As I said in my first guide, I am not a professional at any of this. Everything I will discuss here is merely what I have learned on my own in the past few years through trial and error.

Much of what I have learned comes from fellow GMod artists whose artwork I have admired and been greatly inspired by.

A short list of those artists who I would like to shout out are...

- Spiraling Fortissimo
- RemStur
- Marxman
- clocksource
- Caetho

I will also state that some of the topics I discuss in this guide may be a bit more advanced than what I went over in my first guide, if you are a complete newcomer then I would highly recommend reading that guide first before continuing to read this one.

Onwards with the guide!

There are many console commands that can be utilized to improve the quality of your artwork in Garry's Mod, of course you can set the in game graphic settings to high, but there is even more we can do beyond that. I listed these commands in my first guide, but I will list them again here for reference. Feel free to adjust the values to your preference. :)

r_flashlightdepthres 8192
r_projectedtexture_filter 0.2
mat_depthbias_shadowmap 0.0000005
mat_slopescaledepthbias_shadowmap 2

Remember to not enter these options while Garry's Mod is running a map. It will likely crash your game!

This guide will make use of multiple addons which will aid us in creating our Garry's Mod posters. I have a long list of addons that I recommend in my first guide, and I would implore you to have a look through those before moving on.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=633904640

First we need to establish a camera angle for our poster. You can zoom in with the camera by holding down right click and moving your mouse.

So, here I have posed a scout dancing on ctf_well.

Now lets get out the camera, below I have a picture of the default camera (with no zoom) and another with zoom that I have added.

Without Zoom

With Zoom





As you can see, we can use our camera and its zoom functionality to establish a shot that is much more dynamic and visually pleasing. It is one of the many tools we have at our disposal to make artwork in Garry's Mod.







As I've stated, the way you use your camera to frame a character can have a great impact on the final image. I would recommend playing around with the camera in Garry's Mod as much as possible to get a good feel of its capabilities.


Here are some different camera angles on the dancing scout.





Much of this process is trial and error, feel free to try different angles that you find captivating! Experiment!

ent_setname and ent_fire are console commands that move lighting from a certain prop to another prop. Setting this up will take a bit of explanation, but you'll see soon that it will be of great use to us.

Heres an engineer that i've posed on koth_highpass


If I aim my crosshair onto the engineer, and go into console and type
"ent_setname"

and then add in a name for the engineer.
I've gone with "engiman" meaning that I typed into the console
"ent_setname engiman"
The console will then respond with this message.
Set the name of prop_ragdoll to (insert the name that you typed.)

Now, for the 2nd part of ent_setname, spawn in a prop, (I have chosen a wooden box), and take the prop to a dark area like I have done here.


And just like the engineer, aim your crosshair on the box, go into console, type "ent_setname"
and choose a name for the prop.
Mine will be "boxo"
Meaning that I typed into the console
ent_setname boxo
while the console responded with Set the name of prop_physics to boxo

Now for ent_fire.
Go into console, and type this.
ent_fire (name of ragdoll) setlightingorigin (name of prop)

So for my personal example, I have typed "ent_fire engiman setlightingorigin boxo"

Which made the engineer look like this!


The reason why this is useful is that we have effectively eliminated all of the in-game lighting that the engineer had on him. This means that he is now a blank canvas for us to light up in whatever way we deem worthy!

First, lets pretend the sun is shining down on the right side of the engineer.
I will take a yellowish tinted lamp and place it above the engineer to mimic sunlight.

















He now looks like this.


















I've now taken two more lamps with these settings.
Red: 177
Green: 220
Blue: 255

And placed them on both sides above the engineer to give him a bit of a shine.


Making him look like this!



Now if I use the magic of super dof and post processing, the final image looks like this!









And in the next section, I'll go over exactly how to use these post processing effects as I've done here.

Post Processing are a set of visual settings inside of Garry's Mod that can make your posters look much more dynamic and interesting.


I've went ahead and posed a medic, gave him some hats, put glows around his eyes using the glow tool, and put a few lamps around him.


And while it looks okay, this image can be further improved upon by using post processing!
Here is a list of the post processing effects I'll be going over here.

- Sharpen
- Color Modification
- Bloom
- Vignette (this comes from another addon listed in my first guide)
- and Super DoF


First up,Sharpen
This with sharpen the image



Note: Unfortunately, My Garry's Mod crashed at this point, forcing me to redo the image. Which is why it may look a little different. Sorry about that!



Next, Color Modification
Using the color modification tool, we can adjust the color values of our image to our liking. For this image, I want to go for a dark, almost halloween vibe, so I've utilized the color modification tool to do just that!

Just by implementing these two effects, we have significantly changed our image. These tools can be very powerful!


Next up, Bloom
This will layer a bloom effect across your image. I'll use it here to brighten up the medic a bit after adding the color modification effects.






Next we have Vignette.
No settings on this one, just adds a nice vignette to your image. Makes things look just a bit more dramatic!




And finally... Super DoF.
This will force the camera to focus on a certain layer of our image, while blurring out the background. This will allow us to clean up our image, removing visual clutter that may avert attention away from the character in the image.













Leaving us with our final result!

That's the end, thanks for reading! This guide attempted to go a bit more in-depth than my first guide, highlighting some of the more technical aspects of making art in Garry's Mod.

You can check out my other Garry's Mod posters here.
http://steamproxy.net/id/BrettyGood/screenshots/?appid=4000

I hope this guide was helpful and informative. As I stated at the end of my first guide, if you are willing to put in the time, you can create beautiful pieces of artwork using the tools inside of Garry's Mod.

Thanks again!