There are many things that make a poster look good, but some of the most important are the lighting and the camera.
These two alone make up for a huge chunk of why certain posters look good. True, good posing and an original idea are also important, but no matter how good the pose, it will never look as good as it should be without proper lighting and camera usage.
In this guide, I will talk about how to properly use the camera, and how to properly light your poster.

For all of this to work, you must have the render settings set up right.
**DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOU ARE DONE POSING**
For those of you who dont know, render settings determine the quality and clarity of your poster.
Get to the render settings by right clicking on the Primary Viewport and selecting "Render Settings"
Use these settings:














It is important that Ambient Occlusion is on for this!!

Now, you must make sure that you have your lights set up correctly. See my other guide to learn how to setup proper lighting.

Now, click on the lighting to start setting it up correctly.
Every poster needs a mood, but all posters should have a good shadow system.
Shadow settings can be changed with the following:



shadowFilterSize changes the sharpness of the shadow.
shadowAtten changes how dark the shadow is.

Volumetrics are sometimes also good to use. They basically create a ray of light that you can physically see, like in a dusty room.
With volumetrics:

Without volumetrics:

With good shadows:

Without good shadows:

The camera is crucial for all of the above to work well together.

If you dont already know, this is how you make a new camera:
If you look to the bottom right of the primary viewport, you will notice this button:


Click on that little arrow and go to Change Scene Camera > New Camera.
Right click on the Animation Set Editor > Create Animation Set(s) For New Camera(s) > Camera 1.
This should make a new animation set called Camera 1. It looks like this:


Click on it. On the right, a small list of settings will pop up:










fieldOfView - changes the zoom of the camera.
focalDistance - changes the focal point of the poster.
aperature - changes the blur of the picture in front and behind the focal point.
toneMapScale - changes the brightness (this is very glitchy sometimes, certain objects do not support this like the all father and the saxxy statue to name a few).
bloomScale - changes the "shinyness" of everything.
I will talk about the rest later.

A lot of the time, a higher FOV is favorable over a lower one. It tends to have a more dramatic feel, and can make things that are farther away seem closer. It also reduces warping as well as a "fisheye" effect in the photo as can be seen below:


For all posters, be sure to set the focalDistance to the center of the subject so that it evenly distributes the blur. If the subject is too far away, right click on the focalDistance slider, and select "Remap Slider Range".

Tone map scale is very usefull for making dramatic posters. For those with darker themes, a darker toneMapScale is preferable.

Dont ever change bloomScale pls :(
Maximum bloomScale:

Ambient occlusion. Ohh ambient occlusion you laggy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
In Lamen's terms, ambient occlusion is just advanced shadowing that your graphics card must render in real time. This is why sometimes ambient occlusion will lag out some games if your graphics card cannot handle it.

To control this laggy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, make sure that you only turn it on once you have finished posing!

Ambient occlusion is the reason why proper shadowing, 1024 override, and camera settings are so important. This is where your poster REALLY starts looking good.

You will notice that in camera settings, there are these 3 lines:




SSAOBias is where the shading goes.
SSAOStrength is how dark the shading is.
SSAORadius is how far out from surfaces the shading goes.

From my experience, I have found that the following settings provide the best looking poster (THIS IS MY OPINION)




Bad ambient occlusion:

Good ambient occlusion:

No ambient occlusion:

I hope that you liked this guide and it taught you something.
In my opinion, the good parts are in the details. When making SFM posters, the smallest part no matter how miniscule, can change the entire poster's effect.

Remember, all of my setting preferences are "PREFERENCES", and not fact. People like different things, and if you like a poster that looks like this:
Then so be it.