Hello, I am Kapparoach. If you weren't aware by now, I make posters in Garry's Mod for entertainment. I've also created a large-scale Gmod poster comic known as The Great Quest to Defeat Someone: The Anomalous Gadget, featuring 117 posters.

Today I will be teaching you the basics of poster creation. This guide will feature a large number of images that present great examples, most of them featuring characters from my own posters.

I use GIMP to edit my posters in order to make them look better. The usage of image editing programs is purely optional - you can make great posters without any post-editing, but if you wish to take it a step further, I highly recommend it.

You're probably here to learn how to make stuff like this poster below.

Eager to learn the magic of poster creation? Keep on reading, you might find just the right information that'll streamline your performance!

Keep in mind that this guide will not make you a good artist right away. Instead it'll help you learn much quicker, as well as provide you with the right Tools to get started. Due to the sheer scale of this guide, some images may fail to load the first time.

This guide will not teach you how to make animations. Posters are still images, not videos or animations. If you wish to learn how to animate using Gmod, you'll need to find a different guide for it.

Any major changes to this guide after it has been published will be listed here.

- Added the new "Animated Prop Tool" to the Ragdoll Posing and Positioning addon list
- Added the "Advanced Bonemerge Tool" to the Team Fortress 2 Content addon list
- Renamed the old "Animated Props" tool in Ragdoll Posing and Positioning to "Animated Prop Tool (Legacy)"
// Holy sh*t, we got some real improvements to our tools for once! Poster creators will rejoice.

- Added the "Simple Chromatic Aberration Filter" addon to the Effects & Materials addon list
// Been a while, eh? This should show just how infrequently actually useful addons are uploaded to the workshop.

- Updated the eye posing sub-section in the Face Posing section to match the Eye Poser tool overhaul introduced by the January 2023 Update.

- Added Eltorro64Rus's "Advanced TF2 Mercenaries" and "Improved Faceposer Tool" addons to the Team Fortress 2 Content addon list

- Updated the localization files Made some grammatical adjustments across the guide
- Added the "Physics for Effects" addon to the Effects & Materials addon list

- Steam wasn't very happy with me linking a Google Slides slideshow as a mini-guide into the Moving Scene Pieces section and blocked the link, so I moved the mini-guide's contents into this guide.

- Added a new advanced section: Moving Scene Pieces!

- Changed the poster in the Introduction section

- Added the "Smears" addon to the Effects & Materials addon list
- Moved the "Motion & Slash Effects" and "MS Effects" addons to the Effects & Materials addon list

- Added mention of host_timescale in Tips & Tricks

- Release

The most important advice that I can offer to anyone who wants to begin creating Gmod posters is as follows...

I kid you not, this is important advice for not just Gmod, but for everything else in your life. Do not push yourself to get ideas for posters, this will only demotivate you and cause burnout. It will seriously make you think of it as an unpleasant chore. Let the ideas come with time.

There are many, many things that can inspire any kind of artist to create, doesn't matter if the end result will be a poster, drawing, song, or even a fancy mansion. For example, you can be inspired by the current trends, good music, something silly that happened in your last session of TF2, or even your wildest shower thoughts! The only limits are your imagination, the Source engine, and your PC's strength.

When you do get a good idea, you should write it down somewhere, and expand upon it for the perfect poster theme. If you don't spend time to think of what will you be making, the end result can be quite lackluster. On the other hand, if you spend too long contemplating, the chances of you scrapping the idea increase.

While I was making finishing touches to The Anomalous Gadget, I noticed that Steam Cloud does not like large image files uploaded as screenshots. It will face significant trouble in trying to load them if the screenshot file size exceeds 10 MB. This will never happen to you if you do not edit your screenshots in an image editing program, but if you do, keep this in mind. If the file size exceeds 10 MB, then you should upload it as artwork instead.

Before we begin creating anything, we need to check out your video settings. You'll want your poster to look clean while also making sure that your PC does not explode in the process. Garry's Mod is a surprisingly CPU-heavy game once you have a good amount of ragdolls and effects on your poster.

Before you load up any map, we'll first set up your game's resolution. While you're in the main menu, go to Options and select the Video category. From there, you'll find a drop-down menu for the resolution. Set it to your monitor's native resolution - for example, if your monitor's scale is 1920 x 1080 pixels, then set the value to 1920 x 1080 - it should say (native) next to the value. Then, hit Apply to change to the selected resolution if it wasn't applied already.

If you can't find your native resolution in-game, then you'll have to force a resolution value change via launch options. To do that...

1. Close your game if it's still open
2. Right click on Garry's Mod in your games library and select Properties
3. Press Set Launch Options and enter one of the launch options from the list below
4. Press OK, and launch the game again
5. If the resolution value you selected is incorrect, close the game and use a different value.

List of basic screen resolutions below. Try one per each try, and remove anything you have added into the launch options if all tries are unsuccessful.

• -w 800 -h 600
  
• -w 1024 -h 768
  
• -w 1280 -h 720
  
• -w 1366 -h 768
  
• -w 1920 -h -1080
  
• -w 2560 -h -1440

On a side note, please do not ask me for help on startup issues with Gmod, I'm not a tech wizard. You can seek support for these issues in the official Garry's Mod Discord server.

In the same options menu, you can find the advanced video options. There's a few important options that can determine the quality of your posters.

Model, texture, shader, water and shadow detail drop-down menus can be found there. These will determine the quality of visual elements. I will only explain model and texture details, as they are the most impactful of the 5.

Model detail determines the LOD (level of detail) for any spawned models. On lower settings, models will appear blockier and less smooth, but they will increase your game's performance.

