Disclaimer: I do not promise to be an expert VPer. These are things that work for me and are intended to share knowledge, give inspiration, or to give you a place to start.
Both Snapshots and EasyCheat let you access different locations to do VP in. There’s pros and cons to each, and I use them both fairly regularly, depending on what I want to do and if I know what I’m looking for.
Please note: I use Reshade and Otis, so all my steps will be involving those two. This guide assumes you have already installed Reshade/Otis (but, again, Otis is not required, you can use regular photomode to do this too). If you require assistance installing Reshade or Otis, please head over to Mod Help and someone should be able to help you out!
Because this character has a lot of water themes to her, I went to Umberlee’s temple (using EasyCheat: CTY_LowerCity_A + setting the teleport trigger to ATM_CIN_CTY_Interior_Docks_Tower (teleports you outside-ish Umberlee’s temple); I then used double-click to teleport to get here) and the beach that’s just outside it. However, it’s a bright, sunny day, which is not what I want because Fishy has a lot of ~night~ vibes to her. And also because I want to show you how to change your lighting and atmosphere to make it night or day or whatever you wish it to be.
*before shot*
Whenever you want to change lighting and atmosphere, it must be done in real time (i.e. not in photomode). You will not see any changes if you try to change anything while in photomode.
At this point, I actually like to activate Otis Cam and angle it so I can better see the sky. Because Otis is not technically photomode, it doesn’t block Lighty Lights from changing the lighting or atmosphere. Just make sure you enable input to the game while Otis is running (my hotkey for it is the numpad . [period] key) so that you can interact with Lighty Lights.
Open up your Lighty Lights and click on the “AnL” tab. Again, this must be done while the game is not in photomode.
If you know what you’re searching for, you can enter it into the search and have it pop up. I usually use either the drop down or the arrow keys to look for one that fits what I want. I start with changing the lighting, then go to the atmosphere. Lighting changes the sky (I think) and atmosphere changes the lights (I think. I always mess up which one does what, so you might need to play around with it. If you’re like me and just mess around with it and then can’t figure out how to undo it, if you click “reset LTN” or “reset ATM”, that’ll reset the lighting and atmosphere to their original states).
Some different lightings:
And now some different atmospheres with the LTN_Default_EV11_Dawn to give you an idea of how the two relate to each other: