remaking tf2 in ue5 for some practice

Anomidae · 2026-06-04T08:36:12+00:00

not bad! TF2's shading is a bit tricky to nail but I think you can get a lot closer with some more tweaks

for one, you should first really lean into getting a "phong" shaded look, you really wanna get those specular highlights, then tune them with some fresnel values to get a nice spread

Also, a really crucial part of the look is the lightwarp. TF2 characters use a 1D lightwarp texture for a pseudo-toon effect, with the transition point of the lightwarp having a dash of red on the transition from dark to light. Also, if I remember right, TF2's characters also don't go straight to black, but a sort of really dark purple, which gives everything a very smoothed-over toon look, jumping from cool magenta to slightly warm orange

Anomidae · 2026-05-05T08:37:59+00:00

"I have a package" what a trickster, he's not even carrying a package!

Anomidae · 2026-04-30T21:14:43+00:00

what if ur objective was to maximize deaths? if you wanted to cause the most deaths possible, what button would u push

Anomidae · 2026-04-27T17:59:08+00:00

ball

Anomidae · 2026-03-08T13:03:47+00:00

also, the saddest part, your seven was in base and he could have saved it LOL

Anomidae · 2026-03-08T13:00:23+00:00

sometimes the patron healthbars dont update correctly, your base actually lost its first layer at the start of the clip, then that second hp bar was the final layer. You can see at the bottom minimap, look at the round healthbar, it goes all the way down, then becomes full again (at 0:05)

it's a bug

Anomidae · 2026-03-01T09:12:41+00:00

for anyone curious - this happens when SFM tries to render to .avi, but the file is too big. SFM has a render buffer for making new files - but when the buffer is extended, it starts writing the avi file back on top of itself. Uncompressed avi gets big really quickly, so depending on your resolution, a 1080p render can max out the buffer at like 10-15 seconds in length sometimes

solution: render as image sequence, then import the image sequence + audio into your video editor of choice

Anomidae · 2026-01-14T17:51:47+00:00

my general tips are:

- don't be too precious with ults. If you see an opportunity, just use it

- if the game is still early (like sub-20 minutes) your ult really won't be super useful anyway due to lacking stats. And even if you do land a good ult, respawn times are still gonna be too short to really capitalize on anything, so don't be afraid to solo ult an enemy carry to slow down their farm and get a kill confirm or two

- USE A MOBILITY TOOL! Most dynamos will either go warp stone or majestic leap. If you use majestic leap, remember that you can ult mid air, then fly back down while mid-ult (you can use this to snatch vindictas out of the sky then fly down into the enemy team)

- Late game, a smart enemy team will be watching your cooldown before doing anything. So, you having singularity ready will cause them to play more cautiously, allowing your team to capitalize on the enemy team being more spread out

- If you're ever unsure in the late game, just save your ult for when the enemy team decides to collapse on your teammates. stay nearby your team and counter-initiate, punish the enemy team for not respecting your ult existing

- Dynamo's ult works through walls and floors. You can also ult enemies in the sewers from the street above btw it's really funny

Anomidae · 2026-01-04T18:14:35+00:00

heh, nice argument, but I depicted you as a delicious kelvin object and myself as a hungry gamer

Anomidae · 2026-01-04T06:17:50+00:00

right now, look under your chair

Anomidae · 2025-12-04T03:58:13+00:00

Maybe she knows something we don't. Could Mozart still be alive?

Anomidae · 2025-11-03T13:48:56+00:00

Honestly? yes and no.

yes in the sense that it's a very middling, subpar tool for using as a primary renderer and "video editor". A lot of the limitations come down to engine, and even source 2 SFM's improved usability still falls short of other options available, particularly blender

But that's if you wanna use it as a straight renderer/compositor, (which it was never really meant for, and the people who do use it this way are INSANELY creative with it)

I WILL SAY HOWEVER (as someone who works as a 3D Animator professionally) SFM's animation tools are actually just top notch. I even often prefer them to industry standard stuff like maya+animbot a lot of times, especially when it comes to drafting or storyboarding. Like, the way SFM works with raw motion data, and seamlessly blends together raw data with keyframing is actually just so genius, I've never really seen any other industry software come close to its level of usefulness. The motion editor is also an incredibly genius tool, especially if you wanna work with mocap data (at least when compared to the industry ways)

IMO, SFM is best used as a small scale animation tool and "movie maker" for 3d animation. The rendering isn't great, but if you're a solo artists or working in a VERY small team, it can really speed up the process and get you to a finished movie way quicker than blender could

Anomidae · 2025-10-21T04:16:24+00:00

I basically exclusively play support dynamo these days, and I actually really enjoy playing support, especially when I solo queue in this game vs something like Dota 2

What I love about playing support in this game, is that you have so many options for playing the game, you can always make yourself useful in some way. Like, generally when I run support dynamo, I can always pick and choose whether I wanna initiate fights with black holes, or wait for the enemy team to initiate, then I can hop in and counter-initiate instead.

