There are tons of ways to take good screenshots, and as far as positioning and framing goes, I really can't help you there. That is left to the discretion of the user taking the screenshot. There are, however, many ways to improve your actual screenshots. Most, if not all, of the screenshots in my archive taken by me, stoldark, do not include a HUD (Armor, ammo, health, etc.). A lot of my screenshots have no items in the background, most do not include a frag count in the bottom right hand corner (with a few exceptions), and there is most certainly no weapon being held out. All these elements on the screen can take away from the essence of what you're trying to capture in the image. I have listed here invaluable commands to be used when taking screenshots.
Most of these commands are not for tweaking purposes; in fact, most will create a preformance hit on your frame rates or reduce your system to a machine not very capable of keeping up with your demands. These commands are for still screenshot purposes to show off the power of the Q3A graphical system. You can type these commands from the console during the game. Pressing the tilde ( ~ ) button brings down the console.
/cg_drawgun 0
This command does not show the gun you are holding when in first person perspective.
/cg_drawstatus 0
This command eliminates the HUD you see in the bottom of the screen.
/cg_draw2d 0
This command eliminates the rendering of 2d sprites, ie. FPS counter, Fragcounter, netgraph, numbers in HUD etc.
/r_drawentities 0
This command eliminates the rendering of any and all 3d objects, ie. Health, Guns, Armor, People, Doors, moving pads, etc. The mapping environment remains in tact (walls, tongues, tentacle things)
/cg_fov 0-999
Changes the Field of View while in first person mode. Useful for getting 'unusual' angles
/r_picmip 0
Uses the highest quality textures for Quake III Arena (some sytems may incur a large preformance hit while using this command)
/r_subdivisions 0.5
This command increases the number of polygons within the map environment, making curves much smoother. (this command will definately generate a preformance hit on most systems: ie v2, v3. GeForce cards can cope with the mass amounts of polys)
/cg_thirdperson 1
Ever want to see your player model from a third person perspective? Here's your chance! :)
/cg_thirdpersonrange 0-999
Increases distnace from you to your player model while in 3rd person perspective. The higher the value, the farther away you'll be.
/cg_thirdpersonangle 0-360
Rotates the angle around your player model while in 3rd person perspective
/cg_shadows 1,2,3
This command draws different shadow types on character models. 1 is your standard blob, 2 is a stencil buffer shadow (very cool, but usually halves the frame rate, not recommended for playing), and 3 is a standard polygon shadow which follows your player and moves when hit by dynamic light. The second shadow option must be the coolest one, as it refracts, displaces, scales and is placed correctly and perspectively on all items it passes over. Again, your frame rates will probably halve with this option, so unless you're already getting 900 fps, I wouldn't recommend playing with it on; I just use it for screenshots :)
