General features and configuration

All photomode mods are based on a common system, which is always used in the same way. The general use of the photomode mods is therefore the same for every game. The following explanations refer globally to these basic possibilities. Differences per game will be taken up and completed in the individual descriptions of the respective game / mod.

The general use of all photomode mods is explained here using the mod for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. However, these global explanations also apply to all other photomode mods.

How to use the photomode mods

Getting started

After you've unpacked the photomode mod tools zip, e.g ACValhalla_CameraTools_v110.zip into a folder of your choosing, you're ready to use it. You don't need to unpack the zip into the game folder, it's preferable to unpack the zip into a folder in your My Documents folder. Also, every photomode mod comes with its own unique IGCSClient. It's not useful to use the IGCSClient.exe of one photomode mod with another one's DLL.

To get started with the photomode mod, you typically do the following: start the game normally and wait till it's in the menu. Then you start the IGCSClient.exe and click on the Inject DLL button as shown in the screenshot below, highlighted with a red line:

After you've clicked Inject DLL, the client will inject the photomode mod dll into the game's process and will integrate with it. It should look like the following screenshot, and all tabs in the client should now be available:

Once the photomode mod has found the camera in the game it'll fully initialize the features. You'll get a notification in the left top corner of your monitor when that happens. After the camera has been found, you can use the features, like pause the game, hide the hud and enable the camera. Please see the Controls section below for further details how to activate the various features.

At the bottom of the screen you see three controls: "Set as top-most window", "Window opacity" and "Show camera path control window". These are explained below.

Set as top-most window

This checkbox makes the IGCS Client window become the window that's 'on top of' any other window on your desktop, including the game window. So even though you might alt-tab to another window the IGCS Client window will be the top window. This can be handy if you want to test things out with the settings, e.g. time of day or fog control.

Window opacity

This slider makes the window semi-transparent (down to 10%).

Show camera path control window

This toggle will open (or close if it's open) the camera path control window. The camera path control window allows you to edit and control the camera paths you might have defined as well as start / pause / stop playback of the camera paths. Camera paths are explained in their own section.

Configuration

The photomode mod is highly configurable. To do just that, click the Configuration tab in the IGCSClient, which looks like the following:

All settings on the Configuration tab are persisted to the IGCSClientSettings.ini file in the folder where the IGCSClient.exe is located so you don't need to configure it the next time you start the client.

Camera movement options

The first group of options are the Camera movement options. The photomode mod has several speeds for moving the camera: fast, normal, slow and up.

Fast movement multiplier

Fast movement multiplier is the value used to move faster than normal; when you press the key or controller button for this action together with moving the camera, the camera will move several times faster than normal. This setting controls how much faster.

Slow movement multiplier

Slow movement multiplier is the value used to move slower than normal; when you press the key or controller button for this action together with moving the camera, the camera will move several times slower than normal. This setting controls how much slower. You can also use the slow movement multiplier to rotate slowly, by pressing the key or controller button and rotate the camera at the same time.

Up movement multiplier

Up movement multiplier is the value used to move up / down relative to the normal movement speed. The higher this value, the faster the camera will move up/down. Up/down speeds are usually a bit slower than the speed used to move forward/backward/left/right, so keep it a bit below 1.0.

Movement speed

This is the normal movement speed of the camera (forward/backward/left/right/up/down). If you want to move the camera faster normally, increase this value.

Camera control device

The camera control device is the device used to control the photomode mod camera, when enabled. By default both the controller and keyboard/mouse are selected. If you want to use your controller/gamepad as the camera control device, you can select that here, by selecting 'Gamepad'.

The selected camera control device is blocked by the photomode mod when the camera is enabled. If you want to operate the game menus or game character while the camera is active, you have to use the other device than the one that's selected as Camera control device, or disable Block input to game, typically bound to Numpad . (See the section Keybindings below).

Camera rotation options

Rotation speed

The rotation speed is the speed used to rotate the camera. Changing devices (mouse vs. gamepad/controller) might require you to alter this setting.

Invert Y look direction

This setting controls whether you want to have the camera rotate downwards when you press the rotate forward button/key or upwards. By default the camera will rotate upwards. If you prefer to rotate downwards instead, check this checkbox.

Miscellaneous camera options

Field of View (FoV) zoom speed

The speed with which the camera will zoom in/out.

Key bindings

By default the IGCSClient.exe has a key bound for almost every action. You can alter them on the Key bindings tab by clicking in the textbox of the action and then pressing the key combination you wish to use, as is shown below in the screenshot with the textbox highlighted with the red line. After that, click OK to keep the new key combination or Cancel to revert to the old one.

You can bind multiple actions to the same key combination, e.g. you can configure a single key to pause the game, enable the camera and hide the hud. All keybindings you change are persisted to a file so if you want to change a keybinding, you only have to make the change once.

Gamepad button bindings

By default the IGCSClient.exe has a gamepad button defined for several actions. You can change the definitions for several actions which are bound to gamepad buttons, sticks and triggers. To do so, go to the Gamepad button bindings tab which looks like the screenshot below:

To select a different gamepad button for a given action, simply select it from the combo box of that action. All bindings are persisted to the IGCSClientSettings.ini file in the folder where the IGCSClient.exe is located.

If you're left-handed, in newer cameras you can change which stick rotates the camera and which one moves the camera here as well, plus change which trigger moves the camera up and which one moves the camera down.

Note For people using an XBox controller, 'Start' is the button with the 3 stripes, and 'Back' is the Menu button.

Hotsampling

'Hotsampling' is a term for dynamically changing the resolution of the game. This is very handy as you can play the game in your normal monitor's resolution, set up your shot and when you want to take the shot, resize the game to a much higher resolution. To do that, click the Hotsampling tab to use the Hotsampling feature of the photomode mod. The controls for hotsampling look like the screenshot below:

The client has already pre-generated a lot of resolutions for a variety of aspect ratios for you. To resize to a different resolution, simply select it in the tree on the left. This will fill in the Width and Height of the New resolution to set in the top right. To resize the window you then click on Set. The game window will now resize to the game window and resolution and aspect ratio you've selected. If the window does resize but the game resolution does not, you likely run the game as full screen. Please run the game as 'Windowed', the photomode mod will offer you to get rid of the Window border.

To quickly switch between resolutions you've already chosen before, click the Recently used resolutions button. This button will enlist the last 10 used resolutions and will immediately resize the window to that resolution so you don't need to click Set.

If you want to resize to a resolution that's not in the tree, simply specify it under New resolution to set by filling in the Width and Height textboxes, and click Set.

Running as 'full screen'

To run the game in the full resolution of your monitor, but still as windowed, click the Fake fullscreen button. This will resize the window of the game to the size of your monitor and will resize the resolution of the game to the resolution of your monitor as well.

Alignment controls

If you resized the window to a resolution much bigger than your monitor, you can't check if everything rendered alright. To do that click one of the buttons in Alignment controls, to move that part of window to the monitor area. So clicking Left will make the left side of the window visible on your monitor, and so on.

Log

The Log tab is the tab which gives you more information about what the system is doing, and whether there are errors. It also allows you to disable notifications for e.g. camera enabled/disabled.

If the game is updated and the photomode mod might be out of date, the Log tab will tell you.

Help

The Help tab gives you more information about controls and how to use the client. It can be very useful when you don't have this guide handy but want to know more about e.g. the controls.

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) 1
.	Set time of Day later (+ Alt: slower)

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)

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