You know all those “Meet the…” videos that Valve makes to introduce Team Fortress 2 characters? Valve is giving away the software they use to make those short films. For free.
Source Filmmaker is the internal tool Valve has used from the beginning to create their Team Fortress 2 promotional videos. While those vids aren’t groundbreaking, they’ve always been entertaining, funny, and very well made. So imagine what the community of fans will come up with when Valve sets loose the Source Filmmaker program for anyone and everyone to use.
Rather than restrict budding filmmakers to the cartoonish characters and settings of Team Fortress 2, Source Filmmaker can be used to create a movie using any game that runs on the Source engine. Aside from stretching the available assets to include Half-Life 2, Portal 2, and more, suddenly Source is an even more enticing format for making games on, because developers will be able to create movies at the same time. As Valve puts it, Source Filmmaker “allows storytellers to work in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment,” which should drastically simplify the filmmaking process.
To show off what Source Filmmaker can do, Valve released their latest Team Fortress 2 video today, “Meet the Pyro,” which you can watch below.
If you’d like to try out Source Filmmaker for yourself, sign up for beta access.
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