How to take pictures of my character

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Anouck

Queen of Procrastination
Hey everyone,
on the forums I often see screenshots people take of their characters. But these aren't "just" screenshots. They usually look very good and the characters that are in it are often even posing.

I recently decided to purchase Skyrim on pc - even though I already owned it on Xbox. I modded the game and am now interested in taking screenshots of my game. But I didn't succeed at finding the proper mods to make it happen. For some reason the animations just never work. I installed several programs to make it happen, but nothing worked out.

Could any of you explain me how to make this happen? I am new to the whole modding thing so I don't know much about it.
 

JoeReese

Well-Known Member
Hey Ano. For the screenshots, I believe steam uses F12 as a default. That's what it is for me, at any rate. What I usually do is put myself in 3rd person mode, hit ~ to open console, and type:

tfc 1

then ~ to close console. That will freeze everything around you in place, including spells in mid-cast, and allow you to spin the camera around yourself, or use it to fly around the local area. You can get some very nice action 'selfies' that way, or overhead scenes, etc.

When you're done, just open console and type:

tfc

and it will return to normal play. If, at first, you use
only the tfc (without the 1) then you still have the free camera, but it doesn't freeze the action around you. Typing tfc again sets that back to normal as well. I've found the best shots using the 1 afterward.

As far as posing goes, I've heard about pose mods, which let you position your character like they were posing for a portrait or group pic, etc. ,but I've never used them. I believe you'll find the majority of things on skyrim.nexus.com.
 

JoeReese

Well-Known Member
One other helpful tidbit. For some reason, steam buries the screenshots in some obscure, numbered folder. Even after I went into settings and designated a "skyrim screenshots" folder, steam ignored me and kept sending them to its own folder. I finally gave up on setting a destination. When you exit your game, the screenshot box will come up and prompt you. Hit "show on disk" which will give you the 'secret folder,' then back up one level, so the folder appears in your windows explorer list. Right click on it, and select "send to" and then "desktop (create shortcut). That way, you can always find your screenshots easily, without having to remember steam's ridiculous folder number.
 

Harkin

Necromatic Mastermind
Steam is like 1 of those softwares that doesn't do well with modifications to its presets, I remember trying to rename steam.exe, cause I wanted it to run from desktop with administrator and wanted to run a game not through steam - just ended up not bothering after coming up with an aftermath of post change issues.
 

Harkin

Necromatic Mastermind
Print screen, paste into paint using ctrl+V, save image as any type, bmp, jpeg, png, img etc.

Boom.
 

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