How to Improve Gallery Pictures

Thank you @Hattys, it's nice to have you join the discussion. :) Currently, in order to save your build, you have to be in build mode, and this can create some problems in getting the right angle/perspective. I'm thinking in particular of the way the camera has a tendency to bounce up in build mode as you approach different distances/angles.

However, your idea got me thinking... What if we could use the preset camera positions as we do currently when filming videos?

For those who may not be familiar with that process, camera presets can be created by pressing CTRL plus a number from 5-9. You can pretty much position the camera anywhere you like, as zoomed in or out as you like, press the control combination, and the game saves that to a file called VideoCameraStates. Then, you simply press the corresponding number, say 5, and the camera pans to that position. There's more to it, such as controlling the speed, etc., but that doesn't pertain to this discussion.

What does, is the idea that if we set these camera positions for a build, Maxis could perhaps then access that file when we press "Save" to take the pictures from each of those positions that have been set. This could be done in the background and would simply overwrite the default shots. The nice thing here would be that people who are unaware of (and don't care about) choosing their own shots, would not be presented with anything new in the User Interface or anything disruptive to the current process. The players who are interested could learn about how to use the camera presets and just set them up when they are ready to save and share the lot. It might be prudent to have an option in the game options to allow people to toggle whether to use the system this way or not, but I don't think it would be necessary. Note that the camera presets file can be deleted at any time, and then those presets go away.

Now this idea is really applicable only to lots and possibly rooms. It doesn't solve any issues with sims, of course, but really, because they are created in an entirely different interface, I don't know that there is any idea that would work universally for all creations.