(keep in mind that this guide isn't supposed to be the prettiest, maybe soon or later i'll add some pictures that help explain some stuff but that'll probably be about it)

What is Source Filmmaker?

Source Filmmaker (or SFM for short) is an animation program made by Valve Corporation, it was made using Valves Source Engine and was primarily used to create short films for some of their games. SFM is no longer being updated as of making this guide, since the Source Engine is waaaay out of date & Source2 Filmmaker already exists.
But even though Source Filmmaker is a relatively old software thats riddled with bugs, is still a great tool to create short films and posters!

If you're new to SFM, then I would really recommend you to watch Valves series on YouTube that goes over the basics on how to use it. They go into detail about several things that I probably wont have time to write about in this guide, so please check that out!

Everything else in this guide would primarily be for people who are decent at SFM, so if you need any help with performance or lag, this guide might help.

Heres some useful commands to help increase performance and comfort while using SFM.

1. EDIT YOUR LAUNCH OPTIONS

Using certains commands can increase SFMs performance ever so slightly, which is very important if you want to prevent it from crashing or loading excessively.

Some helping commands include;

• -threads (num value goes here) <-- allows you to change the amount of processors your computer uses to run SFM. For the best results, change your threads value to the same amount of processors on your pc. Example: 12 processors == -threads 12
  
• -mat_removeallmaterials <-- reloads all the textures in your current SFM project. if your memory starts to creep up to a large amount (like 2000mb or 3000mb, as visible in the bottom righthand corner of your SFM screen) type this into your console and it will hopefully tick that number down a notch.
  
• -high <-- im pretty sure this does increase fps if you type it into your launch options, but i forgot what it does specifically. but it doesnt hurt to try, right?
  
• -height 1080 -h 1920 -w 1080 <-- lets you render projects in 1080p aspect ratio, which is helpful for making your animations not render in low quality.
  
• this will be added onto once i research more info.

SFM tends to be a very laggy software on start-up so its important to do a couple of things before beginning a project.

• Turn off Ambient Occlusion & Post Processing! - after making your SFM project and loading a map, right click your ingame camera view. From there, select Progressive Refinement Settings, then uncheck both the ambient occlusion and post processing check boxes. (post processing might not majorly cause bad performance on decent PC's, but ambient occlusion might be the main source of lag for most people)
  
• Disable Lighting! - in the same menu as above, you can also disable the lighting within ur SFM project, this can increase your frames even more and is really helpful when animating bigger projects. (keep in mind that this does disable all the lights, so any preview of your animation will look awful)
  
• Shortening your clips! - Having large clips in your timeline in SFM can also cause large amounts of lag. SFM by default has your current clip in the timeline set to 60 seconds, which isn't very good for performance. to increase your frames, I would recommend shortening this to around 5-10 seconds. And having shorter clips in general can definitely save memory.
  
• Removing models and other elements - if you've already made a big project, consider removing background elements that are out of camera or are larger. More detailed models can cause lots of lag even if they're only seen in specific shots.

Heres some very helpful things I've learned while using SFM.

• Adding FK bones to IK rigs - believe it or not, you can actually do this in SFM! (specifically without the use of a custom rig script) All you have to do is; select the gear icon in the corner, select "Show hidden controls" and open up the area of your rig that you want to make FK. Once in there, you'll see multiple sliders that are attributed to certain bones, these sliders control whether or not that bone has IK enabled or disabled. All you have to do is select all the sliders you want to disable, and drag them to the left! (You can also hold ctrl to select each slider, then drag the Zero slider underneath the Procedural tab to the right). Now finally, right click the entire section where the IK sliders were located (example; RigBody, RigLegs, etc) and click "Hidden" to disable it so you can see the hidden FK bones, and there ya go!
  
• Disabling annoying Jiggle Physics - in order to remove any jiggle physics from models, hats, or weapons, you can "bake" their movement into the model (which pretty much means to disable them). Right click the model you want to remove the jiggle physics from, and go to "Utilities", from there, select "Bake Procedural Bones" and you're done! After you do this, you'll see that the part of the model that had jiggle physics is now animatable object! (if you did it correctly)

Theres a ton of stuff I want to add to this Guide that I've learned while using SFM that alot of you might not know about, so stay tuned!

Also if you have questions or need help with anything I wrote or didn't talk about then I’ll try my best to help you.