1. https://imgur.com/a/bJvkU73 = How to search model correctly.
   
2. Source ComicMaker: https://gtm.you1.cn/app/1840/discussions/0/864977564253899282/
   
3. Model posting: Vertice and material limits - https://gtm.you1.cn/app/1840/discussions/0/2552901289735610062/
   
4. Blender shading issue - https://gtm.you1.cn/app/365670/discussions/0/1636417554420049878/
   
5. Someone is making an SFM successor: https://gtm.you1.cn/app/1840/discussions/0/1813170373225373386/#c1813170373226493091

Originally posted by Zappy:

What CPU, GPU(s), amount of RAM, and operating system does your computer have?

To find out what CPU, amount of RAM, and operating system your computer has, press the Windows key, search for and open "dxdiag", and look at exactly what it says besides "Processor", "Memory", and "Operating System" in the "System" tab.

To find out what GPU(s) your computer has, open the Control Panel, change the drop-down "View by" selection list to "Large icons" or "Small icons", click "Device Manager", expand the "Display Adapters" list/group, and look at the exact names of all items in that list/group.

Originally posted by TheNCourt:

To be straight forward, there are so many things about lights to learn, that it's really not practical to explain how to get good effects without just saying "learn what all the buttons do and experiment."

I'll just say the following;

Tip1) Radius slider. This is your friend, and makes shadows look smooth and sexy.

Tip2) Colors and negative intensity. Remapping the slider range of your intensity on your light with a negative value (like -100) will wield negative light. You can use negative lights to create colors not only in the SRGB (White, Red, Green, Blue) Scale, but also in the CMYK (Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, Black) scale.

To be accurate, CMYK isn't really CMYK, but rather a negative RGB space (Instead of White it's Black). However you can combine two lights, one positive and one negative to create psuedo CMYK. Doing so yields possibilities to create wonderful gradients like this https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1260045912

Tip3) Angles...are one of the most important, and basically define the features of your subject. Lights from below the subject will accentuate shadows from the mouth and nose, cast upon the forehead, while shadows from above, will accentuate shadows of the brow,nose and upper cheeck bones onto the lips and neck.

Tip4) change the light of models : Look at this image. https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1225567166

Most of the light coming from this image is not from an actual light, but rather the models themselves. I add a Vector based element in the element viewer $color2 to a models texture, and then up the colors from 1, 1, 1 to say 100, 200, 300, and the model will glow very bright in a Cyan colored tint.

Now take a look at this GIF: https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1448237042

What i did here, was to up the tonemapscale of this map by a lot, to increase the bloom in the sky and mountains which has a very nice teal color. Then, i added the $color2 to both the car and the character and decreased their natural lighting (from 1, 1 ,1 to .5 .5 .5). This image features NO animation set lights whatsoever, just manipulation of the tonemap and the model colors.

Hopefully these tips were some-what useful, and maybe get you going. The key thought is to learn what the buttons do and experiment as much as you can.

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz.vmt:

According to all known laws
of aviation,

there is no way a bee
should be able to fly.

Its wings are too small to get
its fat little body off the ground.

The bee, of course, flies anyway

because bees don't care
what humans think is impossible.

Yellow, black. Yellow, black.
Yellow, black. Yellow, black.

Originally posted by Marco Skoll:

This is the BAT file I use for 4K rendering:

sfm.exe -nosteam -nop4 -dxlevel 95 -num_edicts 8192 -sfm_resolution 2160 -sfm_shadowmapres 8192 -monitortexturesize 1024 -reflectiontexturesize 1024 +mat_envmapsize 256 +mat_forceaniso 16 +r_waterforceexpensive 1 +r_waterforcereflectentities 1 +mat_wateroverlaysize 1024 +r_hunkalloclightmaps 0 +flex_smooth 0

Breaking it down:

sfm.exe = It's a BAT file, it needs to call SFM.

-nosteam = For performance, I only use this combination of settings for when I'm doing the final render, so I don't want SFM wasting time connecting to the workshop.

-nop4 = Disables Valve's PerForce development tools that really shouldn't be running in SFM anyway and slow it down.

