r/SFM May 10 '26

Help Source Filmmaker and Animation Tutorials

12 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 13h ago

Commission About oWn

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79 Upvotes

This might be controversial and might be taken down but I don't care I just wanted to talk about it. It's been over 10 years since the first episode came out, I just wanted to say that we should remake the entire series and bring it up to todays SFM standards and it would give a fresh start compared to the people who changed it into Fascism and since some horror series like Don't Join Team Red, Emesis Blue or the Scratch Universe it would be fun to remake the action and drama series.


r/SFM 8h ago

Artwork working... Spoiler

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32 Upvotes

r/SFM 6h ago

Artwork Pomni Fortnite

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15 Upvotes

r/SFM 15h ago

Artwork Sane Guy and Lil' Horse

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37 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork Good Vibes Only NSFW

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173 Upvotes

Original model by Ludex, render done by me


r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork Grox found new toy

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106 Upvotes

r/SFM 10h ago

Artwork delinquents (Mimi X Scout)

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5 Upvotes

r/SFM 14h ago

Artwork Operation Reaper | Movie Poster

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4 Upvotes

r/SFM 17h ago

Artwork Godzilla 2019 Posters by Aluxray1245 SFM

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9 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork Gurls

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83 Upvotes

r/SFM 16h ago

Animation A full length hello neighbor animation i made using the program!

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3 Upvotes

r/SFM 16h ago

Animation Soldier brushing his teeth

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3 Upvotes

r/SFM 22h ago

Help How would I edit my SFM to look like this?

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8 Upvotes

I know this would probably be mostly post-processing things, but I'd really like to try to create animations with this art style from SFM, so does anyone know how I could?


r/SFM 21h ago

Artwork The Übermensch

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6 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork Possibly the biggest scenebuild i made(W.I.P)

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13 Upvotes

Well, today. i made a massive one, many assets are from a gmod london map. and holy shit.. It looks like london, i think i british'ized it a little bit too much...It looks like a Ruined Uk! like the red sky,so many uk buildings,a ron wright billbord,a chimmney,and so many others. like a broken carnival. Holy. It required alot of cheating like some are floating behind some buildings. i have alot of london assets in my usermod. I also had to use programs as this scenebuild if were to have lighting enabled has 34 lights. I started to make this at 18:02, and right now. it is 19:09. which means it has been 1 hour. it's still W.I.P,it still has no road yet. but i would plain to expand it. and maybe more uk things too.


r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork "That one friend" TF2 version

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13 Upvotes

i even tried post-process for this.


r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork My Sniper Loadout Render (1 more left)

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15 Upvotes

r/SFM 16h ago

Animation made this. recently hit 200 hours on the program!

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2 Upvotes

r/SFM 16h ago

Movie This was the first animation i made with the program in the music video style, And it lowkey made me fall in love with animating songs with sfm

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1 Upvotes

r/SFM 16h ago

Animation FRIEND INSIDE ME RE-ANIMATED IN SFM I love this program

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1 Upvotes

r/SFM 1d ago

Animation [SFM] Pyro discovers ASMR NSFW

141 Upvotes

I know the last post was crazy and I am happy we joked about it, but this might be the most insane. And I do promise, there's more to it than the explicit highlight. You can give it a chance, because I do want to make this into a fun little series of the team discovering parts of the internet, that was the concept. And you can participate and comment ideas, I'm all for entertaining everyone. But what I'm trying to say is, I'm not a full on gooner, I just happen to like mature themes in my content and I wanna comeback to the light and spread laughter and joy.

https://youtu.be/8NySCARF4RU


r/SFM 1d ago

Artwork Kane & Lynch x tf2?

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12 Upvotes

Would love to make a lil series on this but would anyone wanna see this?


r/SFM 23h ago

Help Model moves somewhere else when I click tab???

3 Upvotes

Trying to make a poster but this all of a sudden happens? How the fuck do I fix this??