Portal 2 Source Filmmaker [IFM]

Overview

This is an introduction to the Portal 2 IFM, a build of SFM made specifically for portal 2.

What is the IFM?

IFM stands for Interactive Film Maker.

The IFM is an early internal build of SFM from mid 2011 designed to run on the Portal 2 branch of Source! This was most likely the very same version of SFM used to make the Portal 2 trailers/commercials.

For general help and information:
[link]

What can it do?

Functionally it is identical to SFM but has the ability to render portals, lasers, goo, and all other Portal 2 entities. It also has full HWM support.

Installation

Download the IFM here:
[link]

Notice to google chrome users! Because this zip contains an .exe chrome will automatically block it and report that “Portal2Interactivefilmmaker.zip is not commonly downloaded and could be dangerous” if advanced phishing and malware protection is enabled. You can ignore this by clicking on the small arrow next to the “Discard” button and hitting “Keep”.

To install the IFM place the content and game2 folder provided in the zip in your sourcefilmmaker directory.

Once you have the IFM installed you can launch it by double clicking on Portal2_movies.bat in the game2 folder.

When the IFM launches you will be greeted with an SFM UI, from here you can use IFM.

Enabling 1080p

For NIVIDA cards:

1) Go to Nivida control panel

2) Navigate to Display > Change Resolution

3) Click on Customize and then on the new window hit Create Custom Resolution

4) Play with the Horizontal and Vertical Pixel options, first try 4k (3840 x 2160) if your display goes black lower the resolution in increments until you find one that works (as long as the resolution is higher than 1080p it should work)

5) Run Portal2_movies_1080.bat

For AMD cards:

1) Download and install the 15.6 beta drivers from here[support.amd.com]. DO NOT RESTART.

2) Download Waginard’s EnableVSR tool from here[www.wagnardmobile.com]

3) Open Catalyst Control Center and close it. Then restart your machine.

4) Open Catalyst Control Center again and then run EnableVSR

5) You will be presented with a window with two options “Hawaii” and “Tahiti”
If you have a Radeon Rx 300 series graphics card or newer, choose “Hawaii”
If you have a Radeon Rx 200 series graphics card or older (HD 7000, 6000, or 5000 Series), choose “Tahiti”

6) Restart your machine again.

7) From Control Panel > Display > Adjust Resolution you should now have the option to push it above 1080p.

8) Run Portal2_movies_1080.bat

(special thanks to the people of [link] for creating the tools and the AMD downsampling solution)

Troubleshooting

– If the Portal2_movies.bat fails to start IFM:

1. Open the SFM SDK in steam. 2. Click “Remove Environment Variables. A popup will appear, hit Yes. 3. Select a mod in the drop down (any will do). Once again a popup will appear, hit Yes. 4. Close the SDK. 5. The IFM should now be able to run from the batch file.

The reason for this is because the IFM uses the %VGAME% parameter when it starts up to figure out where it and other source games are on your hard drive, if this parameter is incorrect or missing it gets confused.

– IFM can read SFM scene dmxs without any trouble. You need to open the dmx in a text editor and change the first line from:

<!– dmx encoding binary 5 format sfm_session 20 –>

<!– dmx encoding binary 5 format sfm_session 19 –>

– Do NOT start IFM with -sfm_resolution 1080, without enabling it first!

For more information or general help:
[link]

Issues

– Due to a bug in the renderer the IFM can only render at a resolution half the size of your systems resolution, so unless you downsample your resolution (nivida GPUs only) or use a 4k monitor you wont be rendering anything in 1080p, also adding -sfm_resolution 1080 to the command line will break rendering entirely without a 4k monitor.

– IFM has python support and support for IK rigs just like SFM, however IFM relies on an older version of python that you wouldn’t be able to install without uninstalling SFM You can still apply IK rigs in SFM and then open the scene in IFM to animate it if your inclined.

– Valves official HWM tf2 models will crash IFM, tf2 maps wont run either (Its Portal 2 silly) Oddly enough community made HWM models will work just fine

– IFM uses different lighting algorithms than SFM they look pretty but they are expensive, while SFM is supposed to be a render on steroids IFM can take as long as Maya or any other traditional 3d animation app to do its thing.

– Portal 2 coop maps will unload themselves after a few moments if you load them in IFM, this is because portal 2 will kick you out of the map thinking your partner has disconnected, apparently IFM treats loading a multiplayer map like a normal coop session

Disclaimers

EVERYTHING IS PROVIDED AS IS AND NEITHER I NOR VALVE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES TO YOUR FILES OR SYSTEM!

Portal 2 is 4 years old now and SFM is 3 years old, internally Valves switched to Source 2 and I feel like we wont see any more major SFM updates till SFM gets ported to Source 2. I feel this tool could be of benefit to the community. Valve said to my tour group when I visited they would love to see more (non tf2) art come from SFM. And no I am not under an NDA for this piece of software, the only previously “new” thing contained in this release is the Portal 2 specific ifm.dll, the rest of the content provided was taken from the retail copies of a CD copy of Portal 2 and SFM or created by myself. I have designed this tool in such a way that you NEED to have a legit steam copy of both portal 2 and SFM installed for it to run, both to keep the content size small and discourage piracy also this allows it to plug into SFMs workshop and SFM itself to share dmxs and assets. With all of these things considered it seemed that sharing it was the best decision for the community as a whole.

So go forth and animate!

Source Filmmaker Guide