Overview
How I make the cool cel-shaded stuff! I’m still bad at making guides so I’m very sorry if this is terrible.
1 | Introduction & Prerequisites
Hi there, I’m Chaotix. I do SFM stuff and shidpost on Twitter. I originally followed a guide to do cel-shading in SFM using multiple renders + Photoshop but unfortunately it’s been removed for whatever reason, so I’m going to sort-of remake it along with how I create my cel-shaded posters. Here are a couple examples of posters I’ve made using this technique.
Got that? Great! Here are some prerequisites.
Programs
- Source Filmmaker – If you don’t have this what are you doing here
- Adobe Photoshop – This is what I’ll be using for this tutorial, but you can use similar programs such as GIMP.
Workshop Items
- Greenscreen Panels by DasMatze [link]
- Studio Backdrop by jdbeatz [link]
- Whatever model you’d like to use
That’s essentially everything you need to get started!
2 | Models
Alrighty, so you’ve gotten your programs and your workshop stuff. What now? Well, SFM of course!
Once launched, load up the map “black_void.bsp”, which should already be in your SFM installation. Once loaded, turn off the lighting and head to wherever you want (I personally prefer hovering around the middle). Whilst you’re here, lower the camera’s FOV. Please. Please do it. For the love of god please use low FOVs because it makes everything look 5x better. After that, spawn in your model, pose it however you want, etc. You don’t really need to do anything fancy with the model itself.
For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll be doing my Spy loadout with a slightly modified version of the class selection idle animation.
Cool, looking good! Next up, we need to add the studio backdrop. This is what makes the shadows on the ground. Once spawned in, simply place it under your model’s feet (or below if you’re doing a floating pose similar to my Scout example). You want to try and make sure there’s no gap between them but you can also edit it in Photoshop later so it’s not too much of a huge deal.
Great! Finally, we need to add the green screen panel. Simply spawn it in and place it behind your model. Don’t worry about it clipping through the backdrop, it’s not going to matter much once we start lighting.
We’re almost ready to start lighting, but now we want to turn the green screen into a white screen. To do this, just simply right click, hover over “Set Skin” and change it to 3.
Excellent! Now we’re ready to start lighting!
3 | Lighting
Here comes the fun part! Lighting is what’s going to make your shadows sharp and your model look goooooood. Spawn a light and point it wherever you want to cast the shadows. I find that moving the light above the model and pointing it towards it gives off the best results.
Once you’ve gotten your light where you want it, change your light settings to these.
You’ll then notice that it now looks…
…like crap.
That’s what bloom does, and you should probably get rid of it. Hop into your camera settings and turn off bloom. Whilst you’re at it, turn off the SSAO settings as well.
And now, hey look! It looks way better!
However, you might notice that the ground shadow is difficult to see. You can keep it like that if you want, but I want it to be a bit more noticeable. Easy fix however, just move the camera up and point it down a bit.
Looks much better! If the white screen is clipping over the shadow, just move it back a bit.
Once that’s done, hide the light, hide the white screen, the photo backdrop and create a new light. Turn off shadows, adjust the colour to your liking and then copy and paste it all around the model so the model looks like it has even lighting. It should look something like this.
After that, you’re basically finished! Now we need to render three images.
- The model with the even lighting – This will be the base render (shown above)
- The model with the backdrop, white screen and bright light – These will be our shadows
- The model with no lights, or backdrop, just the white screen – This will help remove the background
When you’ve rendered all three, hop into Photoshop!
4 | Photoshopping
Here comes my personal favourite part!
Once you’ve gotten your three renders, hop into Photoshop and place them on top of one another. You’ll want the shadowless render at the bottom, the shadowed render above it and the pure black + white render above that.
Next, with the black + white render visible, go into Channels and click this icon.
This should select all of the white around the model’s silhouette. Then you can just simply press delete on the shadowless layer!
If you’re using GIMP, follow this tutorial by jdbeatz instead to get your transparent image.
[link]
Once it’s transparent, make the shadow layer visible again. I recommend desaturating and messing around with the levels to try and keep it as close to black + white only. Then set the layer’s blending mode to “Multiply.” You’ll notice the shadows fit snug onto the shadowless render, turning it into a shadowed one!
Now, if you want to leave it like this and save it as is, you can do so right here, but I’d absolutely recommend cleaning up the shadows with the pen tool. Go around the area you want to smooth out, right click, choose make selection, deselect everything outside the model render and fill it in with black. If you need to remove shadows for whatever reason, fill it with white.
Before:
After:
This part absolutely takes the longest but it makes the whole thing look so much nicer.
Before:
After:
Don’t be afraid to experiment a little! If it doesn’t look right you can always undo it later.
For the background, hide every layer but your shadowed one and do the same technique as before when removing the background, except instead invert the selection and copy it. You should have the shadows on their own now!
Now we need to split it in two, one for the ground shadow and one for the model shadow. Duplicate this new layer, select around the shadowless layer and hit delete on one of the transparent shadow layers. Then invert the layer and hit delete for the second one. If done right you should have the model’s shadows and the ground shadows on different layers.
One done, you can add a background. I personally go for a simple gradient, like this one.
Now that the shadows have been separated, you can edit them however you like. I’m going to turn the shadows into a dark grey, add a pattern onto them and make the ground shadow slightly transparent.
We’ve nearly finished with Photoshopping it now! One last thing I like to add (that I sometimes forget) is an outline to sell that cel-shaded look.
And that’s about it!
[link]A quick note before the outro:
Once you’ve done your shadows, if you just want regular cel-shading and not just one solid colour, simply lower the Fill opacity down to whatever works best for you.
5 | Outro
Thanks for reading! This my second SFM guide and I’m still not exactly good at making these but I hope you find this informative!
If this helped you out in making your own cel-shaded projects, feel free to rate it! And if it didn’t, feel free to tell me what’s wrong and I’ll try my hardest to help you! Special thanks to everyone on Discord and Twitter who were keen to know how I make these.
I do commissions of these for 5 keys if you’re lazy/don’t have Photoshop if you’re interested :^)
I usually hang out on Twitter and Discord the most so if you have any questions or want to commission me, ask there!
Twitter – Tweets by ChaotixTF2
Discord – Chaotix#3215