How to render sfm

How to render sfm

Hey!
Do you want to color correct your posters but keep getting mad because so much detail is just lost?
Then this guide might just be the thing for you!

My name is Fames. I’ve been using SFM since April 2015 and did a «few» posters.

In this guide I’ll show you how you can increase the amount of detail available for post processing your posters.

My dA [xmindblowx.deviantart.com]
My Tumblr [notmindblow.tumblr.com]
If you see any formatting code, the chance is at 90% it’s because of Steam duplicating the «code» making it appear twice

.PFM (Portable Float Map) files are capable of storing images with floating point information up to 32 bit per channel, making it suitable for HDR!
There are 2 forms of PFM rendering in SFM. I’m only going to talk about one in this guide, as the other one is rarely (if ever) used.

The one I’m talking about can be found when you render a «Image Sequence» in SFM and select PFM from the dropdown menu.

When you render a usual poster, the image either gets exported as a JPG or PNG alongside with a TGA. These files are rendered with a color depth of 8bpc (bit per channel) and JPG even uses compression on the image. That’s even more detail lost!
PFM on the other hand, gets exported with a color depth of 32bpc. That’s more detail than your monitor can even display!

Side note: HDR10 (which modern TV use) only uses 10bpc

If my monitor can’t display all the data PFM delivers, why would I use it then? Simple.
Post processing.

Your monitor might not be able to display all the data, but programs like Photoshop can read it and use it. For example, each pixel has enough data, it knows it has a slight red-ish tint to it, eventhough your monitor displays it at pure white! So when you turn down the exposure, very bright parts are still bright and don’t get washed out like they would with normal 8bpc rendering.

-2.5 Exposure with 32bpc

-2.5 Exposure with 8bpc

Night and day difference! Look at the sun! It’s not getting «bleached» out in the 32bpc file because Photoshop knows that it’s brighter than R255 G255 B255!

So know that you know all the goodies about PFM, you probably want to use it.
To render a PFM in SFM, you go to the movie rendering either via pressing CTRL + M, or
use the export tab as seen below.

Then change the Export mode to Image Sequence and change the duration to custom, set seconds to frames and change 1440 to 1 to render a single image. You can also adjust your render settings in the «More options» dropdown.

You can also change the resolution, but you’ll notice that the highest resolution is 1280×720 or 720p.
To fix this, you launch SFM in a higher resolution with the launch option -sfm_resolution X

To open the launch options, right click SFM in steam and go to Properties->Set launch options.

Then you just have to export the image and you’re pretty much done with the SFM part!

When you render a PFM and open it in Photoshop you will probably be greeted with this:

Don’t panic yet! Just select «Use the embedded profile (instead of the working space)» so that Photoshop uses the color profile that SFM exported with.

Now that you’re in Photoshop, you can check the color depth of the image by going to Image->Mode and you should see that 32Bits/Channel is auto-selected.

You might notice that some options like Curves or Liquify are disabled right now, this is because Photoshop doesn’t really like working with 32bpc images.
!The only things you do in this 32bpc file is initial post processing!

The workflow I use for PFM is:

Sadly, PFM does also come with some drawbacks. Most noticable one being the huge filesize.
A 3840×2160 (4K) PFM file is about 95MB

As mentioned earlier, Photoshop doesnt like the usual workflow of just editing everything in 1 file when working with PFM. This means that more files have to exported, taking up even more space and taking more time.

It’s also annoying to always launch SFM in 1080p/1440p/2160p if you want a decent high-res poster going.

AO quality also gets affected, because unlike poster rendering, the movie export doesnt tile the poster. So if you zoom into it, some AO might still be grainy, even if you set the sample rate to 1024.

32bpc image sequences are made with video making in mind, which is probably a reason why Photoshop doesn’t really support it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use it.

I hope this guide helped you!

If you still have any questions regarding SFM and PFM, please ask ahead!
Thank you so much for reading this guide!

// I wanted to edit guide this to include how to use PFM in After Effects’n’♥♥♥♥ but I’ve since lost motivation to keep this guide up, sorry folks!

How to render sfm

When Source Filmmaker was originally created and released to the public, we were on the early fringes of HD resolution in the PC world, and as a result, the max resolution that you would find was 720p. This is the reason for it defaulting to a maximum resolution of 720p and no higher.
Of course, as HD evolved, it became possible for computers to render at higher resolutions of 1080p and even 4K UHD, but since SFM has not received any updates since 2015, this was never updated in SFM, so it’s still stuck at the old 720p HD setting.
SFM can be ‘brought up’ to these new, higher resolutions, but it has to be done manually by the user.