Texture detail determines the quality level of surface textures for everything, including characters, props and maps. At lower levels, textures will appear more pixelated, but will significantly increase your game's performance. Unless your PC is built for playing CPU-heavy games, this should never be set to "very high", as it can cause your game to crash on poorly optimized maps.

This determines the smoothness of edges within your view - with no anti-aliasing, the edges will appear pixelated and serrated. If you're confident that your PC can handle changing this value, it is highly recommended to do so. The highest levels are pretty redundant though, as the lower levels can get the job done just as well without causing your PC to unplug its own life support. I personally run mine on 4x MSAA.

Everything else in the Advanced menu is optional and should only really be touched if you know what they actually do. Do change your Field of View to 90 if sandbox isn't the only gamemode you play, it really helps you with game sense and awareness.

If you do not care much about whichever map you're making your poster on, then just pick whatever and go wild. For most HL2 or TF2-themed posters, maps from their respective games will fit just fine.

If you do need a good theme for your poster though, you're going to have to scour the workshop for a perfect map. Add filters to your search in order to find the best possible map for your poster.

If a map that you want to use requires a game to be mounted, then you'll have to install and mount the required game.

To mount a game that you have installed on your computer, find the controller icon at the bottom-right corner of Gmod's main menu and click it. It'll open a list of compatible games, any games that you have installed on your PC will not be greyed out - check their checkbox to enable mounting them. This will add all of the assets from the game to Gmod as well as allow you to play on the game's maps.

The games listed below have their assets used in a large number of workshop maps.

Team Fortress 2 is free to install and play, and comes with a massive amount of content that you can use for posters, including maps, characters, props and effects.

Counter-Strike: Source's assets are quite regularly used to create maps for Gmod. The game isn't free, but it'll be sold for a very low price whenever it goes on sale.

While Garry's Mod already comes packed with the majority of Half-Life 2's content, you still need to have the game installed and mounted in order to access the maps from the game's campaign.

Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 are also packed with content that you need in order to play some of the maps in Gmod's workshop. Episode 2 also features several new NPC's that you can use for either NPC battles or for posters!

There's probably some workshop maps that require Left 4 Dead or Left 4 Dead 2 in order to work properly. These games also come with extra content when mounted, allowing you to spawn a f*cking swarm of Coaches to fight each other over the last cheeseburger.

Do not ask for others to distribute the required game's assets to you, since that is strictly against the Steam Subscriber Agreement. If Valve catches you breaching the Subscriber Agreement, you risk in getting your Steam account terminated!

Your camera's position means a lot for your posters. You'll want to set up your camera so there won't be unnecessary empty space - it's a common mistake made by new artists, and they fail to realize it until they start to really build up skill.

Press 6 to switch to the Camera weapon, then run around the map you're playing to find the perfect position for your poster.
Once you find the position, find a good angle for the camera, then hold right-click and move your mouse to zoom and rotate your view while you're holding the Camera weapon. You can reset your Camera's zoom by pressing R.

Once you have the perfect position for the camera, switch to the Tool Gun, equip the Camera Tool, and left click to place a camera down. This will allow you to look and move around without losing the camera's position.

I recommend you to disable the camera's collisions with everything else so you don't accidentally bonk it with a prop you were positioning for the poster. To do that, you either use the No Collide Tool's right-click, or hold C and right-click on the camera to open a list of actions, which includes "Disable collisions".

You can also use the Weld Tool to attach the Camera to the world, effectively locking it in place. This allows it to stay in its position even if you poke it with your Physics Gun.

It's time for the most important part of any poster that features characters - giving them a pose.

You can pose your ragdolls with the Physics Gun, but I cannot recommend doing that as it is much less precise than using the Ragdoll Mover. Don't know how to use the Ragdoll Mover? In that case, we will solve that issue by teaching you how to use it.

If you're not sure about what pose you will be making, I recommend getting a reference image for a good pose from somewhere. This is especially recommended if you wish to replicate an in-game animation for TF2's mercenaries.

First, spawn the model for the character that you want to pose, and use the Stand Pose Tool to move them into position.



Under the Posing category of your Tool menu, you can find the Ragdoll Mover. Select it, and you will automatically switch to the Tool Gun with it equipped.

These screenshots below are taken with an older version of Ragdoll Mover.

When you use the Tool on your model, a formation of 3 colored arrows connected by rectangles will appear on the bone you aimed the Tool at.
If you aimed at the model's main bone (which is bip_pelvis for TF2's mercenaries), clicking and holding on one of these arrows will move the model within the axis. The rectangles connecting the arrows can be clicked instead to move them within 2 axis at once. This is mainly used for precision positioning.



Ragdoll Mover has 3 different modes of operation - clicking your middle-mouse button swaps to the rotate mode, while right-clicking swaps to the scale mode. Clicking the same mouse button again will swap back to move mode.



When you rotate a bone that has a child bone (for example, the upper arm is the parent bone and the lower arm & hand are the child bones), they will be rotated alongside the parent bone. This extends to anything attached to the child bones.



You can attach any props to a bone using Tools like Weld. Once you've attached the prop, unfreeze it with your Physics Gun and it'll move together with the bone it is attached to while using the Ragdoll Mover.



And that should be the basics of the Ragdoll Mover! Experiment with the Tool to your heart's content!



Do not forget to pose the shoulders! This is a common mistake made by new artists. If you pose just the arms, forearms and hands, but not the shoulders, then the arms will appear disjointed and unnatural. By posing the shoulders, you will make your character's pose look more natural and alive, especially if they are holding an item or trying to reach something.


Speaking of holding items, it's time to give your character an item to hold! We want to make it seem as natural as we can. For this, we have a reliable strategy.

