A guide to getting the best quality screenshots.

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Briggsy
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Posts: 1523
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2012 1:02 am
Trainz Version: TRS2019 + TANE SP3
Trainz Build: 105096
Author KUID: 630773
Location: Coventry (West Midlands)

A guide to getting the best quality screenshots.

Post by Briggsy »

You may have noticed that some forum members' screenshots (such as Nexusdj and andytee67), have a little "je ne sais quoi" about them that gives them a superior crispness and photo-esque quality to them.

Nexusdj has very kindly offered the followings settings tweaks and tips that he uses to obtain his high-quality screenshots:
Nexusdj wrote:Most of the effort is down to TANE and its array of settings. My graphics card (ASUS Radeon R9 290x 4gb) settings are all set to "Use application settings" .

TANE's main settings are set to :

Shadow Quality: "High" (Ultra causes stutters on my current 8 year old temporary PC)
Main Shadow Resolution: 2048
Texture Detail: Normal
Post Processing: Off
Water Quality: High
Anti-Aliasing: 8x
Detail Update Rate: High
Use Multiple Render Threads: Yes
Use Texture Streaming: Yes
Use PhysX Simulation: No (But I do use it without any discernible frame rate loss)
Process Objects Behind Camera: Yes (but turned "off" on high detail routes to boost frame rates)

There are 2 more processes involved:

a) The first one is the tweaking of the colours in the environment lighting settings specifically "Ambient colour preview" and "Sun colour preview". These need to be set for specific times of the day. Most folks opt just to tweak the ambient colour preview so that it shows "Grey" or darker grey or even black in the preview box. It makes for an overall darker image but seems to really make the meshes in the Sim stand out as if they where a brand new type.

The "sun colour preview" can be adjusted to remove the bleached out effect and can be very effective if changed to a pink hue around dawn or sunset and if combined with a blue hue in the "ambient colour box" can make winter morning shots look very vivid.

b) The second process is started up after the sim is up and running in surveyor. Tab out the sim, go to the main TANE program window and click on the "developer" tab.
Click on "show post-processing settings".
With that open at the top select Mode and I either select "Ultra" or "manual". Ultra is a preset selection of settings but it certainly peps up the on screen image .

Manual mode is just that - you can mess to your hearts content to come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful effects on screen and the beauty of TANE's ability to run in windowed mode means you can have the settings window open above TANE to see exactly what you are changing .

The only downside at the moment is that you have no way of saving the external manual post processing settings when you shut down the Sim - so there's more time spent setting up the settings every time I run TANE, That's why I sometimes opt for Ultra mode to save time .
andytee67 has also expanded on Nexusdj's suggestions to say:
andytee67 wrote:Well with mine, my settings are pretty much the same as Dave's (Nexusdj's) oddly enough. The only difference I have is the water quality is set to low. I run TANE off an nvidia GTX 670 (4GB) card, which although older, seems to work quite well. I tend to set the sessions to run in the summer months... June/July, and start at mid day. But I guess that's down to personal choice.
IMPORTANT NOTE:

The above tweaks and tips are offered simply as suggestions only based on their computer hardware and experience. It is up to you to determine whether your computer is capable of coping with the tweaks shown. If your computer is not powerful enough, the above tweaks could make your screenshots worse and/or hinder your simulation experience. Therefore, any changes made to your settings are done so solely and entirely at your own risk.

The British Trainz Forum, its owner, administrators, moderators, or anyone else associated with the site, plus forum members Briggsy, Nexusdj or andytee67 are not responsible for any changes you make to your computer and / or settings and will not be liable whatsoever for any changes you make to your computer or its settings.

A very special thank you to Nexusdj and andytee67 for sharing their tweak suggestions with us.
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