i mean, this is a guide that was made to be done after you're done lighting it and all, so you should've already done this. If you don't know how to do that



basically, all you do is take a thousand renders of poster_soft # (my poster sizes are 3) (4 if you're Kush) from multiple angles, and then do a few of poster_lightbounce (big number) (small number) (poster size) after using light sprayer to fill in areas with no lightbounce. Then go to photoshop and do a bunch of garbage that takes up too much time

Here's the over glorified and explained version of lighting: Your soft lamp settings should be below 50 FOV, not a super high brightness (I stay at 10 and do poster_darken 0.1), and keep the Near Z as close to the scene you can get it. You can check your Near and Far light by using this command: r_flashlightdrawfrustum 1. Bind it something, I have mine to 'o' and 'p' for that, and for mat_fullbright, I have it to 'k' and 'l'. Surface shape resolution should be 10 and surface shape should be disk. Surface radius is very important. Surface radius shows how much the shadow will become soft. It works like this; higher the radius, less sharp the shadow. If you want a sharp shadow, but it's sorta soft, make it 20 or 30. I don't do that. I usually go for 50 to 75; mainly because I kinda got sick of really sharp shadows after using them for four years. These are your soft lamp settings.

Now onto lighting. You always take a test render first. DO NOT immediately take your poster_soft 3, because it might look like garbage, and you just wasted your time waiting for a render you won't use. Start out with poster_soft 1 before you do your main render. You first start out by taking the poster that's going to be your main/base sun layer, which will be slightly brighter than the other posters. Then another one using that same lamp position (including the same settings) but with blue light and slightly darkened by using poster_darken (insert low number, like 0.5) If it's a blue sky reflecting light, make the lamp blue, otherwise the color is going to be the color that's reflected from the sky. This could be dark grey or something, but I end up doing blue because, eh, why not? Then for the next few poster_soft(s) taken from other angles going around in a circle around the scene, you're gonna wanna do something so complicated it'll blow your brains out. Just increase surface radius on your soft lamp. It doesn't make sharper shadows like the main one does. Make it somewhere from 150 to 200, or higher if your'e an absolute chad. There. You're basically done with lighting. Now go onto the lightbounce part.

Okay, just go to 12:16 on this, Olmate is a god on soft lamps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHmzIrej8Pw&t=183s Just make sure to not copy his settings, because he's using a different version of it. Do something like poster_lightbounce 250tff 3 3 for your final poster of the lightbounce layer.

When you're done with that, just input lightbounce_clearcalculations into the console. Then take a poster (whatever your final number is for your main posters) of some certain things. For SSS, though, replace all skin with the white light material, and take a poster of that in complete darkness, showing only that. Then take a poster with your sky turned to a white color and white fog coming towards the camera at 100 density, fogstart at 0, and use your fogend to adjust it. Take a poster of that and then one of white sky ony in mat_fullbright 0. There. You're done. God help you, this is painstaking.

So basically, this is where the steam guide stops, and the google doc i made begins. God save you if you can understand this mess of a "guide" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DxR8ItzkYVrzG8b1JsHCokcpEn-hBV-eW_wjMABlOhE/edit?usp=sharing