1. In the example below, I want the Demoman to hold the Loch-n-Load which is on the floor. I have already done some posing prior to these steps.
2. I use the Physics Gun to move the gun to a good position relative to the Demoman. Once it's in a good position, I freeze it.
3. Then, I grab the Ragdoll Mover tool and begin posing the arms and hands. Once they're in a good position relative to the gun, I move on to the last step.
4. For the last step, I start to pose the Demoman's fingers using the Finger Poser. For the right hand, I have the thumb go around the other side of the gun's stock. The index finger rests on top of the gun's trigger, while the rest of the fingers hold the gun by the bottom of the stock.

And there you go! Your character is now holding a weapon! You may want to do some small adjustments to the posing, as well as the weapon's position relative to the character to make it seem more natural.

Here's a fun way to figure out how much you should bend and flex your characters' bones - try to perform the pose you want to make with your own body. This will give you a good reference for how far you can bend the bones of a human character.
Get up from your chair and strike the pose that you want to create in Gmod! Do some push-ups while you're at it.


A few models like Soldier, Spy and Medic have cloth physics that can be posed. Use your Ragdoll Mover to find the bones for them, then pose them accordingly. If you can't find the bones for cloth physics, then you should use the Advanced Bone Tool to pose them, if possible.

Posing your character's fingers is also quite essential. For this, we've been given a special Tool known as the Finger Poser. Let's learn how to use it.

Upon right-clicking on a compatible character's hand, a circle will be drawn around the selected hand. Open your context menu (hold C) to find the menu for adjusting the fingers. It will be displayed as an image of a hand with small colored squares connected to each finger. Moving these squares around will move the associated fingers.

Finger bones with yellow squares can be turned to any direction freely, while finger bones with blue squares have a restricted axis. Usually the phalanx bones of the fingers have a restricted axis. With the check-box on the bottom of the menu, you can turn off the axis restriction, allowing you to twist the fingers of your characters to disgusting and painful proportions.



Your Tool also comes with pre-cooked presets for finger poses, though these can be inaccurate for different characters as a lot of them have their finger flexes set up differently. I highly recommend setting up your own presets for certain characters' finger poses, like a fist pose made specifically for Heavy. On the example below, I have used the same "Point" preset for 5 different characters - take note how their finger poses are different.

Face posing! An essential step that is just as important as posing the ragdolls. If your characters are expressionless, then your poster becomes expressionless as well.

The basics of the Tool are actually very simple - you select your model with it, then open your Context Menu (hold C) to find all the face flexing sliders. Move them around to your heart's content!


Before we give anything a facial expression, we must disclose the differences between "standard" models and "HWM" models. From the outside, they don't seem to have any differences. However, you'll be mistaken as soon as you use the Face Poser tool on these models.

Standard models use the same facial flexes that they use in the base game. They have a set of pre-cooked facial expressions that can be used with just a single pull of a slider.
For example, you can make the Pootis Heavy happy with just one slider. Want to make the other team's Scout seethe with unbridled rage? One slider, and you're good to go. Need a scared Medic? No problem, one slider gets it done.
These models also support face cosmetics, as long as you have the Cosmetic Face Poser Fix workshop addon installed.

On the other end of the spectrum, HWM models are much more advanced. For them, you get a large number of sliders for flexing individual facial features set to mimic realistic facial flexes. They are much better suited for making videos, but they can just as well be used for posters.


Creating distorted faces is as simple as cranking the Flex Scale parameter to a higher or negative number in the Face Poser tool's menu.
You can also use the keyboard to change the values of the Flex Scale or individual flexes higher than what the sliders allow you to, though the end result may not look particularly attractive.

The Enhanced Faceposer workshop addon allows you to pull the sliders into negative values for individual flexes, allowing for much quicker experimenting with face distortions.

Now, onto something else that is still related to building your character's expression...
The only tool you will need for this is the Eye Poser, as expected. You have two ways to pose your character's eyes with the tool.

As of the January 2023 Update, the Eye Poser has received a big overhaul. Now upon right-clicking a ragdoll with the tool, you can pose the eyes using your tool control panel (Q-menu or context menu).

When you open the panel, you will see a smaller panel with a square inside. Dragging the square around will move the ragdoll's eyes relative to the square's position on the panel.

Dragging the Strabismus meter on the panel will cross the eyes of your character depending on which direction you dragged it towards. This change effectively makes using traditional methods of crossing characters' eyes irrelevant, although it can still be utilized if you're a big boomer.

The traditional eye posing controls are still there (left-click to make eyes look at your cursor, and hold E + left-click to make eyes look at you).


If the Eye Poser tool does nothing on your character, then you should grab the Advanced Bone Tool and check if their eyes are bones that can be rotated.
If you still can't find anything, then it only means that your character does not support eye posing. If you really need that character's eyes to be posed though, then you should take it to an image editing program.

With the Eye Poser overhaul introduced in the January 2023 Update, you can change the size of your characters' eyes using a meter. This is great for quick experimentation.

If you know how to use the console and want precise eye sizes, you can use the command r_eyesize {value, 0 by default} to change the size of your characters' eyes. The recommended range is between -0.2 and 0.2, anything beyond these numbers may not look good in a finished product.

NOTE: These changes affect the eye scale of ALL active models at once. You cannot change the eye scale of individual models due to Source limitations. If you wish to do that, you'll have to take it to an image editing program.

If you wish to learn more about ragdoll & face posing, check out this specialized guide by HAPPY HEAVY.

It's not always guaranteed that you'll find that one perfect scene for your poster pre-cooked into a map. When that happens, we'll bake it ourselves!

Truthfully, building a scene is mostly just throwing random props around until they're in fitting positions. Even this talent can be mastered - you'd be surprised by just what you can make with all the props and tools you've been given. We're doing this step-by-step. If you do not have a plan for building a scene, it can get messy.

First, we load into the map, which is in this case gm_black_v3. This is what the map looks like in all directions before any props or editors have been placed.


