How to change SFM's loading background picture

We are going to change the SFM loading background picture. To do that, we need
1024x1024 size of image to show up properly in the loading scene and an image editing
software like Adobe Photoshop, Krita, GIMP, or whatever you have that can tweak the image's size

Please consider having these downloaded already

• An image editing software for cropping images

• VTFEditor for opening some files

• SFM with usermod installed

This is the image we are going to change.

---

Choose the image you want to set as the background image of SFM's loading scene.
then rescale it to 1024x1024 using your favorite image editing software.
We need square texture sizes to make the image look properly in the loading scene.

---

Now that we have our 1024x1024-sized image, we need to replace it with the default loading image.

Win + E to open your file browser, unless you're not using Windows OS.
Go to the folder where you downloaded SFM. I bet you already know where it is.
if you suffered with textures enough.

Inside the folder, you will find these
Select "background01" highlighted in the folder and open it.

You may need to have vtfeditor downloaded in your PC to open these (.vtf, .vmt) files.

---

Now you are seeing the interface of vtfeditor and the default image familiar from the loading scene.

We can change this image by importing the new one, which is the one we wanted to

Press CTRL + I or click the import button highlighted.
on the top left corner of the interface.

Click OK

After clicking the import button, you will be greeted by your file browser.
Locate your image to import it.

Here, I am just selecting the same default image.

---

---

After you select your image, you will see it on the same interface, not in mine though :D

Press CTRL + S to save, or click the save button.

locate the default loading image file, we are going to replace it with our own

Select and replace with the highlighted file.
Click Yes and replace the file.

---

Now we are done but sometimes SFM may show the other default files like background02 or your screen resolution may trigger sfm to use widescreen versions of same files such as

Do the same operations to each file located in here

---

After replacing all the background images, you may launch SFM to see your image in the loading scene!

If it didn't work and you see a much different loading scene with a different image, like TF2's images, that means SFM failed to detect the image file we wanted to show in the loading scene.
Solution: Make sure the image file is named the same as the default ones and is located in the correct directory.

---