This guide will go over how to capture the depth buffer when rendering out demos,
which can be then used in movie making.
As far as I'm aware the only alternative way of doing this
is porting demos to Source Film Maker.
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In TF2, things like character animations and ragdolls are influenced by RNG. This means that in order for your world and depth to line up, you have to record both at the same time, in a single pass.
I have modified the standard ReShade DisplayDepth shader to show both normal image and depth buffer side by side. This can then be recorded using game capture software. Some extra tricks are used to control the resolution and framerate of the footage.
- ReShade
- Half-Life Advanced Effects
- MSI Afterburner
- Lagarith Lossless Video Codec
- UT Video Video Codec
- StatusSpec
- ffmpeg
Some can be substituted, but I suggest you use these to avoid any unnecessary issues.
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Lossless video takes up quite a bit of space. You'll probably want to have around 100 GB of free space to work with.
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I edit in Premiere and After Effects. If you use something else, you may have to re-encode the footage to make it compatible.
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If you have any suggestions on how to improve this process, please do share.
- Install and set up everything
- Only have to do this the first time
- How you actually record
- More complex stuff
- Need to know the basics first
- Rewrote the guide
- New ReShade shader
- Ditched SourceDemoRender, VDMs,
startmovie - Now two ways to record
- Output encoded with UTVideo - fixed color loss again
- ffmpeg and ffplay included in the download
- Fixed crash on
startmovie
- Restructured the guide
- Fixed color loss during video encoding
- Fixed Steam messing up ReShade
- First release