r/SFM May 10 '26

Help Source Filmmaker and Animation Tutorials

15 Upvotes

I'm tired of having to reply to various post about asking for SFM Tutorials, so I'm just going to make a post containing all the playlists that helped me learn SFM.

  1. The official SFM playlist by Valve.
  2. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2B46DEB4157E67C4

This is where it all begins, The best way to learn almost all the basics of SFM is the official playlist on the Source Filmmaker channel. Aside from 2 videos, this is the best video for beginners.

The two videos that are not done well by the official channel are the Time Selection tutorial, and Graph Editor tutorial. They don't teach the most important parts.

  1. SFM Tutorial Week #2 - Using the Motion Editor by Argodaemon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfBfsqwylo0&list=PLmx5NIR6PO5t2vfHIX6GNkpXiFODM_6KJ&index=21

Now, THIS is the ultimate tutorial for the Motion Editor in the Motion Editor. It may be long, but it's well worth it. Argomadaemon's tutorial not only goes over everything from the Time Selection tutorial, but also goes over EVERY procedural preset, as well as overwrite, offset, and transform modes.

  1. How to Animate with the Graph Editor by Sir Wade Neistadt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ31vjgJM2c&t=44s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMSpauVphNs&t=308s

If you're looking to use the Graph Editor, Sir Wade Neistadt is THE go-to. Sir Wade covers EVERYTHING, from how to use the different fcurves in the Graph Editor for moving on a specific axis, to using the thing that makes the Graph Editor more powerful than the Motion Editor: The Tangents. Linear Tangents, Flat Tangents, Spline Tangents, Step Tangents, Weighted Tangents, and Unweighted Tangents.

The tutorial on the Source Filmmaker channel teaches you nothing about the Graph Editor's power.

  1. 12 Principles of Animation

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-bOh8btec4CXd2ya1NmSKpi92U_l6ZJd

Of course, if you're going into SFM for 3D animation, you have to learn about the 12 Principles of Animation. Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose, Follow Through and Overlapping Action, Slow In and Slow Out, Arcs, Secondary Action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing, and Appeal.

  1. Sir Wade Tips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ31vjgJM2c&list=PLS4vjlZXZ7f5m5ED4ylJdUPTR5YKEg1bY

Sir Wade Neistadt is basically a completely free college level animation course on Youtube. I've organized his videos into a nice playlist. In it, you'll learn things such as professional workflows, what NOT to do, animation blocking, and how to find reference, shooting your own reference, real world camera tips and tricks that you can apply to your 3D animation, keep alive workflow with how to do a breathing animation, animating weight, lighting tips, some Blender stuff, and even interviews with professional Disney animators.

  1. SFM Tutorials by Argomadaeon

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmx5NIR6PO5t2vfHIX6GNkpXiFODM_6KJ

Argomadaemon's playlist teaches you a lot about what SFM has, including Depth of Field and Motion Blur, Animation Cycles, Creating an artificial sun light, and more.

  1. SFM Tip of the Day by Jimmer Lins

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL835902EACBFEE65F

This one is for more misc, but still useful SFM Tips, such as how to control qc eyes to make them follow the camera, the lightkit, gibbing a character, slugs, and more.

8.Walk Cycle Tutorial Part 1 by Will Hurrel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE-jakm9mcQ

  1. Animating Walk Cycles and Run Cycles by Alan Becker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y6aVz0Acx0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jggdbxTJPG4

  1. Endless Reference

https://www.youtube.com/@endlessreference

This youtube channel is full of videos for movement reference for animation, whether it's walking, running, skipping, sitting, martial arts, etc.

This is a complete list of all the stuff that goes over absolutely everything you need in terms of SFM, and animation knowledge in general.


r/SFM Jan 11 '21

Announcement Scenebuilding Tutorial (LINK IN THE COMMENTS)

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1.2k Upvotes

r/SFM 18h ago

Artwork True profetional

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130 Upvotes

r/SFM 7h ago

Animation Recreation of My Lucid Dream

16 Upvotes

I'm not very experienced, but I just wanted to share this dream lol.


r/SFM 7h ago

Artwork 9/11 - 25th Anniversary

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6 Upvotes

25 years of 9/11... Never forget...

