Allo-allo fellow simmers! Soooo I'm thinking about starting the Legacy Challenge and posting it here in the Sims Creativity section of the site; I was wondering if you lot had any tips for taking better screenshots in-game?

An example of what I would normally consider an okay shot. Not terrific, not terrible.


PS - My computer isn't equiped to have the graphics turned up too high.

Also, would anyone actually read it? (If it was sufficiently interesting/updated regularly, that is.) Let me know!

Are you using print screen or the in-game camera? The former is better.

I'd suggest you use Fraps. It helps you take multiple screenshots at ease. Also, try to avoid too conventional compositions (Sim right in the middle of the photo, everyone equally spaced, sim's picture being full frontal, etc.) and go for unusual angles, off-central compositions instead, if you're looking to take more artistic shots.

I guess I would read your Legacy =)
As for the pictures, I always thought that lighting is a very important part.

I mainly use floor lamps (those 'wooden' ones with a candle on the top coming out from base game) for my screenshots. For indoor shots, I place them around the sims, so that there' enough light to see them clearly, but also enough contrast so that their facial features don't vanish in the light. Playing around with the colours can also help a lot if you want to give a particular atmosphere to the pic. For example, in my story, I had to set a scene in a night club: giving each light a different colour (like, cyan, yellow and magenta) helped a lot to give the whole 'club' feel to the thing :D

Here's one of the pics I took (the angle could still have been a little better, but oh well here I had both floor and ceiling lights)

Outdoors lighting is tricky: during the day, you will have some pretty horrible lights, with harsh contrasts on some parts and no details at all on other parts. In that case, there's not much you can do, apart from trying to move the sims where the lighting is not *so* terrible. At night, though, you can still resolve the issue by placing around some coloured lights (blue, cyan and some white, maybe). In this way, you're going to have a better illumination on the sims, without making the scene look too unreal.

Other tips:

-use the "hideheadlineeffects on" cheat to hide plumbobs, balloons and all of the possible effects on sims -also the bars that appear on them when they're learning skills or reading books-. HP's tiny texture replacements can also be useful to get rid of effects like the 'zzzzz's that appear on sims when they sleep =)
-moveobjects on and the Alt key are your friends with moveobjects on you can move the sims where there's a better lighting, or just put some particular sims closer. With Alt you can place the sims and objects freely, without the need to use the grid. There are really a lot of possibilities with the cheat on only one thing, though: in the majority of cases, if a sim is interacting with an object and has his/her arms "attached" to it, if you use moveobjects on the sim, the arms will bend/distort in very weird ways D: this happens also if you try to move two sims hugging each other and similar stuff. You can safely move away sims that are talking, though.
-testingcheatsenabled is useful, too: not for cheating (since you're going to do a legacy, I guess you won't use cheats), but for editing community lots while you're still in game. This may help you if you need to change the lighting in a particular community lot: shift+click on the lot, click on "edit the lot", add the lights you need and then go back to the game to take the pictures. You can delete the lights once you're finished with the pics =)
-The 3D visor for videogames is useful for facial expressions: make a sim use it, once he/she puts it on, go to buy mode with moveobjects on and take the visor off the sim. Don't delete the object, though: just put it somewhere on the floor or everywhere else. Once you go back to live mode, the sim will do the same animations he/she would do with the visor on, but you will be able to see his/her full face. Many of these animations include funny expressions that can be useful for stories :D

Happy simming :P

Thanks for the tips, especially the one about the visor. I can't wait to try that out; the expressions they made are half the fun of the game.

It's going to be more player commentary and less "Jill woke up and went to work, and she had a lovely time."-type stroy telling, so I'm not going to edit out things too hard. I just want to be sure to get clear pictures from captivating angles of interesting subjects.

Working on the "interesting angles" thing. The in-game camera can get pretty restrictive about that. :P

Took a picture of the founder with the reality goggles trick. Great tip, thanks!

Upon reading the Stories requirements very carefully, I'm not sure my commentary would be up to snuff as a "story." I'm rather ambivalent about posting the legacy here, it may very well not happen. Poking around the threads to see if I can find more clairification on that.

*LOL* I love the Goggle google eyes