Because the ground is one massive func_brush entity, the Tool Gun and Ragdoll Mover won't work correctly if there is nothing else between you and the ground. For this, I'm placing down the biggest plastic plate I've got, which will work as my canvas. The Fog Editor is unrelated, it's just there to let you guys see the entire plate.


First, I spawn in the character, move them to the desired position and pose them, then place down the camera. All of the scene props will be placed within the camera's field of view.


Once that's done, it's time to actually begin building the scene! I begin by placing large rock walls in order to build a cliffside far off in the background.


Then I proceed to place some trees and smaller rocks on top of the cliff.


I then follow up by adding trees, grass and some more rocks in front of the cliffside.


Next up, I place down all the scene props that will be close to the character and the camera. The grainy quality of the grass in the foreground doesn't really matter as I will be using Super DoF.


Now that all of the scene props are ready, I use the Sky Editor to change the skybox into a starry night sky, and add fog with the Placeable Particle Effects addon.


All that's left now is to tinker with the lighting and post-processing effects.


And here is the finished product, with additional effects added via an image editing program! This should hopefully give you a good reference on how scenes are built.


If you wish to learn more about scene building, check out this specialized guide by Mincemower McDonaglop.

What is empty space? Well, it's basically useless space around your poster's main point of focus which serves no purpose. Empty space in a poster is bad, and the more of it is in a poster, the more obscure it gets. Thankfully, it's not hard to deal with. Examples below!

This is Spook, the Overpowered Skeleton. He has a lot of Jarate, but he also has a lot of empty space around him. We're going to fix that.


There's a few methods we can use to get rid of the empty space. First, the easiest method, which is to crop out the empty space. You will need an image editing program for this.



The second method, which is arguably more fun to do, is to build a scene around Spook. In the example below, I have built a box fort behind him, ready for battle. He is coming to pillage your own box fort, and there's nothing you can do about it.



Other examples include, but are not limited to adding dialogue text or effects.

Lighting is one of the multiple essential components of making good posters. Lighting means a lot to many people - not just to artists, but also to Mirage mains, Necrozma, and Solaire of Astora. Praise the light!

With lights, you can highlight points of interest that you want your audience to pay attention to, whether it would be the main character, the sword they're raising into the air, or the pixelated banana you're about to run over with a pixelated car. Good lighting will also make your Bloom filter look great (see Post-Processing for details).

You have two options for adding some lighting to your scene, those being lamps and lightbulbs (more commonly known as lights). Lamps will be your primary source of scene lighting, you'll be using them to highlight points of focus in your scene. Lightbulbs can be used to add a soft, secondary source of light to smooth out the shades.

Left: A lightbulb is used to light up this scene. It will shine a light in all directions, and will highlight all sides of your objects evenly.
Right: A lamp is used to light up the scene. It will shine a directional beam of light, highlighting the side of the object it is pointed at. The radius of the beam depends on its Field of View (FOV).


The object that you're shining your lamp's light at will project a shadow that reaches as far as the lamp's light reaches.

You might also notice that there are 2 shadows now, those being the object's original shadow and the projected shadow cast by the lamp (see image below). This is easy to fix - use the Toggle Shadow Tool to hide the object's original shadow, leaving only the projected shadow.



Try to match your lights' colors with the natural lighting of the scene. Beneath a searing heat of the summer sun, you'll want your lighting to have a bright yellow tint. Beneath the chilling light of the winter moon, you'll want your lighting to have a faint sky blue tint.

If you wish to learn more about lighting, check out this specialized guide by Caetho, or this one by Ninya.

Greenscreens are large, blank plates colored entirely in a highly saturated color. Despite their name, they don't have to be just green - you can make them any saturated color, as long as they do not blend together with the objects around them.

The purpose of these is so you can use an image editing program to select and erase the greenscreen from the image to leave a blank space, which you can fill with other stuff.

To most poster artists, greenscreens do not matter all that much. If you do need advanced scene creation though, you will need them.

In order to build your very own green screen, you will need;

• One plastic plate, size is up to your needs (Spawnlists -> Builder -> Plastic -> Plates)
  
• Color Tool, set to a bright saturated color that does not blend together with nearby objects
  
• Material Tool, set to materials\shiny or materials\debugwhite.

You can also use the Sub-Material Tool to attach the shiny or debugwhite materials to stuff like a monitor's screen if you need it to display custom media. Remember that not every monitor model supports this action.

Try to avoid using Bloom when using a large greenscreen! Bloom can cause the greenscreen's color to bleed out and overlap with your objects, which will not only reduce the quality of your poster, but also cause the risk of you accidentally erasing parts of the poster that you wanted to keep.

These menus include the filters that make posters look cool. What exactly do they do? Well, we're about to find out. I won't explain the Overlay and Texturize menus since they are pretty much irrelevant, unless there's some silly once-in-a-blue-moon niche that I am unaware of.

We shall be testing the filters on this little scene that I whipped up in like 15 seconds.


This filter blurs the background in order to make it look out of focus.

Spacing between nodes: alters the density of the blur.
Initial node distance: sets the distance where the blur begins.



You may think at first glance that this would be a great tool for making your posters look good. In reality though, it's much inferior compared to Super DoF when making posters.
Notice something missing from the example? Yeah, it's the projected shadow. Depth of Field removes projected shadows as well as the flares of visible lamps.

Super DoF is much better tailored for posters than regular Depth of Field - the blur is of higher quality, and you can have the filter focus on just one point of the scene while blurring out everything else. This filter may not work on certain systems, such as iOS.

Blur size: alters the density of the blur.
Focus distance: changes the point of focus' distance.



