SFM Flythroughs

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EArkham

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Aug 14, 2009
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Just curious, but for the folks making flythroughs lately, are you packing up your map, tossing it in SFM, and doing the flythroughs there?

If not, what method are you using?
 

EArkham

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Aug 14, 2009
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The tutorial actually seems pretty straightforward. Looks like it's just animating a camera with keyframes.

At the end of the tutorial, it says "record as you like"... little confused on that part. Are you actually playing the demosmooth back and then recording it as a another demo or do you need to get something like FRAPs to record?
 
Sep 19, 2010
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The tutorial actually seems pretty straightforward. Looks like it's just animating a camera with keyframes.

At the end of the tutorial, it says "record as you like"... little confused on that part. Are you actually playing the demosmooth back and then recording it as a another demo or do you need to get something like FRAPs to record?
Yeah, if you've ever used the Pen tool in any of Adobe's programs, you'll find it works pretty similarly.

Once you save your smoothed out demo as a demo file, you'll need load it up and record with an external program such as Fraps or Dxtory. There's also a recorder called Lawena, which basically takes a bunch of .TGA images and stitches them together into a video. I used Lawena when I was on my laptop, but I would probably go with Fraps or something similar now just because it's a lot quicker.
 
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Micnax

Back from the dead (again)
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Apr 25, 2009
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Doing it in SFM is super easy. You can put yourself onto the camera, place yourself, keyframe the position on the timeline where you want it (multiple times for each angle you want it to fly through) then SMOOTH SMOOTH SMOOTH it, like 20 times or so. Using this method, it's how I did this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKKzLvLn_BM
 

EArkham

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Aug 14, 2009
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Yeah, I'm almost certainly going to do any map flythroughs in SFM. Downloading recording software seems like a hassle honestly, and SFM will let you upload directly to a YT account.

Seems like SFM would also be a good way of doing the introduction videos, too.
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
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Mind you I had rendering problems with certain props and sprites, my lighting went a little darker for some reason, and had a few other hurdles to overcome to get my recent fly through working.

But then again I'm a big SFM noob so that could be why...
 

EArkham

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Aug 14, 2009
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Welp, definitely some issues with it.

For starters, the particle env_snow_stormfront_001 doesn't show up -- not even if I use cp_coldfront(!!!). I can generate the particle just fine if I create a particle animation set, and it works fine, but it just refuses to show up when generated by the map. Checked and rechecked the particle_manifests and just can't figure out why it's doing that.

HDR makes the light beam effects way too strong (I think I just need to recompile with better HDR settings).

Also, my blu spawn doors fail to show up. I can't even make an animation set for an existing element to get them to show up. The other doors show up, so I'm thinking this might be due to not naming them in Hammer.

And none of the moonbase props are in SFM yet, so I'll have to port them over, heh.

So yeah. Bit messy start.
 

EArkham

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Aug 14, 2009
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The particle system issue had to with folder priorities. I had tf_movies set as higher priority in the SFM gameinfo.txt, and as a result, no particles that weren't in tf_movies/particles would appear.

Changing /tf_movies priority to lower than the /tf folder one fixed the particle issue, but introduced the problem of not being able to use tf_movie models.

The inelegant solution was to just copy the particles from /tf/particles to /tf_movies/particles and leaving tf_movies at the higher priority.

Posting this here for other people googling an answer to the problem.

---

Also, adjusting the tonemap scale was a good idea, but unfortunately didn't have any effect on the point_spotlight beams. I'm still thinking this means a recompile with their HDR settings reduced to 0.5 or something. Maybe there's something in SFM that will let me specifically adjust sprite brightness.
 
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