This guide will show you how to manually raise the operating resolution to what you want.

The first thing that you need to decide is what resolution that you want to render your images and videos in. Not everyone knows, off the top of their heads, what all of these resolutions are, for that we need to find a reference, because we need two bits of information to do this correctly.

We need the width and height settings that SFM will use to accomplish this.

NOTE: Be sure that your monitor supports the resolution that you want to use in SFM, otherwise you WILL have issues.

Now that we know what resolution that we want, we can tell SFM to use it by setting it’s launch options.

Start by opening your Steam Library and setting the filter at the top to ‘Software’.
Source Filmmaker is NOT a game and will not show up in your ‘Games’ list.
Right-click the image and select ‘Properties’.
You will then see this:

In the window that opens select ‘Set Launch Options’ and a smaller window will open.
In this example, there are actually two different entries here. You do not have to use both of them, but after I explain why I did this, you may want to.

The first parameter is the command that tells SFM to use 1080p resolution on launch:
-sfm_resolution 1080

The reason that I use the second parameter is that if you do not, every time that you run SFM you will get a dialogue box popping up telling you that the resolution that you have set is unsupported.
This entry does away with that pop-up box.

Once you have entered this information, confirm the changes and you will now be able to run SFM full size and render your images and videos in 1080p, or whatever resolution you have chosen to run.

WARNING: Be aware that at resolutions above 1080p, the SFM window will scale to that size, but the text within SFM will NOT. To fix this, you will need to make some further adjustments.
This video by Lancaster Studio explains how to overcome this issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq_CRJnCC74

You can now run and render in higher resolutions in SFM!!

EDIT: The link to the manifest in the above video appears to be broken, so I’ve tracked down another link that shows how to make the manifest file:

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and I will reply as soon as I’m able.

How to render sfm

If you know how to change the DOF sample count and DOF quality setting, go elsewhere. And yes there is a slight difference between the two. It’s ridiculous how little guides there are that advertise a tutorial for high quality rendering that also mention Depth of Field Quality. So, here I am.

In this guide I’ll teach you how to change the Depth of Field sample count and Depth of Field Quality.

The default SFM settings are quite bad.

I’ll be using this render I made in 15 minutes as an example:

This is actually quite a bad example, however the main problem here is quite obvious; the Depth of field doesn’t look as it should. The Depth of Field is somehow chopped-up and sharp looking rather than looking suitably blurry and smooth. The low Depth of Field sample count is also responsible for the underside of the baseball being grainy. This is because Depth of Field sample count affects much more than just Depth of Field. It also affects shadow filtering, light radius, volumetric lights, and Ambient Occlusion.

Tip: For the love of god don’t use ambient occlusion as strong as the example I provided. Misuse of ambient occlusion can ruin a lot of renders. Tune it to how you want your poster to look, just like anything else in SFM.

WOAH! Slow down there! We aren’t opening SFM just yet. Before launching SFM we need to get you some better launch options.

In order to change your launch options go to your steam library and find Source Filmmaker. Right click on it and select properties.

Next click the empty text box under LAUNCH OPTIONS. Copy and paste the following into that spot:

Right click the Viewport and select «Render Settings»

Change the «# Samples» to any value above 256. I highly recommend the full 1024.

After changing that value, click ok and select the clip editor in the timeline.

With the clip editor selected, wait for 10-30 seconds, and the image should already start looking significantly better.

If it takes any longer just know that a wait time like that is normal. It all depends on your GPU, the geometric complexity of your models, and the number of lights.

Tip: Source Filmmaker displays a sample counter in the bottom left.

For this step you need to have your camera in the Element Viewer. To do this right click on the camera animation set and select «Show in Element Viewer > Camera«.

When you select the element viewer tab, all the settings on your camera should now be listed.

How to render sfm

Poster exports are known to have some issues, including post-processing (such as bloom and material overlays) not being applied and decaying flexes not «settling» fully, so you should do an image export instead.

