small guide of random tips and info from someone who's used this program for too long

so to start. this section is for newbie types. you've just downloaded the program and barely got into it and don't know what to do. my advice. go look up a proper tutorial to get into sfm cause thats not what this guide is for.

However I can share a few tips for good habits you might want to adopt as well as some addons and features you may want to look into.

To start. once you've learned how to start a session and spawn a model (custom one or otherwise) you'll obviously want to interact with it.

when you have a bone selected you can tap either button to switch between movement and rotation controls. This is such a important time saver because going and manually selecting those two controls off the hot bar can add time that after hours of work, does add up across hundreds of sessions. Don't waste time uwu
You can disable ao by right clicking the view port (without any bones currently selected) (this window is were your looking at your scene its the biggest window in your sfm session (normally unless you're some kind of weirdo) and after right clicking, click render setting and hit the check box for ao near the bottom. I'll discuss what ao is and what to do with it in a bit. but during your WORK you do not need it on it will take up resources and can make your session lower frame rate when your working.
the reason for this is because sfm spawns your new models each time directly in front of and facing your camera's direction. this can save you time with not needing to guess if you've got something off axis or the like. I work with alot of models were I'm scene building and having things already aligned with the worlds setup from the get go is convenient.

doubling down on this. have a minimum of 2 cameras. the 1 for spawning things initially and then another you use to put infront of whatever your subject is (the camera you use for your final picture) but keep the initial camera were it is unless you feel you are unbothered by these issues.

this is by far the biggest thing you can do to save yourself so much pain later down the road. sfm does come with an auto save feature but it is not to be trusted because even if you go to load the auto save it could be several moves behind or worse it could crash when trying to load your save and then your save is just perma gone. it is a last resort that you don't need. If you work in sfm long enough you'll pick up on clues that sfm is becoming unstable and could be leading to a crash.

but better safe then sorry is always the motto. save randomly and often. file>save will make sure you don't lose several hours of your life. (i've lost sessions that i spent 6 hours on before its not fun and it can lead you to not using the program again for weeks just don't screw yourself)

that might sound silly but keep in mind that the map "stage" exists. Stage has lights in it already that will light things around your models easily enough. you can always pose everything or make your scene build up then swap to a no lights map and start spawning your lighting.

If for whatever reason your working in a dark map to start. only keep 2 lights on your models from off to there left and right with shadows disabled on them (right click each light in animation set editor and click disable shadows) this makes them take up less resources and makes the session less heavy for sfm so you can work easier.

I've seen people put there stuff in separate folders from usermod and they always seem to have issues some kind of issues but its always new people so it could be isolated. If you ever need to find your model files you can always use dmx unpacker on sfm lab to extract the models you want back out of sfm with little issue (more on that program later its a life saver for multiple things)
sfm is an ancient program by todays standards. there have been multiple tests on this. going above 128 has no noticeable difference and even then you'll barely notice a difference between 128 and 64 samples.
go find your models download (or use the one on your desktop if you still have it there) and find the exact paths for the individual files and delete that way. the reason why i tell you to do this is because depending on the model. some folders host multiple resources for multiple files. if you delete entire folders you might delete materials for other models you have and wonder why you got purple and black checkmarks on your models. alternatively you could break sfm entirely if your not carful with what your doing.
other programs have this same issue and rather then get discouraged ask for help. veterans of sfm all do there own thing but most know there ways around common issues. but understand that we also have our own limits on our knowledge.
you can do things in material overrides that will perma glitch a model in your save even if you delete it and respawn it. having a back up session before you start mucking around might save you from cursing yourself in that way.
have you noticed when you spawn a light that its really bright and the slider barely gives you the ability to adjust it between the power of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sun or a really bright room with barely any slider range? right click the slider for brightness on your light (intensity) and select remap slider range. you can set its max brightness its mid default range and its minimum range. set it as high or low as needed. this is great for when you need exact ranges. need it to be just a lil bright? set it to 500 max 0 min and 250 default and slide left and right from there.

cool detail. you can set the min to negative values to have it take away light. its a weird effect but maybe you'll find it useful?

right click in animation set editors blank field and make sure theres a white checkmark next to show scene hierarchy. once thats done. select models that are related to eachother. (for example scenebuild props like lamps, tables, chairs, furniture in general) ctrl left click in the animation set editor will let you select multiple then right click one of them and select group selected dags. this will push them into a folder you can open and interact with. behold. organizing.

you can also drag them back out and into other dags if need be. stay organized kids.

Text limits are stupid. ran out of room in the previous section so this is an extention.

This section of the guide will be added to over time as I think of new things to add. (unless it fills up and I need to add more. This is still newby related content.

This is a problem I feel like plenty of people suffer from. What is outside view of the camera DOES NOT MATTER. So don't waste your time doing stuff no one will ever see. and also break your models to make the stuff in view of the camera look good.

who cares if your characters spine and arms and legs are dislocated. can the camera see them? no? cool then it doesn't matter. just make sure it looks fine in the viewport and your set. I'll provide some examples of this later once I have time. but this is important to remember cause it can save you time and make your art look alot better once you start keeping it in mind.

This section is directed more at people who are more used to the program.

