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op61
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General questions about SpaceEngine

06 Dec 2019 09:46

It's a question I've been asking also, and I know it can be done (because I've seen others do it) but I dont know how.  How do you capture a 4K or even 8K screenshot if your display is only 720K or 1080K?  And besides capturing screenshots can you also make videos at a resolution higher than that of the display in the same way?
Hi, it's a strange workflow issue. I have also seen 4K videos online, however not much information on how to do it.
How do you capture an animation sequence if you cannot see most of the screen? It seems this is still an issue in the PRO version. The workaround on the PRO is that you can record the camera path. Set whatever the resolution to whatever you like, and record that in the windowed display. 
It seems working with a cropped windowed view is the only way.  For example, you can set your windowed display to 4K or 8K, and press F11 (Shotcut to take a screenshot without all the controls /GUI present). That will work fine because even if you can not see the rest of the 4K window on your monitor, you'll be taking a full single frame screenshot with the F11 shortcut.
Now, the issue I think we both have is creating 4K (or above) videos, where you need to fly manually and capture that. I have found out that changing the capture image sequence in TIFF or TGA works very well, the system won't lag as compared to using JPG or PNG to output the capture sequence. Alternatively, you can use a screen capture software which is what most people are using. 
Image
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A-L-E-X
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General questions about SpaceEngine

06 Dec 2019 10:19

It's a question I've been asking also, and I know it can be done (because I've seen others do it) but I dont know how.  How do you capture a 4K or even 8K screenshot if your display is only 720K or 1080K?  And besides capturing screenshots can you also make videos at a resolution higher than that of the display in the same way?
Hi, it's a strange workflow issue. I have also seen 4K videos online, however not much information on how to do it.
How do you capture an animation sequence if you cannot see most of the screen? It seems this is still an issue in the PRO version. The workaround on the PRO is that you can record the camera path. Set whatever the resolution to whatever you like, and record that in the windowed display. 
It seems working with a cropped windowed view is the only way.  For example, you can set your windowed display to 4K or 8K, and press F11 (Shotcut to take a screenshot without all the controls /GUI present). That will work fine because even if you can not see the rest of the 4K window on your monitor, you'll be taking a full single frame screenshot with the F11 shortcut.
Now, the issue I think we both have is creating 4K (or above) videos, where you need to fly manually and capture that. I have found out that changing the capture image sequence in TIFF or TGA works very well, the system won't lag as compared to using JPG or PNG to output the capture sequence. Alternatively, you can use a screen capture software which is what most people are using. 
Image
Hi, I think it may be possible to do it with third party software.  I have a GTX 1060 6GB / 16 GB RAM, and found some tools on Nvidia's website that can take 4K/8K screenshots and there is software I am using called FlashBack that makes videos and converts them to .MP4.  The crop issue reminds me of the same effect we get with digital camera software where you can only see part of the image at once.  I'm going to try to do a 4K video and upload it to my Youtube page.

If worst comes to worst, I'll just hook up extra monitors and spread Space Engine across three screens lol.
 
A-L-E-X
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General questions about SpaceEngine

06 Dec 2019 10:35

I found this, it might help (looks like this does both stills and videos):

https://stormystudio.com/record-4k-hd-monitor/
 
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op61
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General questions about SpaceEngine

06 Dec 2019 13:06

Hi Alex, I have already connected 4 monitors to my computer to try to capture 4K, it's not the most practical solution, but it's closer to the idea. Send a link to your youtube video here once you have some results, ill do the same.   I will have a look at this link: https://stormystudio.com/record-4k-hd-monitor/
 
A-L-E-X
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General questions about SpaceEngine

06 Dec 2019 15:24

Hi Alex, I have already connected 4 monitors to my computer to try to capture 4K, it's not the most practical solution, but it's closer to the idea. Send a link to your youtube video here once you have some results, ill do the same.   I will have a look at this link: https://stormystudio.com/record-4k-hd-monitor/
Thanks, i'll try to make one now.  I also had a look at Flashback and when selecting MP4 encoding it lets you change the resolution of the recording even if you originally recorded at 1080P or 720P.  I dont know how the quality of this will be, but it's worth a try since all you have to do is set the resolution to 200%.  Let's see how it turns out!
 
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op61
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General questions about SpaceEngine

07 Dec 2019 06:36

Hi Alex, I have already connected 4 monitors to my computer to try to capture 4K, it's not the most practical solution, but it's closer to the idea. Send a link to your youtube video here once you have some results, ill do the same.   I will have a look at this link: https://stormystudio.com/record-4k-hd-monitor/
Thanks, i'll try to make one now.  I also had a look at Flashback and when selecting MP4 encoding it lets you change the resolution of the recording even if you originally recorded at 1080P or 720P.  I dont know how the quality of this will be, but it's worth a try since all you have to do is set the resolution to 200%.  Let's see how it turns out!
Hey, so I spoke to someone from SpaceEngine, not sure if it was the developer. But, there is basically one way which will work according to how they have designed the system. ( I know other people have their own ways, which we don't know about)
Firstly, you get the SE PRO version, this will give you access to the camera path tool amongst other PRO features. With this, you can pre-record your camera animation on your 1080 or 720 windowed display. And then, you can set your windowed display to 4k, 8K or whatever you like, and then you can capture/render out that 4K/8K displays to either a tga/tif or whatever output you like ( I prefer tga/tif because it doesn't lag too much compared to jpg, or png). So even if the 4k/8k windowed display is mostly 'off-screen', the internal capture system in Space Engine captures everything in the windowed display that has been pre-recorded. 
I think being able to pre-record an animation is the fundamental difference between the previous free version and the new PRO version. I do not use a 3rd party screen capture, even though I tried OBS and the NVIDIA shadowplay.  You can capture everything in SE using Space Engine built-in tools. 