To do a proper image export:
— Right-click the/a viewport, choose «Render Settings», and set it up as you want.
— Switch to the Clip Editor, and have the scene (non-«work») camera active.
— Stay still in time, and wait for the bottom-right sample counter to loop back to «Sample 1 of X«.
— Click «File» > «Export» > «Image. «, and save it somewhere with the filename ending in «.png» or such, or alternatively click «File» > «Export» > «Image to Clipboard«, open an image editor, paste it, and save it from there.

This will export what’s currently in the viewport (thus why you should wait for it to sample first), at the resolution set in «File» > «Export» > «Movie. «.

The last bit means that to use a resolution beyond 1280×720, you should follow these instructions:

— Right-click Source Filmmaker in your Steam library.
— Choose «Properties» > «General» > «Set Launch Options. «.
— Make sure that «-sfm_resolution X» is present (without quotes), with X being 720 (the default) for exports up to 1280×720, 1080 for up to 1920×1080, or 2160 for up to 3840×2160.
— Reboot Source Filmmaker (ignore any «window too small» warnings) and load the session.
— Click «File» > «Export» > «[/i]Movie. [/i]», choose the resolution that you want, and click «Cancel«.
— Save the session, and then reload the session (to avoid a possible crash).
— Follow the above instructions to do an image export.
— Optionally change the «movie» resolution back to 1280×720 and save the session.
— Change the «-sfm_resolution X» launch option to have 720 as the number, as higher values can impact performance a lot while working on sessions. (You can also just remove it, but if you keep it in with the value set to 720, it’ll be easier/faster to change it to 1080 or 2160 again in the future.)

It may sound like a lot, but that’s only because that it takes many words to explain few things.

How to render sfm

SETTING UP: To squeeze the BEST quality of a 1080p video onto youtube, the final video will need to be 1440p (youtube gives us a better bitrate at 1080p if the max quality is 1440p). BUT to do this, SFM refuses to render at 1440p, we’ll have to render at 4k by doing

We will downscale this to 1440p in virtualdub later.

OR: Just render at 1080p and resize to 1440p if you dont care about having true 1440p, and just want a good looking 1080p.

1. Render your video as an image sequence (png)

2. Adjust your shutter speed. Take your framerate times 2, and and divide by 1.
24fps = 1/48 = 0.02083
30fps = 1/60 = 0.0167
60fps = 1/120 = 0.00833

SFM will round these numbers.

3. Download VirtualDub [virtualdub.sourceforge.net]

4. Drag in the the first frame of the image sequece.
a) Go to Audio > Audio from other file. Select your audio.
NOTE: To be in sync go to the VERY END of the last clip by hitting the down arrow, then the right arrow.

Your audio length should be EXACTLY the number at the top (audacity is a nice tool for this)

b) set the Framerate by goin to video > framerate > «change so video and audio durations match» (It should be EXACTLY 24/30/60 etc. No decimals such as 60.002, etc.)

c) Video > Compression > Lagarith Lossless Codec (this’ll be a very large file)
c2) (still in the compression tab) Configure > mode > YUY2
NOTE: RGB may be better, use it if you have a lot of dark scenes/dark compression artifacts

d) Video > Filters > Add.. >resize

5. Download Handbrake [handbrake.fr]

6. Go to import, and import this preset (PRESET DOWNLOAD [drive.google.com] )

7. Render using this preset

If your audio is more complex, just render the uncompressed video, put in you favorite video editor, add your audio, re-render uncompressed, and follow the handbrake instructions.

NOTE: I’m not an expert in doing this, these are just the best settings I’ve had with 100s of hours of messing with rendering options.

Let me know if you’ve found a better handbrake preset for youtube.

For those that want to know WHY Image Sequence (although TGA is much faster than PNG, but takes up several times more space), here’s the reasons:

MP4 implementation by Valve is extremely wonky. It honestly looks bad even at high settings, and it loves to mess with the colours.
AVI implementation by Valve is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It was written in 1995 at the very latest and never updated since, as it has bugs that were fixed in the format in February 1996. Yes, you read that right. 1996. This bug corrupts AVIs over 2GB and breaks them completely over 4GB, both due to overflow errors. AND IT’S IN SFM REBORN FOR DOTA, TOO.
Image Sequence. Easiest to rerender if your video goes wrong, and with SFM, it will go wrong. Maybe the render might get stuck. Maybe something ends up inverted. Maybe the colours break. It’s far easier to rerender an image and replace the original than use either of the two formats above.