My question: how can I take an overhead screenshot of my level that is very high in resolution and will make everything appear at the same angle (no lens "fish-eye" effect)?


Here's why, in case you want to read on, but not necessary for the question above.
I first envisioned my project as a 3D walkthrough of a real-life building and grounds, and so I built it that way. But I've come to realize that my idea was not only overkill, but would work better as a map, such as with Google Maps API, or with Microsoft's new Silverlight map control (using deep zoom technology). This would be more manageable for my Web users to download, and if I ever need to change the map I can just rebuild that part of my level and take a new screenshot.
So what I need is to be able to take an overhead screenshot of high enough resolution to be used in one of these mapping applications, and so everything needs to appear fairly uniform in regard to the angle of the image taken from the "lens".

I would greatly appreciate any help offered on this.

Thanks!

Can't you take screenshots of individual, even sized portions at the highest resolution (zooming in more etc), and then 'stitch' them together in an editor like photoshop/Gimp/etc?

As for that same angle thing, if you take the shot with the camera perpendicular to the map, wouldn't that just be fine?

Thanks for the reply!

I was hoping I wouldn't have to use the stitching method... it's a huge level and the building has multiple floors that will need to be compiled and captured separately.
In hindsight the angle/lens effect may not be a big deal. But is there a way to take a screenshot from overhead of my full level but force a higher resolution image to be produced than the default resolution of my computer screen? And is there any way to force some kind of anti-aliasing as well?

Tips...

1)Use 'video_set' to set the engine to a higher resolution.
2)Use 'video_window' to remove the border/title/etc of the window, giving you more rendering area.
3)'d3d_antialias' set to a high value like 9 will smooth out the scene, and also 'd3d_mipmapping' may also help improve the quality. Other 'd3d_' functions might be of some use.

Then you can use file_for_screen / bmap_for_screen to grab an image of the screen.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Check this out for getting rid of the lens effect: ISOMETRIC.

Jibb

Terrific replies--thank you both very much, this is exactly the information I needed!

you can't render to huge resolutions like you mentioned in the other thread. i don't think any normal graphics card would support that.

you have to use stitching but of course this could be automated.