-dxlevel 95 = Shouldn't do anything, as SFM should be running in DirectX 9 Shader Model 3 anyway, but this ensures it is.

-num_edicts 8192 = Turns up the number of entities that SFM can handle in a map.

-sfm_resolution 2160 = Enables 3840x2160 ("4K") resolution as an image/video export setting (as posters have all kinds of bugs, you want to use these modes). This one is a serious hit to performance, so don't use it until you're ready to perform the final render.

-sfm_shadowmapres 8192 = Increases SFM's shadow quality. This is also very performance hungry, albeit somewhat less so. It can actually be worth turning to 1024 (from the default of 2048) down for general editing, as it will improve your frame rates. (Although this does slightly change the effect of the shadowmapfilter slider on the softness of lights, so bear that in mind).

-monitortexturesize 1024 = Increases SFM's rt_camera quality.
-reflectiontexturesize 1024 = Increases SFM's reflection quality.
+mat_envmapsize 256 = Increases SFM's cubemap quality.

+mat_forceaniso 16 = Forces anisotropic filtering to the maximum. Very little performance loss, huge improvement in texture quality on angled surfaces.

+r_waterforceexpensive 1 = Forces SFM to not take shortcuts when rendering water.
+r_waterforcereflectentities 1 = Forces SFM to reflect objects in water.
+mat_wateroverlaysize 1024 = Increases resolution of water distortion effects.

+r_hunkalloclightmaps 0 = Prevents crashes on some larger maps by not loading lightmaps into the engine hunk.

+flex_smooth 0 = Should disable flex decay, which avoids problems with flexes resetting and resettling, but I'm not sure it works properly in SFM. Still, I've put it in there.

Originally posted by TheNCourt:

Best possible quality... There's so many different things one can do that can increase the quality of your image/movie, and the level at which you want this quality can range from elementary to complex...

So i'll just start you out with the most basic basic;

before rendering ANYTHING, everyone should use these console commands :

mat_mipmaptextures 0
mat_forceaniso 16

Startup option
-sfm_shadowmapres 8192

These commands will automatically make your crappy poster into amazing quality wise. Forceaniso makes textures that would otherwise depricate with distance from the camera, not depricate... and mip map textures forces all textures to use the highest pixel version of the texture available.

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz.vmt:

Here are the list of things that would be a great addition to SFM plus improvements:

• 64-bit upgrade
  
• Get rid the infamous "Can't animate over 60 seconds" problem.
  
• More lighting options such as half-spherical light, full-area ambient light, and Source 2-like lighting quality.
  
• A better manipulator tool such as the ability to move or rotate at a specific distance or angle respectively like the one in Unreal 4 engine.
  
• A better animation set grouping system.
  
• Able to set skin and bodygroup inside import model window before spawning the model.
  
• Hide the little "x" on every layout. No more "accidental" problem.
  
• Upgrade the import particle effect window to looks more like in SF2M.
  
• Improved video export option such as compressed AVI export and built-in encoder for MP4 export.
  
• Native 1080p, 1440p and 4K option in export settings, and the viewport resolution can be adjusted to 1440p maximum for performance sake.
  
• Advanced sound editor such a pitch, tempo, left-right pan, basic EQ, reverb and more. Those settings can be animated per sound clip.
  
• Update the in-game mode that allows using different weapons, wearing cosmetics and using bots.
  
• Native and decent physic simulator.
  
• Scale control with specific axis option.
  
• A decal emitter of some sort that you can automatically "stick" the decal on a specific part of the model or map regardless the surface shape.
  
• MP3 and FLAC support that actually works well and can be used to extract phonemes.
  
• Able to save custom bodygroups and merged models so you can reuse them on other shot and session.
  
• Always up to date "Add Team Fortress Item" tool.
  
• Add jigglebone tool to use on a specific bone(s) with pre-existing presets such as "soft rubber", "spring" and "hair", and along with advanced settings including making your own presets.
  
• A special map that you can export a video or poster with a transparent background.
  
• Far more efficient rendering process.
  
• A more efficient way to transfer animation sets from one session to another.
  
