Versions and compatibility

Latest version	v1.0.18
Released on	30-may-2023
Compatible with	Horizon Zero Dawn v1.0.10+, Steam / EGS versions
Hotsampling via	Running the game in windowed mode
Supports IGCS Connector	Yes, 2.0+
Download latest version	Post on patreon

Features at a glance

The photomode mod for Horizon Zero Dawn offers the following features:

• Full, unlimited camera control (gameplay, cutscenes, photomode)
  • Controller or mouse/keyboard control over the camera
  • Field of view (FoV) control
  • Tilt
  • Camera shake controls in both manual movement (for hand-shot videos) and camera paths.
• Game pause / unpause, also in cut scenes and photomode
• Camera paths support ('dolly cam') for defining moving camera trajectories for movies.
• Fog / Haze control (density, height, start etc.)
• Weather control (Precipitation, wetness, temperature, wind speed/direction, cirrus density, blend factor)
• DoF control (normal gameplay, cutscenes)
• Time of Day control
• Flexible lookat control in photomode
• Disable lensflares
• Make Aloy invulnerable (for action shots)
• Engine LOD overrides
• HUD toggle (to make the hud toggle work, be sure to select 'custom hud' in the settings)
• Always LOD0 on Aloy's hair, armor, NPCs, machines, interactable plants, shadows cast on these elements
• Photomode: no more range limits, minimal distance for DOF decreased, enable photomode in cities
• Facepaint selection for gameplay and photomode without unlocking them first
• Frameskip to skip a few frames ahead when paused
• Configurable input interpolation for smooth camera movement/rotation/fov zoom in/out
• Configurable keybindings / gamepad bindings
• Three slots to save camera state (location/orientation/fov) for quickly switch between them
• Hotsampling

How to use

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.

Configuration

Additionally to the normal configuration features, the tools for Horizon Zero Dawn also have some additional configuration features:

Camera smoothing options

Interpolation factors

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 three camera shake factors you can configure to introduce camera shake for normal camera movement: Shake frequency, 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 frequency controls 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 frequency 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 configure various options that influence your shots' quality. It has the following layout:

Depth of Field (DOF) options

The DOF options, once enabled, allow you to control the depth of field in the game. This also allows you to remove the near blur that's prominent in the game when you get close to something with the camera. Set Near plane start and Near plane end to 0 as well as the Max near blur strength. There's no focus point but just two areas (near and far) which can be blurred, and the in-between area being sharp.

Miscellaneous options

Face paint to use

This allows you to pick a face paint right from the get-go without completing the game 10 times in brutal difficulties. None is no face paint.

Disable lens flares

Some of the lens flares in the game can be quite distracting. Checking this checkbox removes all of them.

Make Aloy invulnerable

This setting makes it impossible to take damage. It's ideal to setup great action shots as you don't have to worry you die during the process.

Make Aloy netral for others

This setting makes machines, otherwise hostile, not attack you, but basically ignore you, unless provoked.

Game speed

This controls how fast the 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.

Engine LOD options

To increase the LOD (level of detail) in the game, enable Engine LOD options. This does have a performance impact, but not that much at first. The game uses a multiplier value to calculate the details to show further away, which you can control through the Model LOD multiplier slider. Moving it all the way to the left gives the highest details. This has a side effect in some environments where elements start to flicker and disappear. So tweak the value per situation.

Photomode Lookat control

The Photomode lookat control allows you to control Aloy's pose and orientation of head/torso/eyes. To get started, first enable the in-game photomode and enable Look at by pressing the left stick or pressing C on the keyboard. Then enable the PM Lookat control in the tools. It'll automatically select the first pose to be able to control poses better. Not all poses have lookat support initially. you can work around that by enabling the Pose blend factor and slide it to the pose you want. To be able to control the slider's value better, click it and use the cursor keys on your keyboard to slide it.

The eyes stay locked at the position you set them using the eye control. This might help when picking the right 'look at camera' position: first make the head face the camera, then move the eyes to look at the camera, then rotate the head in the position you want. The eyes will stay locked at the position you set them at.

Rotate head only

By default head and torso are moved together. If you want to only move the head, check this checkbox. The torso will then be in the default position of the pose.

Head / Torso rotation left / right

Rotates the head (and torso, if Rotate head only isn't checked) left / right

Head / Torso rotation up / down

Rotates the head (and torso, if Rotate head only isn't checked) up / down

Eyes rotation left / right

Rotates the eyes left / right.

Eyes rotation up / down

Rotates the eyes up / down

Pose blend factor

When enabled you can slide through all the poses Aloy can take and all intermediate poses between them. While not all of them are useful, some could give you the right setup for that unique portrait.

Environment Adjustments

The Environment Adjustments tab is the tab where you can adjust various aspects of the game world. It has the following layout:

Weather options

Precipitation

This controls the amount of rain/snow you'll see. It depends on the temperature what you'll get: low temperatures will result in snow, high temperatures will result in snow

Wetness

This controls the wetness of the environment, like it has just rained.

Wind speed

This controls the strenght of the wind around Aloy. It also affects rain / snow falling down

Wind direction

This controls the direction of the wind.

Cirrus cloud density

This controls the density of the high smaller clouds in the sky

Blend factor with next weather

Most of the time there are two weathers in play. You can pick one or the other or use a blend between them

Fog / Haze options

Fog options all work together to the fog you'll see in the environment. This means that if you tweak one setting it might not always give an immediate effect as another setting might make it irrelevant at that moment because it is too strong. Experiment with the sliders to get the fog you want.

Haze is the distant 'fog' you see which can also block the clouds from getting through. Often you'd want to start with moving the Haze start / end distance far away to get it out of the way closer to the camera so you can properly setup the height fog.

Miscellaneous options

Time of day

Time of day controls the current world time in a 24 hour clock. You can also change the time of day with the keyboard (see Keybindings) which might be easier than flipping back/forth to the client to get the right sun position.

Information recorded with camera path nodes

When you create a Camera path, each node records the camera location, orientation and field of view. Additionally to that for this game the camera node will also contain the current time of day and the Depth of Field values. So if you want to have different time of day values per node, you can, just set the value you want in the client on the Environment Adjustments tab and create a camera path node.

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
Delete	Toggle HUD
,	Set Time of Day earlier (+ Alt: slower)
.	Set time of Day later (+ Alt: slower)
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
Ctrl-F4	Delete active 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	Insert a new node after the active node on the active path
Ctrl-F9	Delete 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

Control	Feature
X button + pressing left stick	Toggle gamespeed override
X button + left bumper	Decrease gamespeed.
X button + right bumper	Increase gamespeed.