The “print screen” button in Windows is a really unsatisfying way to capture images in a computer game. So Nvidia invented Ansel, a revolutionary way to capture in-game screenshots. They’re so cool, viewable in 360 degrees, that you’ll start to think of them as “scene shots,” not screenshots.
Ansel is aimed at a subgroup of video game fans known as in-game photographers. They freeze a game and capture a still image in enormous detail. That process is very painstaking, but now Nvidia is making it easy to do, starting with an update for Electronic Arts’ Mirror’s Edge Catalyst game. An update for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming later this summer to enable Ansel in that game, too.
“We thought about how to put this in the hands of gamers, enabling every gamer to capture beautiful images,” said Jason Paul, the general manager of emerging technologies at Nvidia, in an interview with GamesBeat.
You can freeze a scene and capture the image from any position. You can rotate the game 360 degrees and view the main character, Faith, in the picture as well. You can capture high-dynamic range images in high-fidelity formats. You can view the images — including the 360-degree shots — via your smartphone, PC, or virtual reality headset.
Ansel consists of an in-game camera, as well as post-process filters that let you adjust the look and mood of your games. You can export the images to formats such as EXR, which lets you work with tools such as Photoshop. You can take high-resolution screenshots and tile and stitch them together into bigger images. You can super-sample down to make really precise screens. And you can do 360-degree capture in mono or stereo, viewable in VR.
Nvidia announced the tech in May, and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is the first of many games to come, Paul said.
I looked at the process in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and it was amazing to freeze the screen, move around the camera to different views, and then capture the moment.