Should I learn SFM or Blender?

[H I Y A N A]

Hey, new to 3d animation and planning to do short animations. I am not aiming for a realistic look, more of a stylised simple look. I have heard SFM is limited but easier to learn while Blender has more tools to work with but harder to learn.

[Naamie]

It's completely up to you if you want to use SFM or Blender, why not try them both out to see whether fits your liking? bear in mind that all principles of animations will apply no matter what animation software you use so the skills/knowledge that you learned can be transferable from one to another.

For me I chose SFM not because it's "easy" but rather the UI being simple to use, the addons that I could get from the workshop or other websites and that it doesn't overwhelm you a lot. SFM doesn't have the fancy tools like blender does and other delicious features but SFM still gets the job done.

Oh yeah, one major important info is that SFM has long stopped being updated compare to blender so expect bugs to appear once in a while not to mention SFM is a 32-bit program in which it might not be able to handle lots and lots of high polygon models where the limit for SFM is just under 4GB.

But since you're here why not give animating in SFM a try? it's not a bad place to start learning how to animate character models. This is but my viewpoint, i'm sure other fellow animators will give you better insight.

[Capt Fuzzy]

Originally posted by H I Y A N A:

Should I learn SFM or Blender?

Ideally? Both
That's the short answer... lol