This is a lot, but I hope it makes sense.
 
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xingqiu1
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General questions about SpaceEngine

08 Dec 2019 02:27

With the change of the space engine version, some beautiful planets, nebulae, and galaxies may not exist in the next version, but these beautiful celestial photos are worth saving and worth printing into an album.
I have a suggestion that you can print a memorial album of virtual and real celestial bodies of space engine 0.980 and 0.990, and mark the version and coordinates that appear on each picture and so on.
The printed album can be used as a prize to reward some fans who have contributed to the production of MODs in the community or sold as a separate book.
This has important significance.
 
A-L-E-X
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General questions about SpaceEngine

09 Dec 2019 10:36

Hi Alex, I have already connected 4 monitors to my computer to try to capture 4K, it's not the most practical solution, but it's closer to the idea. Send a link to your youtube video here once you have some results, ill do the same.   I will have a look at this link: https://stormystudio.com/record-4k-hd-monitor/
Thanks, i'll try to make one now.  I also had a look at Flashback and when selecting MP4 encoding it lets you change the resolution of the recording even if you originally recorded at 1080P or 720P.  I dont know how the quality of this will be, but it's worth a try since all you have to do is set the resolution to 200%.  Let's see how it turns out!
Hey, so I spoke to someone from SpaceEngine, not sure if it was the developer. But, there is basically one way which will work according to how they have designed the system. ( I know other people have their own ways, which we don't know about)
Firstly, you get the SE PRO version, this will give you access to the camera path tool amongst other PRO features. With this, you can pre-record your camera animation on your 1080 or 720 windowed display. And then, you can set your windowed display to 4k, 8K or whatever you like, and then you can capture/render out that 4K/8K displays to either a tga/tif or whatever output you like ( I prefer tga/tif because it doesn't lag too much compared to jpg, or png). So even if the 4k/8k windowed display is mostly 'off-screen', the internal capture system in Space Engine captures everything in the windowed display that has been pre-recorded. 
I think being able to pre-record an animation is the fundamental difference between the previous free version and the new PRO version. I do not use a 3rd party screen capture, even though I tried OBS and the NVIDIA shadowplay.  You can capture everything in SE using Space Engine built-in tools. 

This is a lot, but I hope it makes sense.
Thanks it helped a lot.  I had spoken to them earlier also, but basically was told that unless I plan to do commercial videos to not bother with the Pro version.  Sounds like you got a much more detailed response, OP.  So I think I will spring for the Pro version and also get the Pro version of FlashBack.  I find it a very intuitive piece of software and it actually makes me want to make more videos.  I also like the idea of recording sound without having to plug in my mic or have my speakers on lol.  

The reason I want third party video recording software is that I find SE's built in video recorder extremely laggy, even at 720P.  It also outputs extremely large file sizes.  I have been making 2 hour videos with FlashBack that use up less than 1 GB of space at 90% quality.  Do I need to use the built in video recorder to have access to the camera path tool?
Last edited by A-L-E-X on 09 Dec 2019 10:44, edited 3 times in total.
 
A-L-E-X
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General questions about SpaceEngine

09 Dec 2019 10:40

With the change of the space engine version, some beautiful planets, nebulae, and galaxies may not exist in the next version, but these beautiful celestial photos are worth saving and worth printing into an album.
I have a suggestion that you can print a memorial album of virtual and real celestial bodies of space engine 0.980 and 0.990, and mark the version and coordinates that appear on each picture and so on.
The printed album can be used as a prize to reward some fans who have contributed to the production of MODs in the community or sold as a separate book.
This has important significance.
I would actually like to port these worlds into the new versions of space engine.
 
Roland
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General questions about SpaceEngine

17 Dec 2019 16:46

I am experimenting with using Space Engine to demonstrate various astronomical concepts and I've been using the scripting system to control the camera movements. It works okay (although I would like the new scenario scripting system in 990) but there is one issue I can't seem to solve.

I can control the camera movements using the basic commands (select, center, goto, landto, etc) but I can't change the orientation of the camera. There does not seem to be any way to rotate the view or align the view with anything.

Is there a command I've not found? Or is there just no way to do this from a script file?
The Goto command allows you to specify the camera orientation over the Goto parameters 'Yaw', 'Pitch' and 'Roll'. As the User Manual says, if you execute Goto on a selected object (e.g. before you called 'Select Earth'), the camera will have the orientation Yaw=0, Pitch=-90 and Roll=0 (all values in degrees, negative = left or down).

