How to MAXIMIZE your framerate in SFM

Is SFM slow and barely responsive on your computer? Want to view how your animations really look without your computer skipping frames? Well look no further, 'cause in this guide I hope to show you a few settings that will speed up your SFM experience.

Introduction

If you are like poor scout up there, you are probably sick and tired of how slow SFM runs on your computer. Don't get mad at your computer though, SFM is making it do far too much work! There are a few simple settings that will make life easier for your poor computer.

Lower your Graphics settings

By default, SFM runs with full graphics settings. Lowering the settings may help you improve your FPS. In order to do this, start up SFM, and without any session loaded, press f11 (you will have to close the splash dialog).

You should see this:


Click options and tab to "video options" then click on "advanced options"

You should be here:


Change these settings to the lowest possible. Leave "Model detail" at High. Lowering this will mess up some HWM models. Also don't modify the "High Dynamic Range" if you plan to work with lights.

Unfortunately, this will have to be done every single time SFM is started up

Disable Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion (AO) is the bane of your computer's existence. It is most likely the single greatest thing slowing your computer down (unless you disabled HDR, then its not there).

With AO enabled, your poor overworked computer is forced to calculate the brightness of every pixel on the viewport based on the geometry in the scene.


This results in a more 3d looking preview, but is only necessary for the final render.

Disabling this setting is trivial. Simply right-click on the viewport and click on render settings. Then click the check box next to the words "Ambient Occlusion."

In some cases, this is all that needs to be done to get great performance.

Disable Lighting

This one is also trivial, just right-click on the viewport and uncheck "Enable lighting."

In simple scenes this may not do much, but in complex scenes with many volumetric lights, you could see a huge difference. Also dark scenes will be much easier to work in with lighting disabled.

Unmount Large Mods

If you've never mounted a mod for SFM, you don't need to do this

There is already a guide on this, so here it is:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=278558485&searchtext=mods

Conclusion

This guide was meant to show users the many different ways to improve your computer's performance, and not all of these may be necessary to use at once.

As for me, I leave the graphics settings on full and disable AO and lighting while I'm working. Play around with them to see what you like best.

And above all, have fun!

[AlexsTheCat]

everytime i do this my SFM Crashes and it doesnt work at all my SFM keeps lagging for crying out loud i just wanna make artwork/animation damn it !

[Ziphy]

Glad its could be of assistance!

[Slurmpas [real]]

The disable AO helped so much! My sfm runs so fast now! Thank you so much!

[Ziphy]

I can't imagine it does. SFM just crashes a lot it seems...

[weggs]

Whenever I perform this stuff on source filmmaker, after doing it, a while later, SFM crashes, does this stuff actually run the risk of crashing sfm?

[Benamax]

Will it change the final video? (Rendered project)

[Ziphy]

I haven't tried, but I am confident that it will. You will have to restart SFM for the settings to change.

[Benamax]

Will lowering the graphics settings change the actual video?