Versions and compatibility
| Latest version | v1.0.4 |
| Released on | 29-nov-2024 |
| Compatible with | Dragon Age: The Veilguard Steam. Not compatible with the EA app/EA Gamepass version |
| Hotsampling via | Running the game in Borderless Windowed mode |
| Supports IGCS Connector | Yes (2.0+) |
| Download latest version | Post on patreon |
Features at a glance
The photomode mod for Dragon Age: The Veilguard offers the following features:
-
Camera control: (Also in cut scenes and photomode)
- FoV control
- Free unlimited camera movement and rotation
- Timestop / game pause control
- Camera paths support ('dolly cam') for defining moving camera trajectories for movies.
- Game speed control (slow-motion, speed up)
- Frameskip
- Custom lights (Spotlights and pointlights)
- HUD toggle
- Hotsampling (resize the game window to any resolution)
- Configurable input interpolation for smooth camera movement/rotation/fov zoom in/out
- Higher LODs
- Higher resolutions for local light shadows
- Toggle to disable DOF
- Bloom control
- Configurable keybindings
- Configurable gamepad buttonbindings
How to use
If you're playing the game through the EA store / EA Desktop app, be sure to disable the in-game overlay.
Please see for details how to get started and configure this photomode mod, General features and configuration. This guide will provide additional information for the controls / features specific for this photomode mod.
If you don't see the Dragon Age The Veilguard.exe process in the Process to inject to textbox, please click the Select button to select it manually. This might be
the case if you're running the game as Administrator,
and the IGCSClient.exe does not, it can't see the Dragon Age The Veilguard.exe process. In that case, restart the IGCSClient.exe as Administrator.
Running the game as administrator isn't necessary.
Pausing cutscenes to take shots
To take shots in cutscenes, the built-in pause in the tools won't work, as the cutscene will play on (albeit stuttering). To take a shot in a
cutscene do the following: Press ESC to pause the game, then press DEL to hide the hud. You can now enable the camera and have a perfectly
paused game. There is sadly no other way at the moment.
Configuration
Additionally to the normal configuration features, the tools for Dragon Age: The Veilguard also has some additional configuration features:
Camera smoothing options
The camera smoothing options are for when you want to record a video by flying through the game world and control the camera manually, so not through a camera path. Normally the input to the camera system will be used instantly and you see an effect immediately. However for videos it's often desired to have a smoother camera movement than what's needed when you position the camera for a shot.
The camera smoothing options will give you the ability to control how much of the input you're giving to the camera system is used in future frames so
it's creating a smoother experience; e.g. if you set the movement interpolation factor slider to 100 (default is 1), the input given to move the camera
forward is used over 100 frames and is slowly flowing away to 0 after you stop giving input to move forward.
Additionally if you first move forward and then move to the right, with the default setting of 1 the camera will first move forward and then immediately
move to the right. However with an interpolation factor of e.g. 100 it'll smoothly move to the right, more in a curve than straight away. This gives
smooth movement and rotations of the camera. For the Field of View there's also an interpolation factor, which can be used to smoothly zoom in/out so it's
less 'jerky' when you try to zoom in/out.
Try to combine the values for the smoothing factors with lower/higher values for movement and rotation speed to find the ideal setup for your recording. It's likely you want a higher interpolation factor for movement than for rotation and FoV.
The values are stored in the ini file for next time you start the client.
Shake factors
There are four camera shake factors you can configure to introduce camera shake for normal camera movement: Shake frequency for both movement and rotation, Shake movement strength and Shake rotation strength. For screenshots these factors are not interesting, but for hand-shot video, e.g. in combination with the interpolation factors, they can give a more natural appealing footage.
The Shake movement frequency and Shake rotation frequency control how fast the movement and rotation shake factors change direction. The higher the value the faster they'll 'shake'. The Shake movement strength controls the amount of movement shake will be added to the camera location in the up/down/left/right/front/back directions. The Shake rotation strength controls the amount of rotation shake will be added to the camera orientation in pitch/yaw/roll.
The strength will be applied equally among all directions and rotations. Try to experiment with which values work best for the speed you move your camera; a faster moving camera could use a camera shake with higher strengths than a slow moving camera. Good starting values are 1.5-2 for the frequencies and 0.4-0.5 for the strengths. Setting the sliders to 0 will remove all shake factors from the camera.
Camera paths have their own shake factors.
Image Adjustments
The Image Adjustments tab is the tab where you can adjust some aspects that might influence the image.
Miscellaneous options
- Game speed
- This controls how fast the engine runs internally; a value of 1.0 is 'normal game speed' and a value of 0.0 is total pause. Use this to create slow-motion effects which help you pause the game at the right moment.
- Bloom strength
- This overrides the in-game bloom with the value you select.
- Disable depth of field
- This disables the depth of field effect in e.g. conversations and cutscenes
- Higher LODs
- This increases the detail of elements like mountains, stones, trees etc. further away.
The in-game overlay
Starting with v1.0.1, the tools for Dragon Age: The Veilguard now offer an in-game overlay which can be opened by pressing Ctrl-Insert. If you have bound another key to
camera enable, you have to press Ctrl and that key.
It might be the mouse cursor doesn't appear or goes missing. The reason for this is unknown, I think the game itself tries to get rid of the mouse cursor at times. I've not found a fix for this if it occurs other than alt-tabbing out of the game window and back into it, or toggling the in-game overlay off / on again. I know it's cumbersome but it's what I can offer at this point.
The Camera tab
The Camera tab contains basic controls over whether the camera is enabled, the FoV, roll/tilt and temporary storage of camera state (which are also available through Ctrl-F1/F2/F3).