• Cloud-system where the session can be shared and edited by multiple people easier ala Google Doc.
  
• Native TF2 painting system plus support sheens.
  
• Material/shade editor that is close with more modern system.
  
• A better override material tool such as able to edit, paint or draw an existing texture ala Photoshop (doesn't have to be as complicated) inside SFM and save the custom texture separately. Plus, able to save edited material attributes
  
• Able to save the animation as a custom sequence.
  
• Theme support.
  
• Customizable keyboard inputs and shortcuts.
  
• Upgraded engine that allow custom models to use more than 32 materials, 32 items per bodygroup, and 100,000 vertices per bodygroup.
  
• Multi-monitor support
  
• Better bone constraint options and able to save bone constraint settings per model.
  
• Valve could sell their own assets or add a donation button if they want monetary support and continue the software support longer.

That's all I could think of right now.

Originally posted by Pte Jack:

Each body group (Blender Object) should only be 9000 - 11000 verts (closer to 9000 and even then, depending on the complexity of the model, this limit may have to be decreased.) You have to watch for Model splitting or the dreaded Exception ACCESS (1) error, when you compile. If these occur, then the objects causing the split or fatal error have to be decreased in vert counts.

If your model has shapekeys/blendshapes (flexes) all flexes should be contained in one body group (blender object), it doesn't matter where they are on the model, they should be confined to one bodygroup.

As for MATERIALS (VMTs), a model can only have up to 32 (?? I think it is) materials. This includes all Texture groups (skins) you add to the QC.

A VMT may call multiple elemental Textures (VTFs like Basetexture, Bump./normal maps, environmental/phong masks, detail textures, etc..) and textures are limited to the textures required by the elemental calls from the VMTs.

All Textures must be to the power of 2 in dimensions, like 64x64, 128x256, 4096x2048, 2048x512, etc, The width and the height must be to the power (2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096) and I'm not sure if a Valve model or the Valve programs support 8K textures (8192) pixels (but why would anyone want to use a monster like that in a model anyway, LOL!)

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz.vmt:

I still remembered my very first and last attempt being an SFM tutor. What a mess I was. Firstly, the "student" I tutored with lives in an opposite timezone so the schedule is messed up like forcefully stay up way too late just to teach him. Then, little to no free time such as even I go outside, I have to chat with him on Steam mobile to know his progress and I ended up spending most of the time on the phone because of that. Plus, delaying my SFM projects and other projects. Maybe it's the reason I start losing my passion to make an SFM video besides Youtube's adpocalypse bullsh*ts, got cheated on (not related with romantic relationship) and pressure from my studying.

In the end, I glad he's doing fine and getting better without me. He even thanked me for helping him out even though I feel I didn't teach him enough but oh well. I also glad he understands me when I decided to bail out from the tutoring stuff. Maybe it's just me so I can't say for every SFM tutors out there. Take my experience with a grain of salt.

Still, your idea is noble I have to admit that but as Capt said, it's unpractical.

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz. jpg:

Yeah. I use https://lingojam.com/FancyTextGenerator

Originally posted by Zappy:

Depending on several factors, the following guide on GameBanana might be relevant to your issue: Fixing the 5% Weight Bone Link Cull on Models[gamebanana.com]

Originally posted by R234:

It's not that hard, when you know how to do it:

1) You're first going to need the position data of where you want the sound to come from. I usually do that by importing a model (I like to use axis_helper.mdl for that) and put it where the sound effect will originate from. Then, right-click that model's animation set, and click "Show in Element Viewer" > "AnimationSet" (if you're making a character talk, you can use the character's model instead of a helper). Once in the Element Viewer, expand the "controls" group, then the "rootTransform" group. Select the field to the right of "valuePosition", and copy it (Ctrl+C). The field is likely to be pretty wide with lots of digits in it, make sure you copy the whole thing.
http://i.imgur.com/5jqResU.jpg

2) Now we have to paste this data onto the sound effect. In Clip Editor mode (F2), add the sound clip to an audio track, if it isn't done already. right-click it, and click "Show in Element Viewer". Expand the "sound" group. Paste (Ctrl+V) the numbers we copied earlier in the field besides "origin". You also have to set the "level" variable to 100, if you leave it at 0 the sound will not play in stereo.
http://i.imgur.com/LHPaONn.jpg

It should work now, I know it does for me :)

Originally posted by illegal mexican birb engineer:

This disgussion is from 2014 or before, and the conversation is probably over, but I recommend Audacity and Levelator. Audacity for mixing lines. And Levelator to make it sound nice.

