Sourcefilmmaker open alternative?

[Lonrot]

SFM is absolutely fantastic, however it's cumbersome to work with non Source related stuff, for example compiling assets.

Is there an alternative to SFM with a more open approach and still as good in terms of animation? I come from a 3Ds Max/After Effects background, and felt in love with SFM as soon as I got my hands on it. The ease to adjust, smooth, copy and blend animations in the timeline "realtime" is phenomenal.

Note: By open I mean, being able to import or create custom assets with ease, price is irrelevant.

Your thoughts?

[Kumquat [Velbud]]

Blender :P

[Wilkins Coffee]

Second Blender. Don't know much about it myself, but you can make models and such and easily port them over to Source (or so I'm told).
Blender's also free.

[Bop]

It's the cumbersome elements that result in the animation workflow being so smooth. To be quite honest, even the cumbersome elements shouldn't really to much of a hassle. Just bear with it. The motion editor of SFM, in my opinion, is the core reason as to why SFM animation is easy to get around with. So far, I haven't heard of any other 3D production suite that uses anything like the motion editor, so I would say there's probably no alternative at the moment.

[Lonrot]

Originally posted by ClinterinoM0 | C::

The motion editor of SFM, in my opinion, is the core reason as to why SFM animation is easy to get around with. So far, I haven't heard of any other 3D production suite that uses anything like the motion editor, so I would say there's probably no alternative at the moment.

Yes exactly, a 3D program with a motion editor like SFM. I have seen posts claiming that Cinema4D is very smooth for animation, but I haven't tried it yet to compare.

3Ds Studio Max is great, but the keyframe editing is rather primitive compared to SFM. The closest thing I can think of is After Effects but it's merely a post production tool, and not even realtime.

More comments are welcomed.

[Pte Jack]

There are a few Full length movies have been done in Blender. Blender also has a game engine.

[Bop]

I personally hate 3DSMax's animation system. It's far too clumsy. Blender and Maya have much better animation systems.

[僕の名前 (仮)]

Unreal Engine 4 have it's own filmmaker (dubbed UnReel by people from twitch stream). I don't know if you can actually animate here or you will need Maya or Blender, but you can move camera, add post-process effects and even make changes to map and film in one software (well, basically it's a still level editor)

[ai]

Only Blender.