Here's a trick for adjusting the focus distance perfectly - set the blur size to 10, then slowly move the focus distance slider until it has perfectly focused on your point of interest, then change the blur size back to its regular value.

If you wish to have this filter focus on multiple points of the scene, you will need an image editing program - take multiple screenshots with each of the different points focused on, then clip them together.

This filter adds a motion blur effect that is commonly used by video editing softwares. However, I cannot recommend using this filter, as Accumulation Motion Blur (see below) is a lot better for the purpose. Why? Because this filter will kill your game's performance.

Frames: sets the amount of frames that will appear in the blur.
Shutter: changes how often your game captures frames for the blur? I'm actually not sure what this does as I never use this tool.



The cooler Frame Blend. This allows you to add a motion blur effect without causing your PC to explode, and it doesn't add motion blur in front of your moving props' path!

Add transparency: changes the transparency of the current, present frame.
Draw transparency: changes the transparency of the previous frames used for the blur.
Frame capture delay: changes how often your game captures frames for the blur. You want this to be a low number for the best quality.



Requires an image editing program!
This filter splits your screen into 2 smaller screens that use their own viewpoints. Make the first screen transparent and blend it together with the second screen for fake 3D!

Size: changes how far apart your two screens' viewpoints are from each other. Keep this at a relatively small number - I had the value at 6, which didn't look great when blended together.



This filter modifies the colors of your screen. You can, for example, dull out colors by reducing their multiplier, or use a preset that makes your screenshot look like a very old picture.

This comes with a set of pre-cooked filters that you can use and modify freely.

Brightness: alters your poster's brightness.
Contrast: alters the contrast of colors in your poster.
Color multiplier: changes how vivid the colors in your poster are.



The thing that makes good posters good. Enabling this will make objects reflect light, causing them to appear shinier.

This comes with a set of pre-cooked filters that you can use and modify freely.

Number of passes: changes the amount of bloom passes on your poster.
Darken amount: changes how much of your poster is affected by bloom.
Multiply amount: changes the density of the bloom filter.
Horizontal and vertical blurs: changes the length of the bloom's blur on the horizontal or vertical axis.
Color multiplier: changes how vivid your bloom effect's color is.
Color: changes your bloom effect's color. White color works best for general use.




This filter is also known as Tilt Shift. According to the game... if used properly, it can make your scene look like a miniature one? I honestly have no clue why this exists, though there's probably some users out there that find a niche for this filter.

Passes: changes the density of the blur.
Height: changes the scale of the blur.



This filter highlights the edges visible on your screen by drawing black lines around them.

Threshold: changes the amount of highlighted edges.



Adds a filter that sharpens your image by adding 2 copies of itself - one on the top, and one with inverted colors on the bottom.

Distance: changes how far apart the 2 copy layers are from each other
Contrast: changes the density of the filter



This filter requires your map to have the HL2 sun, otherwise it won't do anything. When enabled, the sun will get a filter that causes rays of light to shine over surfaces if they partially block the sun.

Multiplier: changes the effect's multiplier
Darken amount: changes how bright your sun rays are
Sun size: changes the scale of the filter added on top of the sun



If you're still confused about post-processing in-game, check out this specialized guide by TheTwinkiGuy.

You probably never expected to see a poster artist mention the Duplicator Tool in a guide, but here I am. Mentioning the Duplicator Tool in a guide.

Although this Tool is almost never used in poster creation, this can come in very handy if there is a specific ragdoll pose that you use frequently, such as a sitting Pyro.

You can set a template for the sitting pose which you will copy and save as a duplicate, then whenever you need a Pyro to be sitting down somewhere, you paste the template and adjust the posing as needed. This can save you a significant amount of time and patience, especially if your posters often have a large number of background characters.

The Tool can also be used to save a pre-cooked pose for a character that would otherwise take long to pose, such as non-humanoid characters like Pokemon.

You can also save multiple ragdolls and objects as a single duplicate by connecting them together with any constraint. The best constraints for this are No Collide and Weld.

No Collide should be used if you don't want the objects to be attached together, but still saved as a single duplicate.
Weld works better if you need the objects to be connected together, such as a Stunstick attached to a Metro-Police's hand, or a top hat attached to Dr. Kleiner's head. If the welded prop is not frozen, it will move together with the bone it is attached to while using the Ragdoll Mover.

There is one thing you have to remember though; just like with saves, duplicates may not carry over objects you have Bone Merged to your ragdolls. This will always happen with TF2 cosmetics that do not have prop physics, unless you have used the Hat Painter and Crit Glow Tool 2.0 on them at least once.

Recently I made a poster where I used an off-screen system to make my scene pieces move in order to make jigglebones and particles respond to the movement. Here's a short guide on how to make a similar system yourself! This requires no addons whatsoever, but it is highly recommended to have SmartSnap installed for precision building.

Make your scene pieces and fully pose them. For this, I've used a dupe that I have saved on my PC. Make sure they are frozen.
Once you've set them up, turn them into statues using your context menu. This is important so they can keep their poses while moving.

Place the track pieces off-scene. It's highly recommended to have the track positioned directly above the moving scene pieces to reduce the risk of instability.
Holding Shift + E while rotating your track piece will make you rotate it in 45 degree angles relative to the map.
Once you've set up your first track piece, freeze it and weld it to the map.

If you need your track to be longer, you will need to attach more pieces. Spawn the track pieces, then hold E with SmartSnap installed to take precise aim at a grid point on the spawned track piece. Use the Weld Tool's right-click for this.
After right-clicking the first track piece, look at your first track piece and hold E to take aim at the matching grid pieces, then right-click twice to finish the weld.
Make sure that all of the track pieces are frozen.

Once your track is ready, spawn a decently heavy prop (like a broken HL2 car) on top of the track, directly above your scene pieces.
Make it hover slightly above the track so you can move the track guides below it in the next step.