Yaw=left/right, Pitch=up/down and Roll=rotate left/right.

One important thing to keep in mind: think about the camera like a 3-axis gimbal camera system with the axis hierarchy Yaw->Pitch->Roll (yaw=outer axis, roll=most inner axis). Such hierarchy is very important to understand, because otherwise you might use intuitive values for yaw/pitch/roll and you wonder why the camera doesn't have the expected orientation or why the camera did a roll instead of a yaw. Search for 'gimbal lock' in YouTube to understand what happens if one axis has +-90 degrees (like mentioned above: yaw=0, pitch=-90, roll=0).
 
rjakobsson
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General questions about SpaceEngine

18 Dec 2019 08:13

I read in the FAQ that there are no plans on releasing SE for consoles such as Xbox One and PS4. 
Why not?
 
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Mosfet
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General questions about SpaceEngine

18 Dec 2019 09:03

Right now SpaceEngine is developed with a proprietary engine on its own, based on OpenGL graphic libraries, which are not supported by consoles as far as I know. It means all the code would have to be rewritten. In a relatively far future, who knows what will happen in consoles world...
"Time is illusion. Lunchtime doubly so". Douglas N. Adams
| My mods: http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=80 | My specs: Asus x555ub - cpu i5-6200u, ram 12gb, gpu nvidia geforce 940m 2gb vram |
 
A-L-E-X
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General questions about SpaceEngine

19 Dec 2019 11:38

I am experimenting with using Space Engine to demonstrate various astronomical concepts and I've been using the scripting system to control the camera movements. It works okay (although I would like the new scenario scripting system in 990) but there is one issue I can't seem to solve.

I can control the camera movements using the basic commands (select, center, goto, landto, etc) but I can't change the orientation of the camera. There does not seem to be any way to rotate the view or align the view with anything.

Is there a command I've not found? Or is there just no way to do this from a script file?
The Goto command allows you to specify the camera orientation over the Goto parameters 'Yaw', 'Pitch' and 'Roll'. As the User Manual says, if you execute Goto on a selected object (e.g. before you called 'Select Earth'), the camera will have the orientation Yaw=0, Pitch=-90 and Roll=0 (all values in degrees, negative = left or down).

Yaw=left/right, Pitch=up/down and Roll=rotate left/right.

One important thing to keep in mind: think about the camera like a 3-axis gimbal camera system with the axis hierarchy Yaw->Pitch->Roll (yaw=outer axis, roll=most inner axis). Such hierarchy is very important to understand, because otherwise you might use intuitive values for yaw/pitch/roll and you wonder why the camera doesn't have the expected orientation or why the camera did a roll instead of a yaw. Search for 'gimbal lock' in YouTube to understand what happens if one axis has +-90 degrees (like mentioned above: yaw=0, pitch=-90, roll=0).
Where do you enter these commands and values and why cant you just use the arrow keys or numpad to do this?
 
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default0.0player
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General questions about SpaceEngine

19 Dec 2019 18:17

Spaceengine PRO is getting more expensive over time.............
 
Roland
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General questions about SpaceEngine

24 Dec 2019 09:26

I am experimenting with using Space Engine to demonstrate various astronomical concepts and I've been using the scripting system to control the camera movements. It works okay (although I would like the new scenario scripting system in 990) but there is one issue I can't seem to solve.

I can control the camera movements using the basic commands (select, center, goto, landto, etc) but I can't change the orientation of the camera. There does not seem to be any way to rotate the view or align the view with anything.

Is there a command I've not found? Or is there just no way to do this from a script file?
The Goto command allows you to specify the camera orientation over the Goto parameters 'Yaw', 'Pitch' and 'Roll'. As the User Manual says, if you execute Goto on a selected object (e.g. before you called 'Select Earth'), the camera will have the orientation Yaw=0, Pitch=-90 and Roll=0 (all values in degrees, negative = left or down).

Yaw=left/right, Pitch=up/down and Roll=rotate left/right.

One important thing to keep in mind: think about the camera like a 3-axis gimbal camera system with the axis hierarchy Yaw->Pitch->Roll (yaw=outer axis, roll=most inner axis). Such hierarchy is very important to understand, because otherwise you might use intuitive values for yaw/pitch/roll and you wonder why the camera doesn't have the expected orientation or why the camera did a roll instead of a yaw. Search for 'gimbal lock' in YouTube to understand what happens if one axis has +-90 degrees (like mentioned above: yaw=0, pitch=-90, roll=0).
Where do you enter these commands and values and why cant you just use the arrow keys or numpad to do this?
You have to add these commands in a script file (<filename>.se) and store it in SE program subfolder ./addons/scripts/<filename>.se. From the SE console the script can be called with 'run <filename>'. Entering the Goto command with parameters in curly braces doesn't work in the console.
Of course the arrow/numpad keys also work fine, but CouchPotato asked for a script based solution. This is usefull if your intention is to create a reproducable animation sequence which you might want to finetune.

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