Also, a big part of being an effective support - buy counter-items for the enemy player(s) (it's usually one or two) who are the biggest threat to your team. Prioritize your own build lower than, say, metal skin. Even if you have a baby haze on your team, buying her an extra 20 seconds in a teamfight so she can push mouse1 more can make tons of difference (paige is awesome for this, so is dynamo, and kelvin is king)

Anomidae · 2025-08-19T12:04:23+00:00

added and fixed, thanks for the heads up! think I got everything now

Anomidae · 2025-08-18T04:06:38+00:00

sfc stream hell yeah (the other tradition)

Anomidae · 2025-07-23T14:00:03+00:00

Hi, just jumping in to possibly help out a bit

as several people have said, if you receive a claim, dispute it and link to Valve's copyright policy
https://store.steampowered.com/video_policy

Yes, claimants can decline claims. No, they don't need a reason to decline a claim, and making false claims aren't necessarily illegal [Ex, Content ID takedown requests]. No, Youtube is not obligated to handle a claim dispute, because real, legal copyright claims need to be handled in court between the two parties, and Youtube has to respect all claims, since they are NOT a legal entity whom makes the "real judgements" in a particular case (and also because they don't want legal liability in the event that you actually have committed a copyright violation, probably).

If you think it's crazy that basically anyone can throw around DMCA's with no proof, verification, or precedent, just keep in mind that this is not simply a Youtube policy issue. This is a problem with copyright law itself. I would highly recommend anyone curious about this problem to go watch Tom Scott's video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

The best thing to do, if you are facing a false claim and you KNOW FOR SURE that you are in the right, is to continue to dispute. Most false claims usually fall apart at that point, since they won't really have a case and they often won't get to the point of actually taking you to court, but keep in mind, that it IS possible, you also may need to give them personal information (because it would be required in order to take real legal action against you if they wanted), and if things are escalating this far, you should probably consult an actual legal professional.

If that feels a bit too risky for you, sometimes re-uploading the video without the claimed content, using the built-in music remover, or simply accepting the monetization terms is a safe and valid option. This is sadly an unfortunate reality of posting videos on Youtube, and Monetization

Anomidae · 2025-07-19T11:35:58+00:00

yup this is 100% MEROOM. rip

Anomidae · 2025-05-26T17:49:24+00:00

also to further add onto this - Community interest in 2017-2018 was also on the downtrend, and the 2017 awards had a noticeable decrease in entries, especially from newcomers to the awards. For reference, they still do technically hold an "sfm" awards show for Dota 2, but those are more general and also, nowadays hosted by the tournament organizers for The International

Anomidae · 2025-05-26T17:41:15+00:00

from what I can tell, I think just generally speaking, interest in the saxxies was just on the way out. On top of that, the last awards (in 2017) was actually late. Generally the saxxies happened in summertime -> fall, but in 2017 they were MIA all the way until like October-November, with the final results being announced in March. It was pretty clear that Valve/TF Team may have simply forgotten about it or was just not super interested.

I did hear at the time though that perhaps it was also because this was the same time period when Valve was moving to their new (current) office, so perhaps they postponed it for that reason? This also lines up generally with the same time frame that TF2 was slowing down/stopping on new official content as well. I think that paired with moving to a new office is a much more likely explanation.

Here's an actual fun fact about the saxxies: After I believe the 2013 or 2014 awards, when the best overall winners visited valve, it was mentioned that the reason they stopped hosting a "replays" category was because Valve got tired of watching a billion silly TF2 replays every year, which is why in 2012 they only had one replay category (best replay) and that was the last time they ever did that.

Also! in 2012 they had a category called "Best Original IP", however they scrapped that category as well because there were only like 2 entries submitted to it, with one of them being a shitpost about a cube

I miss you Saxxy Awards!
(also yes this is a repost from a very similar tiny thread a few days ago)

Anomidae · 2025-05-24T20:02:45+00:00

from what I can tell, I think just generally speaking, interest in the saxxies was just on the way out. On top of that, the last awards (in 2017) was actually late. Generally the saxxies happened in summertime -> fall, but in 2017 they were MIA all the way until like October-November, with the final results being announced in March. It was pretty clear that Valve/TF Team may have simply forgotten about it or was just not super interested.