Spawn the track guides, fit them into the track and move them below your heavy prop. If the prop you're using is long, you might want more track guides to keep it steady. For this car, I've used 2 track guides.
Once they're in position, weld the track guides to the prop.

Once you're finished with the track guides, it's time for the potentially scariest part.
Weld your scene pieces (for TF2 ragdolls, its recommended to weld their pelvis and chest bones), camera and lights to the heavy prop on top of the tracks.
Once you're done, hold one of the attached props with your physgun and double-tap R to unfreeze everything attached to the heavy prop.

YOUR RAGDOLLS MUST BE STATUED, OTHERWISE THEY WILL LOSE THEIR POSE.

Your moving scene pieces should be ready! For the sake of convenience, you can attach a thruster to the end of the heavy prop to make it move at the press of a keyboard button.

Your characters don't have to stick to the ground. If it'll make the poster look much better, you can suspend them in the air or partially sink them to the ground.

If you don't have much time, you can skip posing body parts that won't be visible within your camera's field of vision.

Are your effects getting distorted by game lag, or are you perhaps trying to capture a rapidly moving object in your poster? If you said yes to either of those questions, then you may want to consider slowing down time! You can do this with the command host_timescale [number, 1 by default] in the console with sv_cheats 1 enabled. Change the value to a number lower than 1 to slow down time, which will reduce lag and give you more time to react.

The positioning of the props, cosmetics and ragdolls can be very incorrect from every other angle except your camera's, as long as they'll look good in the finished product. The finished product on the right is edited in GIMP.



Are you making a dialogue scene where 2 characters are talking to each other? Don't make them face directly at each other. Instead, have them be turned slightly towards the camera, and pose their eyes so they are still looking at each other.

Left: The characters are facing directly at each other. This can completely hide the expressions of certain characters, which will take away from the quality of your poster.
Right: The characters are looking at each other while facing towards the camera. This will present the expressions of your characters in all of their glory. Always attempt to pose your characters like this in a dialogue scenario.



There are multiple effective ways to highlight significant points of interest in your poster. You can choose between pointing at it with a lamp, focusing on it with Super DoF, or having other characters point at it!

Now that you have learned a thing or two, it's time to put it to test. Lets start by making a nice and simple profile picture using Gmod.

A good profile picture will capture everything you want it to present. Empty space will make profile pictures look much worse than it does with regular posters. A profile picture with empty space will appear very unidentifiable when scaled to small values, such as when you see it in a leaderboard in-game. To avoid empty space, we'll have the profile picture only show a character's head at close distance.

The profile picture's image should also be square in shape - rectangular images will be stretched to fit, which will instantly ruin their quality.

I have provided 8 sample profile pictures below, all in scale of 250x250. You may use them as your profile picture if you wish, but remember this; you will always be more proud of a profile picture you have created yourself.

I have included a large number of addons that you might find useful - most of these will make poster creation more streamlined.

I would have included all useful addons in this one section, but there is a character limit, so I had to split it into multiple sections. Life sucks.

Mandatory addons' links are bolded and underlined.

Ragdoll Mover - Posing ragdolls using the Physics Gun is very imprecise. This tool allows you to pose your ragdolls smoothly and precisely. You can also precisely move physics props with it!

Stand Pose Tool - Using this tool will set your selected ragdoll into its reference pose with all of its bones frozen, which will make posing them with the Ragdoll Mover much easier. It can also be used to reposition the ragdolls incredibly quickly.
NOTE: Some ragdolls may get warped below the ground when you use this Tool. In these cases, spawn a plastic plate, suspend it in the air and use this Tool to position the ragdoll on top of it, then finish positioning it with Ragdoll Mover.

Ragdoll Resizer - Allows you to resize individual parts of a ragdoll. This is essential if you want to spawn smaller or bigger versions of a selected model.
NOTE: Using the Stand Pose tool on resized ragdolls will cause issues regarding the bones' position! Use the Ragdoll Mover to move the resized ragdoll to its position instead.

Advanced Bone Tool - Before Ragdoll Mover was updated to allow it to pose non-physics bones, this addon was a mandate for posing small details, such as cloth physics, the Soldier's helmet, a large number of smaller bones on Pokemon models, and much more. Even now, this addon still serves a good purpose, as it allows you to pose non-physics bones faster, and even resize them.

Enhanced Faceposer - Extends the sliders on the Face Poser to negative values, allowing much more diverse possibilities, especially when you want the faces to be distorted!

Animated Prop Tool (New) - A new version of the same tool made by its original creator, now with new features - on top of its existing features, you can now play animations backwards, set keybinds to start/stop animations, remap animations to play on other characters that do not normally have them, and much more! See below for the legacy version.

Animated Prop Tool (Legacy) - Allows you to spawn a selected model and set it to perform its default animations at a loop. For example, you can have a Metro-Police perform its running animation loop, or have a Demoman use the Schadenfreude taunt repeatedly. Some models may not have any animations associated to them though. Either way, this is a very good addon for when you need a lot of background characters for your poster.

Pose Ref Pack - This addon adds 3 cubic models with drawn pose references on each side. This is great for beginners who need a reference for basic poses, such as walking or running!

Mandatory addons' links are bolded and underlined.

No-Collide World - Makes an object not collide with anything, including the world. This Tool is perfect for when you want scene objects to partially clip through the world. Be careful not to drop them!

SmartSnap - Projects a grid to most props which you can lock onto by holding E with the Tool Gun. This will make precision building easy!

Unbreakable Tool - Makes an object unbreakable. This is useful if you fear that you'll accidentally break something while working on a poster.

Prop Lock - Using this Tool on an object will prevent you from using the Physics Gun or any other Tools on it. Perfect for when you don't want to accidentally poke a ragdoll with your Physics Gun and mess up the pose you spent 5 minutes on.

