Versions and compatibility

Features at a glance

The photomode mod for Starfield offers the following features:

• Full, unlimited camera control (gameplay, cutscenes, photomode, conversations)
  • Controller or mouse/keyboard control over the camera
  • Field of view (FoV) control (Also during gameplay)
  • Tilt
  • Camera shake controls in both manual movement (for hand-shot videos) and camera paths.
• Camera paths support ('dolly cam') for defining moving camera trajectories for movies.
• Game pause / unpause.
• Frameskip
• HUD toggle
• No pause menu on alt-tab
• Custom aspect ratios (also in photomode)
• Game speed control (slow-motion, speed up)
• Configurable input interpolation for smooth camera movement/rotation/fov zoom in/out
• Configurable keybindings
• Configurable gamepad buttonbindings

[Camera]
bDisableAutoVanityMode=1

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, this photomode mod also has the following additional 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 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 additional aspects of the game. It offers the following features:

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.

Gameplay FoV

This controls the gameplay Field of View and allows you to override it during gameplay, as the game itself doesn't have a FoV slider. The value isn't saved in the tools' ini file.

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

Miscellaneous usage

Camera path usage

Gamepad

Normal camera usage

Camera path usage

Miscellaneous usage