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Space Engine Screenshot Guide

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Dec 30th, 2014
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  1. ------------------------
  2. SPACE ENGINE
  3. HIGHRES SCRENSHOT GUIDE
  4.  
  5. ------------------------
  6.  
  7.  
  8. To take ultra high resolution screenshots in Space Engine there's a couple of popular methods, DSR and dowsampling.
  9. These however don't allow you to use the full potential of the game in terms of image quality and resolution.
  10.  
  11. The best way to do so is Hotsampling, an incredibly effective alternative to any other highres method, that however does not allow for regular gameplay
  12. and is only a method to farm screenshots or "render" them.
  13. The basics of how hotsampling works are as it follows:
  14.  
  15. The resoultion of the renderer is the same as the resolution of the output window.
  16. Which means that if you can edit the output window size, by effect the renderer will also change it's resolution.
  17. This is free from aspect ratio constraints, monitor size and aspect ratio constraints and is only tied to your ram and vram (how much your machine can handle).
  18. With hotsampling you use an external program to edit the window size of the game, in this case Space Engine to make it render things at much higher resolutions.
  19. The trick on why this is so important and good for Space Engine is that the game renders object detail based on your resolution, so the higher the resolution the more detailed
  20. and nicely rendered the image will be! No more jaggies, no more artifacts, no more choppy clay planets!
  21.  
  22. To edit thre resolution in Space Engine I use SRWE (Simple Runtime Window Editor, you can download it here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/7347/)
  23. There are a couple of alternatives that I don't like as much, that is up to personal preference and we'll get to it later. The alternatives are WBG (Windowed BorderlessGaming)
  24.  
  25. ------------------
  26.  
  27. The basics of SRWE:
  28. All you need to know is that SRWE is a simple injector tool, using the drop-down menu you can select the window you want to edit the resolution of. There are many different options
  29. but for Space Engine the only ones that matter to you are "Window Position and Size" - "Width" and "Height" (in pixels).
  30. The "Align Window" options are very useful when rendering large images because you can set the window to align Top Right and you will be able to see the renderer spinning widget.
  31.  
  32. Be careful with the resolutions you input since SRWE does the changes INSTANTANEOUSLY, so if you put a resolution of 12440x1420 by error you'll force the window to render all those
  33. 12440 pixels, which will inevitably crash your game, and if you went too high and your machine can't handle it possibly your computer too.
  34. My suggestion is to keep a .txt file with the resolutions you want to use and copy and paste them on the with and height inputs to avoid any mishaps like that.
  35.  
  36. Closing SRWE closes it's injection and will make the screen size revert back to normal, but since I've sometimes had some problems with that I recommend you set the resolution back to 1080p before closing space engine.
  37.  
  38. Remember that you can also use SRWE on any game you like to force a windowed borderless or fake fullscreen modes!
  39.  
  40. ------------------
  41.  
  42. The basics of high res screenshot farming:
  43. The initial process is the same as any other screenshot, find a good spot, set LOD to 2. Pause time (very important here!), use manual exposure and magnitude values and edit with the GUI all the settings you want to while still at 1080p.
  44. When you have the screenshot prepared you can jump to using SRWE.
  45. Open it if you hadn't already opened it and input the resolution you want to, set the window to show top right corner and wait.
  46.  
  47. You're gonna have to wait a lot depending on how big the screenshot is, the detail of the things (the closer you are to the ground the more detail there is, longer render times).
  48. It can take up to 20 minutes to fully render an ultra large image on my computer (my GPU is not too fast), the times may vary from computer to computer and there is no consistent time measure for this.
  49.  
  50. If the spinning widget disappears it means the image is finally rendered, so simply press F11 and the game will dump the high quality JPG to the screenshots folder with the full resolution you input it to.
  51. If you think the widget is stuck and nothing new is being rendered, try to take a screenshot and open it, check for faults and undetailed areas, if there are none the screenshot is good to go. If there are let it render more.
  52. Try again later, repeat this process untill the screenshot is perfect.
  53.  
  54. Once you've taken the screenshot use SRWE to revert your resolution back to your monitor's native, 1080p in my case.
  55.  
  56.  
  57.  
  58. TIPS:
  59.  
  60. Always use manual exposure (simple in 9.7.2) with the keybinds, magnitude and the other graphical options with the GUI (leftmost GUI is the one with graphical options).
  61. Always use LOD 2 for the best results.
  62. Never ever NEVER move your view when in high resolution mode, there is an issue with that that I'm not sure if is a bug or a side effect of the window-monitor resolution disparity. Your view will go crazy and all the work will be LOST!
  63. Always stop time when rendering images, it may not seem like much but it actually does help.
  64. When in doubt, take another screenshot. At these resolutions the game becomes laggy and unstable, and the F11 key may not register properly, so better make sure.
  65. Always move and find places with your native resolution, as I've said before the game is NOT playable when doing these high res renders.
  66. Remember that the resolution increases additively from your window borders, that means that if you have 1080p height and make it 2160p the image extends both up and down. The same goes for horizontal resolution.
  67. This is very useful because you don't have to calculate resolution sums, the x,y 0 coordinate when adding resolution is the CENTER OF THE SCREEN. Keep that in mind when making large panoramas.
  68. The FOV is best to be left alone, buf if you're confident enough you can try to change the FOV while in 1080 and use that to your advantage at the higher resolutions to make ultra wide open panoramic shots.
  69. Like with moving your viewpoint, you should never change the FOV while in high res mode.
  70.  
  71.  
  72. Hotkeys:
  73.  
  74. Hudless screenshot: F11
  75. Exposure mode: V (three modes in 9.7.2; off, simple and auto)
  76. Exposure values: "," and "." for less and more exposure
  77. Magnitude values: On my keyboard they're [ and ], may vary depending on your region
  78. Use the leftmost bar options to manualy edit more options using the sliders.
  79.  
  80.  
  81. -----------------
  82.  
  83. The basics of post:
  84. Once you've saved the image, they will be dumped on your /screenshots folder on your Space Engine install location. There is a little problem however, and it is the filesizes.
  85. You'll notice extremely large filesizes, most of which going over 20 and 30mb depending on the res and detail.
  86. If you want to post these on 4chan or any other place you'll have to either:
  87.  
  88. Downsample with bicubic filter: use PDF Creator for that, or one of the many online options
  89.  
  90. Resample: I use Paint.net for this, but you can use any software you like (just make sure it's NOT Microsoft Paint), simply resave the images as JPG again but with higher compression.
  91.  
  92. Resize and Resample: The best option to mantain great quality, sometimes resampling just doesn't do it and you get too many artifacts, simply use your preferred software to reduce the resolution and also resample as you see fit.
  93.  
  94.  
  95. Remember that the resolution limit on 4chan's normal boards is 10k x 10k, and the filesize limit is 4MB.
  96. The ideal is to aim for something like 8k x 5k @ 4MB, 3.8MB, w/e.
  97.  
  98. Always use high quality JPG, never use PNG for these images.
  99.  
  100. You can further edit your screenshots with PS, Lightroom or whatever software you want to further kill jaggies, fix color correction, etc. But that's cheating!
  101. Past 6k you'll notice a massive decrease in jaggies anyway.
  102.  
  103.  
  104. -----------------
  105.  
  106. Another useful tool that I use all the time: http://www.silisoftware.com/tools/screen.php?aspect_ratio=0.00&image_width=2600&image_height=1100
  107. An aspect ratio calculator, you can input any resolution and aspect ratio and it gives you the second resolution. Works great for these screenshots.
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