Recent reviews by samlovesmath

good trauma

crippling addiction

Source Filmmaker is a very newbie-animator welcome software that performs well despite minor setbacks that makes what you can use with this a little more restricted than with other animation softwares. Not only is the product free and open for use to all animators and modelers, but the Steam Workshop very intensively works hand-in-hand for those who release thousands of models for use.

Unlike other softwares such as Blender, C4D, Maya, etc. this software focuses more on the animation and rendering of poster and video content. The program has been well-documented for years despite no recently new updates, and plenty of tutorials are available online. Creation of animation work is fairly easy once you know the ropes.

The only setback I will list, for experienced and new animators alike, is that SFM is very OLDER-FORMATTED and much more buggy than the average animation software. It's expected since this software has been in "beta" and was most likely abandoned by Valve themselves after some time in favor of S2FM for future games. If you wish to do more complex things such as edit/import models and materials, you will meet some big bumps along the way trying to get through old and mostly-retired file formats.

SFM, in my opinion, is definitely best for newer and less experienced animators who wish to start expanding their animation experience and basic software knowledge, whereas afterwards they can search for more complex programs (such as I have done myself).

TLDR; pretty good for new animators, big workshop, a bit buggy.
(review edited 07/13/2022)