While my last two guides focused on using Lawena, due to the 64-bit update, Lawena in its stock state is no longer functional. Thankfully, we have several fixes for Lawena being shipped, including a full overhaul by IBleedButter. In the meantime, however, I dipped into other options, one of these being SparklyFX. So, how about another guide to get those still suffering from the update a jumpstart on what to use.
Here's what you need:
HLAE or another DLL-Injector
SparklyFX
NOTE: You will be launching the game through HLAE, and all of your cfg/custom files will be read. If you need to have a different movie config, I highly recommend making entirely separate cfg/custom folders.
First, you will need to launch HLAE, then go to Tools > Developer > Custom Loader
https://imgur.com/a/lb1XvbW
You will then be greeted by the custom loader window.
https://imgur.com/7BMZGvg
In this window, there are a few things you will need to fill out.
The first is the Program Path. You will need to select your tf.exe. NOT THE tf_win64.exe. Unless you want to use Casting Essentials with SparklyFX, and don't care about smooths, you will need to use the 32-bit version of TF2.
Second, you will need to input your own custom launch options, Command Line. However, you absolutely need to enable -insecure. HLAE and any DLL Injection count as cheats and WILL be caught by VAC. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO JOIN ANY PUBLIC SERVERS WHILE RUNNING ANY OF THIS.
Third, is the DLLs to Inject. You will need to select the following:
AfxHookSource.dll (through HLAE's file path)
xsdk-base.dll (through SparklyFX's file path)
Once selected, you should be all set to click the OK button and HLAE will launch the game.
When in-game, press F11. If you follow the full setup, you will open this new window in-game.
https://imgur.com/a/xRpPGdE
In this window, you have a few different tabs to mess with, the first one is the Streams tab. If you are familiar with how HLAE Streams work, this is the exact same way. It's hard to explain, but each stream is a different instance of the game being recorded, and each instance can have an entirely different look than the last.
https://imgur.com/a/27lUriX
You can change different commands being used, model looks/visibility, material data, camera depth, etc. You can select which streams you want to be recorded via the boxes to the right of the stream name. I'll let you mess around to see what you like, but a normal thing people use streams for is making the ViewModel fade in effect you can see in videos such as Boshy on Rckteer. But if you're curious about how far you can take streams, here's an example shot:
https://imgur.com/a/nOeuNOW
Anyways, next is the recorder tab.
https://imgur.com/a/F0rurDQ
On the initial launch, you will need to record a hotkey to press when you want to record, where the movie files you want to be recorded to, along with what encoder settings you would like. I have my settings listed there but I highly encourage testing out different encoder types.
The dev tools tab I'm significantly afraid of so I'm just going to skip over to HLAE Tab (every time I used the dev tools tab it crashed on me idk why.)
https://imgur.com/a/IDNnvUf
HLAE Tab is just easy to access HLAE commands for campaths. It also autosaves campaths so if your game crashes, you will still have access to most, if not all of the campath you created.
Next is the Spectate tab.
https://imgur.com/a/5g0nRNe
The top half of the spectate only works in POV Demos, but it allows you to attach the camera to another player in the demo. Not a POV, but a third-person shot you can mess with. The bottom half of the spectate tab can help you scan for airshots through demos. You will need to enable the scan function, then play through the demo at whatever speed you would like, or skip to the very last ticks. Then you will have a log with every single airshot that took place during a demo.
Lastly, is the Config tab.
https://imgur.com/a/0j8rnp6
Simple tab, you can export/save your SFX Config, change the autosave interval, or reload the entire program.
Compared to Lawena, SFX crashes less and also tells you why it crashes. That isn't to say there are no problems with the program, but it does a great job of telling you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it. There's not much troubleshooting except for one big one.
PLEASE DISABLE ANY ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE YOU HAVE BEFORE DOING ANY OF THIS
Recently while setting one of my friends up with SFX, his antivirus saw the injection, thought it was a virus, and deleted all the DLL files.