The Lights tab
The lights tab offers the ability to create spotlights and pointlights in the game world. You don't need to enable the camera first. Clicking the 'Create spotlight' button will create a spotlight with default values at the location of the camera. Clicking the 'Create spherelight' will create a pointlight on the location of the camera.
Once created, the light will appear in the list on the Lights tab. Click 'Edit' to edit the light. The editor for a light offers basic options. I've included all options that made sense, however some might not immediately show any difference at times, e.g. shadow fading is only happening if the shadow is far away from the camera.
To attach a light to the camera, check the 'Stick to camera' checkbox at the top of a light editor. To move a light to the camera but don't have it stuck to the camera, click the 'Move to camera' button at the bottom of a light editor.
Information recorded with camera path nodes
When you create a Camera path, each node records the camera location, orientation and field of view.
Saving/restoring camera state
After you've enabled the camera (default with Insert), you can store the current camera state in three slots. The camera state is the current location,
the orientation/rotation of the camera and the FoV, as well as other information recorded in camera path nodes, as the system uses camera path nodes under the hood.
By default you save the camera state by using
Ctrl + F1 for saving the current camera state in slot 1, Ctrl + F2 for saving the current camera state in slot 2 and
Ctrl + F3 for saving the current camera state in slot 3. To restore the camera state to a saved state, press F1 to restore the camera to the state saved
in slot 1, press F2 to restore the camera to the state saved in slot 2 and, press F3 to restore the camera to the state saved
in slot 3. These keys are configurable in the keybindings tab.
When you disable the camera again, the saved states are lost. If you want to preserve game states after you disabled the camera (e.g. you want to move the character a bit, and then enable the camera again), use a camera path and add the camera states you want to save as nodes. Camera paths are preserved after you disable the camera.
Controls
The default photomode mod controls are listed below. It depends on the Camera control device setting on the Configuration tab whether the device (e.g. mouse or gamepad) can control the camera.
Mouse
When moving the mouse:
- No mouse buttons pressed: rotate the camera
- Left button pressed: move camera up / down / left / right
- Right button pressed: move camera forward / backward / left / right
- Both left and right button pressed: tilt camera left / right
- Mousewheel: increase / decrease Field of View (FoV)
Keyboard
Normal camera usage
| Key | Feature |
|---|---|
Insert |
Enable / Disable the camera |
Numpad . |
Block / Unblock input to game |
Numpad - |
Decrease FoV |
Numpad + |
Increase FoV |
Numpad * |
Reset FoV |
Home |
Lock / Unlock camera movement |
Numpad 4 |
Move camera left (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Numpad 6 |
Move camera right (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Numpad 8 |
Move camera forward (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Numpad 5 |
Move camera backward (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Numpad 7 |
Move camera up (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Numpad 9 |
Move camera down (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Numpad 4 |
Move camera left (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Arrow key Up |
Rotate camera up (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Arrow key Down |
Rotate camera down (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Arrow key Left |
Rotate camera left (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Arrow key Right |
Rotate camera right (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: faster) |
Numpad 0 |
Pause / Unpause the game |
Page down |
Skip a few frames when paused |
Numpad 1 |
Tilt camera left (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: tilt 90 degrees left) |
Numpad 3 |
Tilt camera right (+ Ctrl: slower, + Alt: tilt 90 degrees right) |
Numpad 2 |
Reset tilt |
Del |
Toggle HUD |
F1 |
Restore the camera state to the state saved in slot 1 (+ Ctrl: store current state in slot 1) |
F2 |
Restore the camera state to the state saved in slot 2 (+ Ctrl: store current state in slot 2) |
F3 |
Restore the camera state to the state saved in slot 3 (+ Ctrl: store current state in slot 3) |
Camera path usage
| Key | Feature |
|---|---|
F7 |
Start / pause playback |
F8 |
Stop playback |
F4 |
Add path |
F10 |
Add node to active path |
Ctrl+F10 |
Replace the active node on the active path |
Alt+F10 |
Insert a new node in front of the active node on the active path |
Shift+F10 |
Append a new node afterthe active node on the active path |
Ctrl+Home |
Go to start of active path |
Ctrl+End |
Go to end of active path |
Ctrl+Page Up |
Go to previous node on active path |
Ctrl+Page Down |
Go to next node on active path |
Numpad 1 |
Select the first path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 2 |
Select the second path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 3 |
Select the third path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 4 |
Select the forth path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 5 |
Select the firth path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 6 |
Select the sixth path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 7 |
Select the seventh path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 8 |
Select the eighth path during playback (if any) |
Numpad 9 |
Select the ninth path during playback (if any) |
Miscellaneous usage
| Key | Feature |
|---|---|
Alt-\ |
Toggle gamespeed override |
Alt-[ |
Decrease gamespeed. |
Alt-] |
Increase gamespeed. |
Gamepad
Normal camera usage
| Control | Feature |
|---|---|
| Left stick | Move camera forward / backward / left / right |
| Right stick | Rotate camera |
| Left trigger | Move camera up |
| Right trigger | Move camera down |
| Y button + left / right stick | Faster movement / rotation |
| X button + left / right stick | Slower movement / rotation |
| D-pad up / down | Increase / decrease FoV |
| B button | Reset FoV |
Camera path usage
| Control | Feature |
|---|---|
| Start | Start / pause playback |
| Back | Stop playback |
| Left bumber | Go to previous node on active path |
| Right bumper | Go to next node on active path |
| A | Add node to active path |
Miscellaneous usage
| Key | Feature |
|---|---|
| Menu button + pressing left stick | Toggle gamespeed override |
| Menu button + left bumper | Decrease gamespeed. |
| Menu button + right bumper | Increase gamespeed. |