Collision Resizer/Prop Resizer - As the name suggests, this Tool will let you resize props and their collision boxes.
WARNING: Attempting to resize certain objects will crash your game! Consider creating a save before attempting to resize objects!

Effect Resizer - Same thing as Prop Resizer, but this Tool will instead resize effects (props that only have a green ring as their collision box).

PermaProps - Using this Tool on an object will save it to the world. It'll be there the next time you load up the same map.

Weight STool - Allows you to change the weight of an object. Did you know that Heavy's Minigun weighs 50,000 kilograms in-game?

Skybox Editor - Allows you to change the skybox texture of the map you're playing.
NOTE: There is no drop-down menu for the skyboxes, you'll have to input the internal name of the skybox texture you want to use. Full list can be found here in Valve Developer Community.

Mandatory addons' links are bolded and underlined.

Advanced Particle Controller - Allows you to add effects from your mounted games, such as muzzle flashes, blood splatters, and much more!

Toggle Shadow Tool - Mandatory tool for when you're using Lamps to add lighting. This tool will remove a model's original shadow, leaving just the Lamp's projected shadow.

vFire - This addon changes the ugly default fire effects into highly detailed, spreading fire that burn vivid and bright.

Placeable Particle Effects - This addon adds a large number of highly detailed particle effects, which you can place and move around.
NOTE: Some of these effects can cause lower-end PC's to lag!

Physics for Effects - This addon allows you to give effect props actual physics, letting them be affected by collisions, gravity, etc. This also works as a way to make bonemerged TF2 cosmetics compatible for saves and dupes!

Extended Paint Tool - Adds a large number of new decals to your Paint Tool. Also adds decals from TF2, L4D, L4D2, HL2:EP2, CS:S, HL2:DM or DoD:S if you have any of them installed and mounted!

Custom Blood Decals - Adds a large number of TF2-styled blood splatter decals to your Paint Tool. You do not need TF2 to use these decals!

Sub-Material Tool - Allows you to change, copy and paste individual materials of objects. For example, you can change a monitor's screen's material to RenderTarget, and pair it with the RenderTarget Camera to have it display whatever that Camera sees!

Invisible Material - Adds an invisible material to your Material and Sub-Material Tools.

Offset Trails - Same thing as the default Trail Tool, but with less limitations. You can attach multiple different trails to any part of an object.

Ragdoll Colorizer - Allows you to change the color of a ragdoll if it supports it. Examples include HL2 playermodels that are there by default.

Shadow Editor - Allows you to control dynamic map shadows.

Smears - Must your character go fast? This addon provides you with 2 smear models - one being a static prop, and one being a posable ragdoll for curved smear effects.

Motion & Slash Effects - As the title suggests, this addon provides you with models made to look like motion and slash effects. Perfect for when you need motion and slash effects for posters that need motion and slash effects! Did I already mention that this motion and slash effect addon comes with motion and slash effects?

MS Effects - Need that slash effect to glow bright for when you're swinging a comically large energy spoon at your enemies? This model pack from Mobile Suit Gundam comes with just that, and then some.

3D2D Textscreens - Allows you to place customizable text fields into your world. Use this if you don't want to use an image editing program to add text.

Edge Glow Tool - Allows you to add edge glow effects to your objects.
NOTE: A large number of edge glow effects can cause frame drops! The edge glow will also disappear whenever any form of Depth of Field is enabled.

Simple Chromatic Aberration Filter - Adds a chromatic aberration filter to your shaders in the post-processing tab. This thing alone can make a game as ancient as Half-Life 2 look good by today's standards.

Cinematic Overlay - This month in your local Garry's Mod community tab - a totally epic war poster created by a war addict, featuring anime characters that stand out like a f*cking corpse! This addon adds a cinematic overlay to your Post-Processing tab. Use this if you don't want to use an image editing program.

Life Mod - An advanced in-game post-processing addon that lets you take enhancing your posters' graphics to the next level. This is by no means mandatory though, as you can still make good posters without it.
NOTE: Most of the effects are very CPU-intensive - do not use this if you're on a low-end PC!

Soft Lamps - This addon provides another good option of highly detailed lighting and advanced poster enhancement, if you know how to use it.
NOTE: Requires an image editing program!

TF2 comes with a lot of content (such as cosmetics, unusual effects, and much more) that cannot be fully utilized without Tools available from the workshop.

Mandatory addons' links are bolded and underlined.

Bone Merger - The bread and butter of all TF2 cosmetics, this Tool is used to attach cosmetics to the mercenaries. Can also be used to attach weapon cosmetics, like Festivizers to their respective weapons. They will be attached to their default positions - if you don't want them to be attached to their default position, you need to move them manually with your Physics Gun, then use the Weld Tool to attach them to the desired bone. See below for the Advanced version of this tool.

Advanced Particle Controller - Yes, I'm recommending this addon again. Alongside the particle effects it provides, you can also create projectiles and tracers that emit particle effects, like crit-boosted rockets and Machina tracers.

Hat Painter and Crit Glow Tool 2.0 - Allows you to add paint to cosmetics that support it, as well as add Crit glow, and Jarate & Milk soak effects to objects.

Cosmetic Face Poser Fix - Changes a large number of face cosmetics (mostly beards) to support face posing.
NOTE: Does not support HWM models.

TF2 Resource Mounting Fix - This addon fixes a clash between TF2 and HL2 textures, so you won't be seeing HL2 textures in TF2 maps. This addon is recommended over the others, because it's Lua-based - you don't need to toggle it on or off whenever switching from a TF2 map to a HL2 map. You may need to input tf_applyfixup in the console to trigger the fix.
NOTE: This will clash with other resource mounting fix addons! Uninstall them before installing this one.