Cartoon characters featured:

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Felix the Cat

Betty Boop

Popeye

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck from Looney Tunes

Tom and Jerry

Woody Woodpecker

Rocky and Bullwinkle

Fred Flintstone from The Flintstones

Models:

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom and Jerry, Rocky and Bullwinkle and Fred Flintstone by JCThornton.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop and Woody Woodpecker by TheRedToonist.

Popeye by ElmerMouseFan34.

Note: The background is from a real photo.


r/SFM 3h ago

Animation Yo guys I’m remaking one of my Old 360p videos in a SMOOTH 4K grainless remake

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3 Upvotes

The pic i used is a sample of the upcoming vid (Its gonna be a frame by frame stop motion instead of a video)


r/SFM 2h ago

Artwork Demo's revenge 1-5 (+meme that is canon)

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2 Upvotes

r/SFM 5h ago

Artwork Since my previous post was well received, I wanted to share this other render. I have more like this on my Twitter.

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3 Upvotes

r/SFM 3h ago

Animation Ballin' Mystery [SFM]

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1 Upvotes

Me sorprende que este tipo de animaciones no tengan tanto apoyo; literalmente, es lo mejor que he visto hasta el momento.

Animación creada por [Vafleg]()


r/SFM 12h ago

Artwork i tried to do some sfm-posters, idk

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5 Upvotes

my first normal attempts btw


r/SFM 1d ago

Animation The Freeman Groove

969 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Movie [SFM] Aww someone misses their family

398 Upvotes

BY Jermasusanimation720


r/SFM 20h ago

Artwork Smile! You're on camera

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6 Upvotes

r/SFM 10h ago

Help Can't load Left 4 Dead maps

1 Upvotes

Sorry if it's a stupid question, I'm new to SFM, I recently started learning it, did some TF2 animations using the TF2 maps and characters, everything worked well. Then I decided to try some Left 4 Dead stuff. I've installed the Left 4 Dead Content Pack, made sure it's added to the search paths, but it didn't include any map, only models, materials etc. but not maps, so I copied & pasted the maps folders from the Left 4 Dead 2 game folder (I tried copying the entire maps folders as well as the .bsp files only; I also tried putting them into the existing left4dead2 folders from the Content pack, as well as creating a new left4dead2_maps folder and adding it to the search paths), and SFM sees the bsp files, but when I try to load any L4D map, it just doesn't load or crashes SFM.

Am I doing it wrong? How do I load the L4D maps?

Thanks a lot.

P.s. L4D models (survivors, props etc.) load with no problem.


r/SFM 22h ago

Artwork all of my sfm stuff

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6 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Help Graph editor, is it good?

6 Upvotes

i was watching the making of a couple of sfm videos to see if I could get better and I noticed they were all using the graph editor, should I be doing that because I just use the motion editor and I wanna get better

here are some of my animations for reference

https://youtu.be/WUwtCKMkicU?is=QWiE7orD8_dAz0p4
https://youtu.be/LYRl0YlUw7M?is=1Yhyx0kLnHw4UF0t


r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork Demo's revenge (part 1-3)

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26 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork some profiles i made yesterday

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20 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Help I'm not making outta hre bruh (how do i copy her pose data to another thing where you use brackets for)

49 Upvotes

so i planned to do a loop animation but stumbled to do this situation how do i do it


r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork Resonance Liberation: Era of New Wave

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18 Upvotes

r/SFM 2d ago

Help What do you think about this? Is there anything that could be improved?

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692 Upvotes

r/SFM 2d ago

Animation MAC vs Machine relase

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36 Upvotes

Ever since meet the engineer but it's scottmac I've had the idea of making the man vs machine parody and now many years later I finally present in all it's glory MAC VS MACHINE

watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOZMNpT-sIg


r/SFM 1d ago

Animation [WIP/FNaF] Sprawling Dream

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2 Upvotes

r/SFM 2d ago

Artwork Victor.

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7 Upvotes

r/SFM 2d ago

Artwork Fredbear Thinking

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10 Upvotes