Name's Fames. I've been using SFM since April 2015.

I've worked on a "major" few things in the past, including Leak!, which won the Best Extended category in 2018.

A lot of people have been asking me to spill my beans of knowledge.

I expect you to have basic knowledge of how to use/navigate SFM, including the Element Viewer.

👏Use👏it
A lot of people already know about this, but it's still not enough.


Have you ever noticed how shadows get fuzzier if they get casted by a big light source?
SFMs lights are so called "point-lights", meaning that they are an infinitely small point casting light in 1 direction. This causes shadows to be sharp. Now you might say "But Fames, can't you just turn up shadowFilterSize?", which I reply to with "Absolutely the ♥♥♥♥ not."


Select the light in the Animation Set Editor and increase the radius slider.0 radius, 0.005 shadowFilterSize
0.25 radius, 0.005 shadowFilterSize
As you can see, the shadows get softer eventhough I didn't increase the shadowFilterSize at all.
Radius gives lights a radius (duh). Have you ever noticed how small LEDs cast sharp shadows but light reflected from a wall casts very soft shadows? Radius basically turns your light into that wall.
Not a single light in the real world is a single point, so just give every light in your scene some radius. It doesn't have to be much.

I personally tend to give my fill lights a huge radius (100+, usually around 250 depending on the distance).
Just play around with it and see what it does, you're better of learning things if you actually use them.

Note: Radius only becomes visible if you render an image or let it preview in the Clip Editor!

(No, this is not used for an ubercharge)

Have you ever wondered what these sliders do?
An Uberlight lets you figure these things out!


Simple as that. You can also just use my script for this.

Now I'm gonna be honest with you, you're probably only going to use width and height so let me show you those 2.
I remapped the sliders to make it easier to demonstrate.
Again, just play around with it.

Now that you know about uberlights, I can tell you about glowing eyes.

In a few of my recent posters I had glowing eyes.


I didn't use any fancy materials or multiple lights for this.
For some reason source only lights up the eyes if you set the roundness of an uberlight to -1.

It's a gimmick, honestly.
I've started using it recently and it's a quick and relatively easy way to get some rim lines going.

Simple as that.
This does work with volumetrics, too.

I don't use AO anymore, but some people still do.
You can change the intensity of AO with a light.

I recommend using my script for this, but you can also just change it in the Element Viewer.

Lights in SFM are just a projected texture, so why not change it up a little?


This texture can be any texture you want. Useful for things like projectors.

SFM likes to crash a lot when changing a light's texture, so be careful

As you all know, AO's normal color is black. I hate it.
But did you know that you can color it?


I used my script[i.imgur.com] in this example, but you can use the Element Viewer for it.

Most people don't use SFMs bloom, but this exists nonetheless.

Again, I used my script for this, but the same can be achieved in the Element Viewer.

In my recent posters I used a material effect called $emissiveblend.
If you're familiar with $selfillum, this one should be pretty easy to understand.

Adding those lines to a VMT will make the material glow. "$emissiveBlendBaseTexture" defines the texture used for the glow effect. Depending on your style, this can either be a black/white texture or a colored one. Similar to lights, it can be tinted with "$emissiveBlendTint". I recommend using a material override for the tint and using a color operator.

The hands, the heart and the ears used a emissiveblend setup.

This is all I have to share for now.
I will probably update this in the future.

Thanks for reading, I hope this helped some people.