Advanced Bonemerge Tool - The same as the regular Bone Merger tool, but now with added features! It is no longer limited to models that were made for each other - attach whatever and customize its merge position however you like, unmerge objects, customize bones on a merged model, and much more!

Fixed Dispenser Screens - Includes the Dispenser's screen as an effect that must be attached with the Bone Merger.

TF2 Better Phys V2 - Changes the physics of your mercenaries' ragdolls, making them less stiff. Mandatory if you're for some reason using the Physics Gun to pose your models.
NOTE: Dupes that use TF2 ragdolls that haven't been created with this addon will break!

Particle Attacher - Allows you to attach Unusual effects to objects.
NOTE: Does not support Unusual Taunt effects, you're gonna have to get those from the Advanced Particle Controller.

Killstreak Eyes Tool - Allows you to attach colorable Professional Killstreak eye effects to your mercenaries.

Sentry Poser - This Tool will spawn a Sentry/Mini-Sentry model, which you can point to a direction of your liking.

Cloak Effect Tool - Attaches a configurable Cloak effect to any object with materials that support it.

Gold, Frozen & Uber Materials - Adds the Gold statue, Frozen statue and Uber materials to your Material Tool.

Advanced TF2 Characters - The mercenaries with entirely new facial flexes made by Eltorro64Rus.

Improved Faceposer Tool - Required for Eltorro64Rus's Advanced TF2 Characters' facial flexes to work. This will provide the features of the Enhanced Faceposer as well as allow you to edit the new facial flexes - use this over the Enhanced Faceposer if you want to use the models.
NOTE: Do not use the two Faceposer addons together!

None of these addons are mandatory, but can prove to be useful. If you need more maps and models, there are thousands of them available in the workshop, waiting for you to subscribe to them.


gm_black Collection - Includes a set of large flat maps with a pitch-black ground and support for the default Sky Editor. Perfect for scene building!

gm_manor - An Amnesia-themed dark mansion map originally made for Slender Fortress, this map is beyond excellent for when you need a cliche haunted mansion setup for your poster.
NOTE: This map requires TF2 to be mounted, otherwise you will see missing textures everywhere!

gm_lair - A small tropical island in the middle of the ocean, with a volcano that houses a lair for villains to plot their evil schemes within.

gm_community - A small study room based on the TV show Community, this is good for a more detailed classroom setup than a lot of the other large school maps with flimsy HL2 tables littered across the room.

gm_abstraction_extended - A paradise surrounded by blue waters, this beach resort is the perfect way to scratch that itch for spending a summer vacation, swimming in a pool under the bright sun. Evening and night versions are available as separate addons due to file size limitations.


Scout's Improved Bodygroups

The Enhanced Soldier

The Enhanced Pyro - You can face pose... it.

The Enhanced Demoman (2014)

Heavy's Improved Bodygroups

The Enhanced Engineer

Medic's Improved Bodygroups

Sniper's Improved Bodygroups

Spy's Improved Bodygroups

HWM Merasmus Revival - WIZARD SOUPRICE!

Enhanced HWM Skeleton - ooOOOoo, spooky skeletons! Give them a scary face pose! Make them build a box fort inside a dark mansion! Send shivers down some fool's spine!

Improved Halloween Models - TF2 skeletons and the Horseless Headless Horsemann, except their models are actually usable now.

TF2 HWM Head Models - Decapitated heads of the TF2 mercenaries, except you can face pose them.

Flexy Combine Soldiers - You can face pose them.


TF2 Paint Cans - Model versions of the paint cans from TF2. If you ever needed to make a poster of a Lime Scout attempting to paint their Australium Force-a-Nature green to make it look like it was made out of emerald, here you go.

Spooky Eyes - Cursed eyes for cursed posters.

Enhanced Toolbox - Engineer's toolbox, but it can be opened and closed using the Advanced Bone Tool.

Rick May TF2-Styled Portrait - Press F to pay respects.

Enhanced MvM Money Drops - Oi you! Shut your mouth, and look at my wad!

Mandatory addons' links are bolded and underlined.

Model Pre-Crash Prevention - Prevents an instant crash due to pre-cache overflow.

Ultimate Workshop Downloader - For multiplayer only. This makes anyone joining your server automatically download the addons you have installed and active on your server, without the need of having the other players manually download the addons from the Workshop. This'll stop them from seeing errors and missing textures on everything else except maps for games that they don't have mounted!

FPS Booster - A script that will potentially increase your game's performance. It won't turn your potato into the overseer of the Aperture Science computer-aided Enrichment Center, but it'll help.

Model Manipulator - Freely change and swap around the visual models of different objects, while retaining their physical properties and functionalities. I'm sure there's a niche with this Tool that people will find useful for poster creation, so I'm including it here.

Tool Search & Favorites - You're probably getting a large number of Tools installed from this guide. This script allows you to search for, and mark individual Tools as favorites while you're in-game.

RenderTarget Camera - Spawns a Camera that renders whatever it sees to the RenderTarget material. Can be used together with the Sub-Material Tool to have computer monitors display whatever the Camera sees!

Destiny 2 - Dead Man's Tale - Need a gun that isn't one of the trillion generic realistic guns that infest the workshop? Get this beauty together with the required addons, you'll love it.

Thank you for reading! This guide wasn't easy or quick to make, so I really hope this proved to be helpful to you in your endeavors of poster creation.

If you have any feedback, comment down below. I'd rather take feedback over praise, since the former actually helps me improve, unlike the latter. Keep it constructive and civil, please.

If you do find any useful Tools that haven't been mentioned in the guide, comment it down below, and I might just add it to the list of addons!

I will be removing and/or blocking any and all spam.