Capture High-Quality Screenshots in Unreal Engine 5

High-quality screenshots in Unreal Engine 5 are essential when presenting your work to clients, building a standout portfolio, or promoting your game or design project. A well-composed screenshot not only documents your progress but also communicates your artistic vision and skill. Fortunately, UE5 offers various tools and features that allow you to capture clean, professional screenshots directly from your scenes. In this article, we’ll show you how to take screenshots in Unreal Engine 5 and explore practical tips to help you improve the quality of your screenshots.

Image source: developer.nvidia.com 

Unreal Engine 5 offers many ways to take screenshots, from simple one-click shortcuts to advanced high-resolution options. Here are the most common methods:

For a simple screenshot at default resolution, just hit the F9 key on your keyboard. UE will save the image, which you can then access by clicking the prompt at the bottom of the screen. This will open the folder containing your screenshot.

The high-resolution screenshot console command is a great cross-platform tool for taking very high-resolution screenshots. It can take screenshots at any size thanks to its ability to increase the Size Multiplier of the image. That way, we can take screenshots at a much higher resolution than your screen resolution.

• Select the ‘High Resolution Screenshot’ option
• Click ‘Capture’ to save the screenshot to your computer.

High-resolution screenshots are essential for creating promotional materials such as banners, posters, or website images where image quality is important. Using this feature ensures that the screenshot remains sharp and clear even when zoomed in or displayed on a large screen.

Image source: realbiomes.com 

If you want to capture a specific moment during gameplay, you can automate the process using Blueprints:

• Add an ‘Execute Console Command’ node to your Blueprint.
• Use the command ‘HighResShot’ along with your target resolution
• Customize the command with additional options to suit your preferences.

Note: By default, screenshots taken in Unreal Engine are saved in the ‘Saved’ folder in your project folder. You can access this folder by clicking the prompt that appears at the bottom of the screen after taking a screenshot.

Image source: unreal-university.blog 

Taking screenshots in Unreal Engine is pretty simple, but there are a few important factors to keep in mind if you want the sharpest, highest quality capture possible.

When capturing still images, the goal is to get a clean, unedited frame that looks exactly as it appears in the engine. To achieve this, turn off Anti-Aliasing to ensure that no filters are messing with our pixels. While AA helps smooth out jagged edges in gameplay, it can also blur fine details in screenshots. This is especially important when using Nanite, which generates assets on a per-pixel basis. Additionally, some anti-aliasing methods like TSR (Temporal Super Resolution) can interfere with the rendering of Nanite assets. So, turning off AA ensures that every pixel is rendered sharp and accurate, preserving the true details of your scene.

Image source: realbiomes.com

Unlike a standard camera, the Cine Camera Actor has additional parameters for cinematic purposes, including focus, focal length, aperture, and many other settings that will help when creating the perfect shot. Once you have found the angle you want, you should position the actor to avoid accidentally moving him or her.

Image source: realbiomes.com 

Another important factor to remember is to adjust the Manual Focus Distance using the Draw Debug Focus Plane feature. The reason for this is to ensure maximum sharpness on the subject in focus. Without this feature, important details may appear slightly blurry or fuzzy, an issue that is often not noticed until you zoom in on the final image.

To take better screenshots with the High Resolution Screenshots tool, consider the following:

• Adjust the resolution multiplier relative to your base screen resolution. But don’t set it too high, or it may crash Unreal. Experiment with different multipliers to find the optimal balance between quality and performance for your system. For example, the ideal raw render resolution should be 1.5-2 times the target resolution. That is, if your screen resolution is 1920×1080 and your target resolution is 3840×2160, you can render with a Size Multiplier of 3. You will end up with a raw render of about 5760×3240, then lower the resolution to 3840×2160. However, the problem can be that the render looks different from the viewport, especially if the AO/Global Illumination is changed or not set up properly. The only solution is to take multiple screenshots until you get one that fits.
• Optimize the viewport aspect ratio for a better layout, aim for 16:9, or use full-screen mode (F11). You will get a screenshot that fits most modern screens and social media platforms.
• Press the ‘G’ key when the viewport is active to hide UI elements and collision box borders. This gives the screenshot a clean, uncluttered look, focusing on the main world instead of the dev tools.

Another great way to improve image quality is to adjust the Screen Percentage setting. This technique effectively supersamples the scene, rendering it at a higher resolution and then scaling it down to your screen size to create a sharper, cleaner image.

For example, if your screen resolution is 1920×1080, setting the Screen Percentage to 200 will cause Unreal to render the scene at 3840×2160, then automatically scale it down to 1920×1080. This is similar to rendering at high resolution and manually resizing in Photoshop, but built directly into the engine.

Image source: realbiomes.com

This also acts as a form of high-quality anti-aliasing, removing jagged edges and improving image clarity. We recommend combining 200% Screen Percentage with a higher Screenshot Size Factor (depending on your system and target resolution). This is simple to get high-quality results without post-processing.

If you feel that the image, especially the surfaces viewed at an angle, is not sharp enough, you can improve it by reducing the LOD (Level of Detail) of the texture to use a higher quality mipmap and increasing the Anisotropic Filtering to preserve detail on inclined surfaces. Use the following CVARs:

• r.MipMapLODBias = -2
• r.MaxAnisotropy = 16

Note: Reducing LOD too much can cause image noise, so apply it on a case-by-case basis.

When shooting at wide angles or from a distance, such as overhead or large biome panoramas, you may find that objects such as trees or bushes are blurred or disappear. This usually happens because:

• Preserve Area mode is not enabled on foliage objects
• Anti-aliasing, such as TSR, is used to blur details
• Nanite or LOD of textures automatically degrades at long distances

To fix this, you can reduce Nanite culling (the removal of unwanted details) by using the following CVAR:

• r.Nanite.MaxPixelsPerEdge 0.5

However, if this value is set too low, you may experience buffer overflow or thrashing. If that happens, you need to increase Nanite’s buffer limits by adding CVARs to your DefaultEngine.ini:

• r.Nanite.MaxVisibleClusters=10485760
• r.Nanite.MaxCandidateClusters=16777216
• r.Nanite.MaxNodes=10485760
• r.Nanite.RasterIndirectionMultiplier=1.1

Warning: Increasing these limits can cause the engine to exceed hardware limits and crash.

In some cases, keeping r.Nanite.MaxPixelsPerEdge at 1 while reducing the texture mip ratio is more beneficial in terms of keeping foliage density at a distance. You can use:

• r.MipMapLODBias=-3 (can be reduced even lower)

Taking high-quality screenshots in Unreal Engine 5 doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right tools and a few tweaks to your settings, you can capture sharp, professional-looking images from your footage. No matter you’re building a game, showcasing a portfolio, or preparing images for a client, clean screenshots make your work stand out. Try these tips and see the difference your next shoot will make.

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References: realbiomes.com, unreal-university.blog