On my experiences with SFM

Recently I got a request for the files of one of my SFM works that I used as a banner art for an old TF2 article. Unfortunately my laptop broke days before the request, so I lost all my SFM files and high-res renders of my old works.

That surprisingly left me feeling a bit sad and empty, despite me not even remembering their existence for literal years. I can’t turn back time or have my old laptop magically fix itself though, so instead of crying over spilt milk I am simply going to talk about how good it used to taste. Since almost all of my SFM stuff are done for articles I can pull out some old pictures from here.

When I first started writing here, I used to upload full HD renders for my articles, despite them only showing up as 880 x 445 at most (I believe, looking at my older articles). This means I am basically burdening the server with no benefits whatsoever (sorry Med). Back then I have very basic understanding of posing, lighting and general SFM skills, so my pictures are rather … basic.

I first started out by writing about cosmetics, so SFM is amazing for helping me showcase cosmetics and cosmetics combinations, since I was quite poor and Irish back then and can’t afford much of them. However, there were some issues with the textures of certain cosmetics, so I rely a lot on Steam Workshop fixes. Not all of them have fixes though, at least not at the time of writing, so I’ll just … not use them in the pictures. The texture issue was problematic in my Tuxxy article since Scout’s and Pyro’s lapels showed up as white instead of being team-coloured as it should, but I like to think I got around the issue well enough.

Making light-hearted pictures are always great fun for me! It’s nice to crack a few jokes, have the mercs goof off for a bit through pictures. Of course, it also means I can put less effort into lighting since I don’t have to set up 50 different lights with volumetric effects to properly create the atmosphere I want. Not that I don’t enjoy doing those too, but I only have that many hours in a day, and sometimes I just want to show the Scorch Shot’s superiority at setting people ablaze from afar using a 300 reference.

As for the more serious-looking work, I actually used to have a folder full of them for me to use as wallpapers. Some of my favourites are below:

I learned a lot from online tutorials and my own trial and error as I write articles, and I even talked about my SFM experiences once here. As I moved away from talking about TF2 and into other games, I no longer use SFM. Which is a shame, since it is great for creating pictures, and I do enjoy working with it.

I am almost certainly not going to redownload it again though, managing all the different fixes and relearning how to use it is probably a week-long project.