Any tutorials for scaling screenshots from games?

[MLG at DOW]

Hey, everyone!

So I've been on a quest to find the accurate scale of Fallout weapons for a long time, and I got close. I was scaling the in-game weapon models to their real world counterparts- but the developers didn't seem too accurate in the scaling aspect, which makes it difficult. My biggest issue is that not all weapons are the same scale- I can't find one scale ratio and apply it to every weapon. The Red Glare is scaling differently than the 9mm for some reason.

I once watched an episode of Mythbusters, and Adam needed to find the scale of a room from a movie, I think, and he was measuring screenshots with a caliper, then eventually made an accurate scale model from that. My question is- how do I do that? How do I scale in-game weapons based off screenshots? I think that would help me find an accurate scale, especially if I capture something like a tin can or bottle in the frame. How would I go about this? And I apologise if I'm a little difficult to understand, I'm just trying to figure this out.

 

[avagoyamug]

I think you already have all the answers there - you try to find something ingame, that you know the exact size of... Could be something like a can, or a character (sometimes RPGs tell you the size of your character).
The problem that you already run into though will be, that games are ofyen very inconsistent with scaling. The Art director might decide some weapon looks too big or too small in the hands of a character and scale it up or down a bit... Most weapons, even if modeled after real world weapons, are often just loosely modeled to scale by eye...

 

[division 6]

A lot of times they also change the scale of an object so that when you encounter it you will find it in different sizes through out the game.
Plasmids in Bioshock are a prime example.

If the weapon or based on something real world than just use the real world size and don't fret over in game distortion.

 

[MLG at DOW]

Yeah, a lot of the guns have the bullets within the model, like the 9mm, so I base the scale off that. But what about weapons not based off real world guns, like the Red Glare?

 

[laellee]

Yeah, a lot of the guns have the bullets within the model, like the 9mm, so I base the scale off that. But what about weapons not based off real world guns, like the Red Glare?

You just have to guess. If I have no reference for a weapon scale, I base 95% of the size I choose off of the grip size, and what fits comfortably in the hand. Occasionally, if you look in game wiki pages, they will sometimes list a length.

 

[chrisnupp]

This has worked for me a lot to get fairly close to scaling. With weapons I use my hands. Sounds weird, I know but hear me out. I'm an average dude, I have average size hands. weapons have grips, be it a gun, a weird cleaver, anything. Seeing the hand in-game I find a grip, or make one that matches where fingers line up, then scale the rest of it to that.

 

[laellee]

Here, I'll throw you a bone... Had a couple minutes, so I pulled up the stats on a real life rocket launcher with similar features, the LRAC-F1. Namely, I was looking for a launcher that had a similar grip and shoulder-pad setup to the Red Glare. After pulling a good side shot of the LRAC and saving it into MS Paint, I then went over to a Fallout Wiki and got a nice side blueprint of the Red Glare, and saved a copy of that image too.

There are a bunch of ways to do the next step, but here's what I did for the sake of speed: I pasted the LRAC image into MS Paint, and then scaled it up so it's length matched the length of the actual launcher, 46 inches. I then just pasted the Red Glare blueprint image into the same MS Paint with the LRAC, and scaled the Fallout weapon until the grip size and shoulder pad-to-grip spacing matched up with the real launcher. The result looks like this:



Then it's just a matter of measuring the rescaled Fallout launcher... The Red Glare comes out to 47 1/4" overall, 38" collapsed.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I just eyeball it based on the size of the character. I remember asking about the yard stick in the game because they would have basically handed us an easy way to measure the in game weapons. Of course it's not even an accurate yard stick in the game!

In reality they would have special weapons for power armor because a laser rifle you use would be too small to use in power armor.