Image Capture

Image Capture

An example of image capture would be scanning a picture onto the computer. Its sorta like printing, but in reverse. An amateur way to get a physical picture/drawing onto a computer would be to take a picture of the drawing with a camera, then copy the image onto the computer. However, the picture quality is not as good on the drawing when shot with a camera so the proper way to do it would be to use a scanner to scan the picture onto the computer.

A Scanner

In the games industry, image capture is very helpful as having a real life image in digital form on a computer is very helpful for development. For example, taking pictures of outdoor scenery could help contribute to designing an environment for the game. As you have the picture to refer to as help for inspiration for the environment. Images on digital cameras are very easily transferable to a computer as you can just connect the camera to the computer and copy the images over. Or just take the SD card where the pictures are saved out of the camera and put it into the computer and so the same thing.

Real life images could also be implemented into the game aswell as you could take a picture of lets say a brick wall and use the picture you took as an actual texture within the game. Of course the image would have to match a pattern so the texture wouldn't have lines running through the sides of it on the object and the image would have to be optimised (power of two) in order for the texture to display properly on the 3D model.

Scenery in Germany. Taking pictures of good scenery which could inspire an environment/level for your game could be very helpful as you have the picture saved so you can always look back to it for help whilst designing the environment.

There is also image capturing software which can capture images from your computer screen. One of the simple methods which is available to every one is pressing the 'PrtScr' (print screen) key, this takes a screenshot of whatever was displaying on your computer at the time.You can use an image editing software (like paint, as every windows computer has this) and paste the picture onto it and save, thus successfully saving a screenshot from your computer. This is really helpful for when your doing a written tutorial for someone and you need images showing the process to accompany it. There is also software which can record footage on your computer (e.g. hypercam, camstudio), this software is called screencasting software. It can capture footage from a computer screen and convert it into a video file such as AVI or WMV. It is very helpful for video tutorials or recording game footage on your computer.

HyperCam, a popular screencasting program