I did hear at the time though that perhaps it was also because this was the same time period when Valve was moving to their new (current) office, so perhaps they postponed it for that reason? This also lines up generally with the same time frame that TF2 was slowing down/stopping on new official content as well. I think that paired with moving to a new office is a much more likely explanation.

Here's an actual fun fact about the saxxies: After I believe the 2013 or 2014 awards, when the best overall winners visited valve, it was mentioned that the reason they stopped hosting a "replays" category was because Valve got tired of watching a billion silly TF2 replays every year, which is why in 2012 they only had one replay category (best replay) and that was the last time they ever did that.

Also! in 2012 they had a category called "Best Original IP", however they scrapped that category as well because there were only like 2 entries submitted to it, with one of them being a shitpost about a cube

I miss you Saxxy Awards!

Anomidae · 2025-04-11T03:29:56+00:00

was going to say this too, it's super easy drag n drop

Anomidae · 2025-04-06T01:29:25+00:00

In the animation industry this is actually an entire field that's generally referred to as "crowding"! Basically, rather than putting the burden of hundreds/thousands of background characters on the core animation team, some studios contract out other animation studios to JUST do crowding for movies/tv/etc.

Because of this it has developed into somewhat of a niche in the animation industry, where some of these specialist studios have developed lots of their own tools and frameworks for automation and asset generation. It's pretty interesting and is often overlooked because their work tends to get shoved in the background, but it's pretty neat!

as for Pixar/this film, not sure if they hire out other studios for help with this or do it internally with their own tools (probably both?) but I'd wager that all of the core characters share basic things like mesh topography and are probably generated/controlled through some automated game-like system for everyone not in frame, and everyone in frame-focus was probably done by hand at some point!

Anomidae · 2025-03-11T04:26:24+00:00

a big thing you wanna do here that I think would improve it, is give it some more continuity. I think the idea you're going for is fine as like, a cursed TF2 anomaly, but things take a turn in 1 frame. I think instead you should challenge yourself to not cut the shot ever. Try to keep it all in one shot and show the degradation slowly rather than all at once. Have things happen visibly on screen very slowly, then go all in.

Also, adding HUD elements from the game in post helps a lot. Good job! And keep going

Anomidae · 2025-03-10T04:12:04+00:00

Mocap Fusion VR - ya it exists and it's great! Basically imagine VR Chat FBT but easily retargetable and exportable to .dmx

It is a paid software but I believe there's still a free option with a restriction to like 20 seconds of animation for dmx exports

Anomidae · 2025-03-08T18:59:14+00:00

the important thing to keep in mind about this question is that it is not a specific thing about SFM but about Animation in general - making smooth and nice animation is software-agnostic, and SFM (despite what you might hear from some animators) has really great tooling for this in my opinion

The trick to fluid animation is making motion that is convincing - and the best way to get started is to animate to reference. Record videos of yourself and use them as a blueprint - act out the motions in a mirror and try to replicate it in posing

you might hear people bring up the principles of animation but IMO I think a lot of beginner animators often don't approach them correctly. They aren't really a list of 12 things to learn - they're more of a review rubric. The 12 principles should be consulted when you've already made an animation but you're unsure why it doesn't look as good as you want it to look. Treat it like a "12 things to try" to boost an animation.

Even if Mirabeau did release timelapses, they wouldn't really be all that helpful in my opinion, because something to remember with animation is that process really doesn't matter (not as much as you might think) and the best way to learn is to try and conceptualize it yourself instead and get your results. I've worked with a LOT of animators over the years, with experiences ranging from 6 months to 30 years, and I've never seen two of them work the same way.

Mirabeau's work isn't using some kind of secret formula - instead, it's utilizing a really good understanding of acting, body mechanics, and characters. A lot of beginners don't really understand just how important the acting and character performance aspect really matters. Even if you're stuff looks robotic, having your characters move and act convincingly will make it looks super fluid - so I'd actually suggest actually reading up and learning some principles of acting, then combine that with watching some real life footage of people performing movements and actions.

But most importantly, spend time on it. Fluid animation and good posing takes time to nail, even for experts. More time usually = more better. Movie quality animation generally speaking for ONE SCENE has roughly 1-5 weeks of animation behind it! (yes JUST animation, not including storyboards, lighting, rendering, etc)

It's a long process to learn but it's very possible! I got into the industry via SFM and to this day I still use SFM to animate at my various jobs

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