Originally posted by episoder:

that is correct. it's basicly an image format. what do you need help with? finding the plugins? or i gotta have another trouble shoot chat today, really?


Photoshop: here[nemesis.thewavelength.net]
Gimp: here[www.tophattwaffle.com]

basic material right there (c/p to notepad if it's hard to read :)

vertexlitgeneric { $basetexture "path to texture" // diffuse and alpha transparency or selfillummask if needed $bumpmap "path to texture" // normalmap and specular intensity in the alpha channel $selfillum 0 // basicly emission without emission. just glow $selfillummask "path to texture" // if the bsaetexture alpha is occupied, try this. may work. $phong 1 $phongboost 4 $phongexponent 4 // sharpness (inverted roughness) of the highlight $phongfresnelranges "[.2 1 1]" $phongexponenttexture "path to texture" // phongexponent (see above) in Red, metallic in Green $phongtint "[1 1 1]" // additional specular color control $phongalbedotint 1 // if set, enables "metallic" color reflections from the base color $envmap env_cubemap // this imprecise reflection should be avoided as much as possible $envmaptint "[.2 .2 .2]" // color controls to dim it $normalmapalphaenvmapmask 1 // additional flag to select the source for it $basemapalphaenvmapmask 0 // $rimlight 0 // who likes it from the back? fresnel did? $rimlightboost .1 // can all be avoided when using proper stage lighting $rimlightexponent 32 // it's hard to get a good contrast }

try it and tweak the numbers until it looks good. for quick refreshing i'd recommend hlmv.

if you need help gettin the visuals right you could maybe ask the pbr guru anyway.

Originally posted by Bop:

Attaching particles onto the whole model like burning effectFirst, you need controlPoint0 of wraith_king_ambient, from hero_skeletonking.pcf, to be locked on the rootTransform of the model.

Next, show the model (as model) in the element viewer. You want to right click the root (wraith_king_GameModel) and copy it.

Finally, open the particle system (as particle system) in the element viewer. Right click the element array "controlModels" and Paste Special -> Paste as Reference.

Enjoy. http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=537086984

-----

For advanced users reading this thread, the particle used a Position on Model Random initialiser. This initialiser is used for burning players and many trail effects in TF2. Particle systems with this property places an emitter on the roots (can be offsetted) of each hitbox of a model.

Originally posted by episoder:

good guide. i guess it'll not be pinned. you a day to late, maybe. there won't be mod here for the next couple weeks. checking once in a while.

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz.iso:

Originally posted by episoder:

good guide. i guess it'll not be pinned. you a day to late, maybe. there won't be mod here for the next couple weeks. checking once in a while.

We need to keep talking here to let it stay on top of the page for as long as we want.

Originally posted by surfer171:

You know what got me thinking suddenly, remember history form 3? Or was it form 4? When Malaysia is infested with communist back then, there's this pacifist guy who used this method of sending out letter of apologies through air. Heh, think that'll work in this era as in sending out to all the sfm users about this thread's existence

Originally posted by surfer171:

You know what got me thinking suddenly, remember history form 3? Or was it form 4? When Malaysia is infested with communist back then, there's this pacifist guy who used this method of sending out letter of apologies through air. Heh, think that'll work in this era as in sending out to all the sfm users about this thread's existence

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz.iso:

Originally posted by surfer171:

You know what got me thinking suddenly, remember history form 3? Or was it form 4? When Malaysia is infested with communist back then, there's this pacifist guy who used this method of sending out letter of apologies through air. Heh, think that'll work in this era as in sending out to all the sfm users about this thread's existence

Are you it isn't a reward posters to any communist guerillas who surrender themselve?