anyways, onto the story; so for those who don't know, the map this render was made on is actually not for SFM, it was made for Garry's Mod. i'm aware that you can use gmod maps in SFM(please check out this excellent list of HDR-compatible maps by hiroshisan, very useful), however, the success rate of using one is rather low as most maps tend to break for various reasons; most common issue being the lack of HDR lighting, which causes the map to lose any lightmaps or shadows it once had. so, i had to go through the process of converting this map myself and restoring the HDR so it would show up correctly(this tutorial is good, but your mileage may vary), and low and behold it actually worked! it was a bit lacking, however, so to enhance it i added in a custom skybox (the normal one is a solid blue with zero detail) and extra grass to hide the seams of the skybox in the background more.
while i'm really proud of how this pose turned out, i do wish i could've done a bit of a cleaner job with the lighting and detail as the image is a bit messy, even after color adjustments and gaussian blur; regardless, it's nice to know how to convert these maps(somewhat) and hopefully have a wider range of maps to work with in the future.
yoshi model by kabalmystic and \r\n\t\t\t\t\t
| \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHiroshiSan\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
ttt_yoshi_island map by MaestroN, ported to SFM by me
i don't remember who made the grass model, will update later
skybox model by critical hit