Let's start with some bugs people may run into or issues in general really.

one way this can happen from when it used to happen to me is when i was messing around with material overrides. if you mess with material overrides never leave one blank. for example if you did a string > $basetexture to direct sfm to look for another material file for your model. do not leave that blank and move to something else. if you watch your console sfm will repeatedly return an error that it cant find or do what it needs to until the program crashes. again theres other instances of this happening but that was what my issue was.
so think for a moment. if you've used sfm a long time, have you ever had a session were after hours of work and a save. you open your session again later and suddenly... the models (some not all) seem off. maybe that pyros butt seems alot smaller than you remember or maybe your characters facial features seem blank when you spent 30 minutes making the perfect scowl with their flexs the last time you had sfm open?

this is a common issue of sessions with tons of things going on but there's a simple enough fix.
before opening your session that is bugging out. open a brand new session in stage or something and spawn each model you've used in your bugged out session (only ones with flexs) and once you're done save the session and name it something. for example (your original session + starter) or something like that so you know what it is.

you do this so that any time you want to open your session thats breaking. you'll remember to open this new one first to load each model in without them breaking. when you do this and then load your original session your models should work fine again because as far as sfm is concerned you loaded them in and they were fine already. sfm has terrible memory leak issues and over all is not the most stable program in the world.

-those are the only 2 issues i can think of at the moment that i wanted to talk about

moving on.

material overrides to remember.

In my years as a sfm animator i've only ever used a handful of material overrides. that doesn't mean you shouldn't look up and learn more but im going to share my daily use ones.

string $basetexture.
this ones for if you have a model that has other materials provided that are not hooked to a script for rapidly changing materials (im sure those exist >.>) you just give it the path to the texture you want.

float $phongboost
float $phongexponent

these 2 handle the shinyness of a model. generaly if i want a wet oily shine i go with 1 ish in phongboost and 100 on phong exponent. alter those numbers till your happy though. remember that sfm accepts decimals so you could do .4 on phongboost if its to bright of a shine.

float $alpha

alpha makes things invisible but as you can guess if you were to do .5 on it then you could get a transparent object. bear in mind sfm does not like transparency very much and you might have models that show up infront of your transparent object if you choose to use it this way. mileage may vary. if your doing a project that you need transparency consider rendering with and without said object in place and using photoshop (or other program) to overlay and alter it as needed. same goes for animations. just have it set up so that the video with the object that has to be transparent is set to 50 percent or more or less opacity.

color $color2

self explanatory. this adds color to an object. I use this DAILY for specific models that are set to white with bump maps on them. this way you can color an object to match another objects color. for example i got a background prop that is a wall with cartoony boards. I can add color to make the boards look any color i want for my scene build.

last thing i can think of is one i rarely use.

vector 3 $color

admittedly I've used this only a hand full of times and not recently. but when ever i want something to glow. I use this. I believe self ilum is the proper way to do this but this is the method i usually use. when its applied it adds 3 numbers next to the vector overried. set each number to whatever you want as long as they are all equal (so 10 10 10 or 5 5 5 or 100 100 100) they need to be the same number. when you do this the model should start getting brighter depending on your chosen numbers. save before doing this i beg you cause i have no idea if it will bug anything. I don't use it that often.

so im sure you know about ao by now. but did you know you can alter the harshness of your ao's color without touching the 3 ao controls on the camera? (SAVE BEFORE YOU DO THIS IT CAN CRASH YOUR SESSIONS SOMETIMES). I've developed a habit of saving before i ever touch my camera's element settings from how often it would crash sfm after working in a session for a long time probably cause its near the end of the work during final touches.

to do this go to your camera and select show in element viewer (camera). then when your in your element viewer look for the black box. its the only color box there and using the color picker set your color a bit above the lower left of the box (so not black but a soft dark gray color) this is usually what i do. no shadows are absolute black in life. soft shadows will help make pics look nicer especially if you play with ssao strength, ssao bias and ssao radius sliders on your camera.

random other ♥♥♥♥

this is something I find cool that I don't see talked about ever but i think really is great for pics. but to my knowledge it only works on mlp models specifically cause of the way their eyes were made for sfm.

eye lights. eye lights are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome and people don't talk about them enough. Eye lights require a few edits to lights to get working but once done will give you the ability to light up pony eyes or just there iris's to give them a nice glow.

to start.

1. spawn a light.
2. right click your light and select disable shadows
3. on your light drag cut on to the right and cut off to the left.
4. right click on your lights farzatten slider and set it to about 100 max 50 default or whatever it only needs to shine about a foot infront of itself to hit the eyes when you get close to the head).
5. set brightness to about 15 max and 10 default 0 minimum. this won't have to be very bright
6. right click your light and select show in element viewer (light) and select the check box for uber light (its the third check box from the top of the element viewer normally)

after doing all this your light should be ready. just get real close to your ponies eye with it so it highlights just the colored part of the eye. adjust brightness to get it to be a softer glow on the eye. not recommended for pony models with fake eye highlights.)

I hope this guide helps some of you a little bit and if i think up new stuff to add ill try to alter it later with new additions. this guide is not ment to teach you from start to finish how to use sfm just as it says. a few tips and tricks i've learned along the way. hope it helps someone. sorry for the horrendous use of grammar I'm to lazy to type like im civilized.

by the way if anyone ever needs help feel free to message me. I don't mind helping people occasionally if i can.