select from a predefined list of atmospheres, or tweak an existing one. It is not recommended that you move the sun angle too much from its original location as the predefined lighting on the MegaTexture will start to look wrong. For a specific shot you can play quite a lot with the ambient light tab, to improve the lighting on the intended screenshot subject(s).

NoClipping

To move around the scene it’s best to use the free fly mode. Type noclip in the console. To adjust your movement speed use pm_noclipspeed <speed> (200 is the default, 100 is slower 300 is faster, etc). You should also be able to hold down the Shift key to temporarily move at a faster speed (which itself can be changed with the pm_noclipspeedsprint cvar).