The photo references for my paintings aren't just any random images from the internet. But they are carefully captured from the game to suit my idea and composition for the painting
In this post I will walk you through how I capture these screengrabs
Hide the HUD display
setting to hide HUD First thing I do is hide that HUD display, thus providing a clean image. In the settings, I decrease the HUD opacity all the way down.
Enter Free Camera Mode
To enter into camera mode, I open the console (~ key) and then I have two options:
tfc: Toggle Free Camera, with animations on
tfc 1: Toggle Free Camera, with animations off. This is as good as freezing time
One more thing to note is, whether you see your character in free cam will depend if you are in first person or third person. If you entered the command while in third person, only then you can see your character
Changing time of the day
scenes at different times of the day Changing the time of the day dramatically changes the scene in the game. The direction of light, shadows, cloud formation and sky color are totally different at different times. It is a great feature to explore the feel of the place.
The command to do so is: set gamehour to <24 hour number format>
example: set gamehour to 14 for 2pm
Changing weather
scenes with different weather condition Different weather conditions also change the look and feel of a location. There are numerous codes for different weathers like clear, foggy, rainy, dusty and even a radstorm.
The command for force weather isis: fw <weather code>
Changing Field of View
scenes with different POVs Consider field of view as camera lens, higher the FOV wider the lens and smaller the FOV narrower the lens.
Higher FOVs giving wide anger view is best for capturing large buildings or areas. For capturing the Red Rocket references I had used wide FOV to cover the entire station.
Smaller FOVs are great to capture details, these close references help me to paint objects in detail.
Here is link to a reddit post which has list of weather codes and some other console commands. Not all commands are useful for me, the ones listed above are enough for me to get decent photos.
I refer multiple photos to paint the final piece, and these photos are just for reference. I may leave out unwanted objects or structures which doesn't add to my composition or I may add some stuff to convey the narrative. The goal is to capture the feeling of the scene rather than transferring the image to canvas,
Below is the Final Painting using above references
My Youtube Video: