Macro to maximize graphics settings and then revert them?

Guides UI and Macro
1

Hi everyone,

I love taking screenshots in WoW but I’d like to start improving the quality of them. For this I would like to maximize my graphics settings ti get a high quality image, and then have them reverted to their previous settings.

I know that macros can change the graphics settings so I was wondering if it was possible to achieve this idea. Many thanks in advance.

2

It highly depends on what settings you want to change. A lot of it graphics settings cannot be changed without triggering a reload / loading screen. I imagine that may often be unacceptable, unless it’s only for like posed pictures with a dead raidboss post-progressionkill.

Most likely you’d be looking at a (flimsy) addon and not macro for something like this i suspect, or a pre-screenshot macro, followed by making the screenshot, followed by triggering a post-screenshot macro to flip things back down.

Also if you’ve just been dissapointed in the quality of your current screenshots, this may be the result of the default screenshot encoding settings, and not the actual game graphic settings.

Last i checked the default screenshot settings were to save as Jpeg (.jpg files), which is a lossy format, and aiming for retaining atleast/only 30% quality.

I’d start by either increasing the quality to 100% and/or switching to TGA (a lossless format). There are some issues apparently, with skyboxes on TGA screenshots i’ve heard, but i haven’t actually had a problem with it myself.

Either:

/console screenshotFormat tga

Or:

/console screenshotFormat jpg 
/console screenshotQuality 10

Quality (1-10) with 10 being 100%, 5 being 50%, and so forth. I think 3 is the default.

3

Hey, thanks for the quick reply.

I enjoy landscape screenshots so an example of one of the settings I’d need to temporarily maximize the View Distance. Of course, I can achieve this with:

/console farclip setting 4000

And then revert back to normal (whatever the value is in my config file). Of course, this would be a bit tedious to do for every single setting (Environment Detail, Shafts, SSAO, etc.) hence my question. You’re totally right on the reload though - that slipped my mind and may be a problem. I’ll definitely have a quick look around for addons, if I have any luck.

Regarding the screenshot quality, I’ve been using those commands for a while but haven’t used TGA much, so I’ll play around with that and JPEG and see what comes out better :slight_smile:

4

I don’t see the problem with setting several cvars in one macro. These are my four macros for four different graphics settings. I switch between these depending on my current FPS:

VER 3 000000000000003D "ShadLow" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
/console graphicsSSAO 1
/console shadowMode 0
/console MSAAQuality 0,0
END

VER 3 0000000000000052 "ShadMed2" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
/console graphicsSSAO 3
/console shadowMode 1
/console MSAAQuality 1.0
END

VER 3 0000000000000051 "ShadMed1" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
/console graphicsSSAO 4
/console shadowMode 2
/console MSAAQuality 2.0
END

VER 3 000000000000002E "ShadHigh" "INV_MISC_QUESTIONMARK"
/console graphicsSSAO 5
/console shadowMode 3
/console MSAAQuality 3.0
END
1 Like
5

The main thing is that what you’re after basically is a series of events that has 3 distinct steps:

  1. Increasing the view distance and potentially improving various things
  2. Making the screenshot
  3. Reverting the view distance and other changes

So you’d either have 2 macros (step 2 doesn’t need a macro), or you’d have a small addon.

An addon would potentially be more fitting for a few reasons.

  1. It’d allow the process to be a bit smoother, potentially putting the whole thing behind 1 minimap-button or keybind. Maybe add a camera-click sound effect to it for better usability.
  2. It would make it easier to actually revert settings. As in during “Step 1” it would check what the current viewdistance and such is, remember that value, and then during “Step 3” revert to that exact value. With a macro you’d more likely end up reverting to fixed values within the macro, which would make regular graphics changes a pain in the behind (as you have to remember to edit the macro too).
  3. An addon wouldnt suffer from the small size-limit than a macro has.

But i’m not sure if such an addon already exists, it’s likely you’d have to cobble one together yourself.

I’m not sure how much it overlaps with your ideas, but i’d highly recommend you check out the Addon Narcissus, i feel like i’ve seen some features in there that sound like you’d like them.

It’s mainly that they’ll be hardcoded values, so you basicly take away your ability to just change graphic settings in general (as use of the macros will render that change moot).

6

Thanks for both of your replies.

Regarding Narcissus, I had no idea about the addon and it almost achieves what I want - a temporary maximization of the graphics for screenshot purposes. The only issue is the character information in the way. Regardless, I’ll probably keep the addon just because of how good it is.

I’ve actually found an addon even closer to what I want - Screenshotter - which actually maximizes the graphics settings, takes a screenshot, and then reverts the settings. The only problem is that this seems to keep causing the game to crash, so I’ll need to look into this issue or other alternatives.

7

Cool.

Yea, it’s really well polished, more so than any other wow add on i can think off.

Yea, that sounds like a little snag :slight_smile:

8

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