Oprindeligt skrevet af Bronze Star:

Why is no one working on a program to improve it — and who needs it if there is a community that can fix sfm bugs by itself?
Why Valve, will not give the source code of the program for the community to improve it? And who will do it then?

Obviously the dev team is long gone. Just another victim of Valve's idiotic work hierarchy where everyone is free to work with any project they want especially something profitable.
I remembered Pte Jack (a notable forum regular here besides me) said SFM contains source codes licensed from other company hence it can't be released with source code to the public. All the community-made scripts are just surface-level scripting and they can't get into SFM's inner working.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Bronze Star:

Who will they give sfm for further development?

If we could made a crowdfunding project to convince any Valve dev to work on SFM a little more. Valve have better priorities to work on. Anything profitable of course.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Bronze Star:

If there was an opportunity to revive the program, what would you do for it?

Oprindeligt skrevet af EmperorFaiz.vmt:

Here are the list of things that would be a great addition to SFM plus improvements:

• 64-bit upgrade
  
• Get rid the infamous "Can't animate over 60 seconds" problem.
  
• More lighting options such as half-spherical light and full-area ambient light.
  
• A better manipulator tool such as the ability to move or rotate at a specific distance or angle respectively like the one in Unreal 4 engine.
  
• A better animation set grouping system.
  
• Able to set skin and bodygroup inside import model window before spawning the model.
  
• Hide the little "x" on every layout. No more "accidental" problem.
  
• Upgrade the import particle effect window to looks more like the import model window such as preview box.
  
• Improved video export option such as compressed AVI export and built-in encoder for MP4 export.
  
• Native 1080p option in export settings but leave the viewport resolution as it is for performance.
  
• Advanced sound editor
  
• Update the in-game mode that allows using different weapons, wearing cosmetics and using bots.
  
• Decent physic simulator.
  
• Scale control with specific axis option.
  
• A decal emitter of some sort that you can automatically "stick" the decal on a specific part of the model or map regardless the surface shape.
  
• MP3 support that actually works well and can be used to extract phonemes.
  
• Able to save custom bodygroups and merged models so you can reuse them on other shot and session.
  
• Always up to date "Add Team Fortress Item" tool.
  
• Create a jigglebone on a specific bone(s) with pre-existing presets such as "soft rubber", "spring" and "hair".
  
• A special map that you can export a video or poster with a transparent background.
  
• Far more efficient rendering process.
  
• A more efficient way to transfer animation sets from one session to another.
  
• Cloud-system where the session can be shared and edited by multiple people easier ala Google Doc.
  
• Native TF2 painting system plus support sheens.
  
• A better override material tool such as able to edit, paint or draw an existing texture ala Photoshop (doesn't have to be as complicated) inside SFM and save the custom texture separately. Plus, able to save edited material attributes
  
• Able to save the animation as a custom sequence.
  
• Theme support.
  
• Customizable keyboard inputs and shortcuts.
  
• Valve could sell their own assets or add a donation button if they want monetary support and continue the software support longer.

That's all I could think of right now.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Bronze Star:

How long would the community support the program?

Until a better software created that provide more and better functions/tools and yet shares the same simplicity of SFM's work process, it will stay for a long time. Maybe an indie company could license Source engine and make their own, better SFM that would be easier for the existing SFM users to migrate without missing out anything and without re-learning most stuff. One can dream...