Has Valve abandoned SFM?

[Al Pantalone]

This thing was released to the public in 2012 and it's still in beta state almost 6 years later, plus I haven't seen an update since 2015. It still has plenty of errors that need to be fixed and crashes a lot with certain models from other Source games. You'd think SFM would eventually support all source games, maybe even source 2 some day.

Some improvements are slowly being made by the users with scripts and such, but I'd really like if Valve would actually finish their product before ceasing to support it.

[EmperorFaiz.wav]

Pretty much. Saxxy Award is literally the only thing that Valve still give a sh*t about SFM especially the community.

There's no hope.

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Al Pantalone:

- It still has plenty of errors that need to be fixed -

Source Filmmaker was built by VALVe for VALVe. If something mildly annoying has a workaround, it would be easier for VALVe to do that workaround than to report the issue, wait for the issue to be diagnosed, and wait for the issue to be fixed, after which there could even be new, different, other issues instead which would have to go through the same process.

Beyond that, Source Filmmaker is free and thus doesn't directly gain VALVe any money, so they basically don't have much reason to fix small issues for the general public, as that won't make them any money and is harder for themselves than just working around those issues.

Beyond that, the only such "issues" I can think of are very rare, definitely user-caused, to be fully expected, and/or not an issue but just a lack of a feature (e.g. $BlendColorOverBase, proper ambient occlusion with transparent stuff, Team Fortress 2's killstreak sheens and layered skin/war paint systems).

Originally posted by Al Pantalone:

- You'd think SFM would eventually support all source games, -

What's officially known as "the Source Filmmaker" is not the Source Filmmaker, but a Source Filmmaker, specifically Team Fortress 2's. It's a known fact that Portal 1 and/or 2 has its own variant of Source Filmmaker, and it's not unlikely that other VALVe-made Source games also have unique Source Filmmaker versions for themselves, supporting things that those games do (e.g. portals in Portal 1/2's Source Filmmaker version, and model versions of other games).

So while there (probably) isn't any given Source Filmmaker which supports all Source models and features, there are likely several Source Filmmaker versions which support different things, including models for other games not supported in Source Filmmaker.


And again, as mentioned above, it's often easier to work around things than to fix them. This likely includes model version compatibilities. VALVe has access to the un-compiled files of models for their games, so there's nothing stopping them from simply compiling Source Filmmaker-compatible versions of models from games which Source Filmmaker doesn't support models from.

Originally posted by Al Pantalone:

- maybe even source 2 some day. -

In Source 1 Filmmaker? No. Source 1 is too different from Source 2 for that to work out well. If you mean a Source 2 Filmmaker, though, there is actually already one publically available for free, though it's DotA 2-themed instead of Team Fortress 2-themed.

[Gmanluigi]

Originally posted by Al Pantalone:

This thing was released to the public in 2012 and it's still in beta state almost 6 years later, plus I haven't seen an update since 2015. It still has plenty of errors that need to be fixed and crashes a lot with certain models from other Source games. You'd think SFM would eventually support all source games, maybe even source 2 some day.

Some improvements are slowly being made by the users with scripts and such, but I'd really like if Valve would actually finish their product before ceasing to support it.

Someone should honestly just make their own version of sfm thats just like it but actually being updated regularly, unlike valve and their greedy asses, I've seriously unsubbed almost every addon i dont use on sfm to try and get just one working, ONE!!!!! and its still giving me the CUtlRBTree overflow error. I have seriously lost all hope on sfm being fixed by valve at this point.

[EmperorFaiz.wav]

NECRO ALERT

Look up Pragma Filmmaker. That is exactly what you wanted. Incomplete but still getting updated.

[anonymousgamer]

Somehow I believe that's an issue with the session and not an issue with having too many addons.

[HAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!]

As much as Valve basically abandoned SFM, at least it is still with us today, we all have had our rage on this animation software for crashing and stuff, but at least it's gonna be with us for a long time or maybe forever. I loved SFM because of how easy it is unlike other software's. I'm just ashamed and disappointed that Valve abandoned this software which SFM is capable of making amazing animations like movies such as The Winglet for example, who makes the best TF2 animations and is using a abandoned animation software.

[Comrade Glootchi]

Why do you have to ask a question that's had a known answer for years? Yes. Valve has abandoned SFM. It's clear by the lack of QOL updates to SFM. We'll never see any updates for this abandonware.

[Clanks]

Originally posted by EmperorFaiz.fbx:

NECRO ALERT

Look up Pragma Filmmaker. That is exactly what you wanted. Incomplete but still getting updated.

Looks pretty good, I'll download it. Thanks :)