The Half-Life geniuses over at Valve have decided to fully embrace the art of fan-made film production with Steam’s free release of Source Filmmaker.
Valve has been pushing the envelope in regards to giving away far more free games and open software than the industry norm.
Now they are giving away the Source Filmmaker (SFM) movie-making tool that is built by game-makers here at Valve to make movies inside the gorgeous Source game engine.
The cult term Machinima has been around the gaming community for years, as artistically inclined fans of movies and video games have adopted computer graphic rendering engines and software to build their own cinematic productions.
Who would not love the cheap (free in many cases, folks) opportunity to create high quality visual films without the need of actors, movie studios, or sets?
Many of the fan-made short films, created using games like Doom and Metal Gear Solid to base off of, have far surpassed the majority of Hollywood’s offerings lately. If you don’t believe me, just Google “the best of Machinima” and prepare to be floored.
Starting today filmmakers can fire up the Source graphics and build a world, a movie, with no limits for free!
SFM includes all the base game assets from Team Fortress 2, along with assets from some of the first “Meet the Team” short films that are provided on Steam’s site.
I’ll let the experts at Valve explain their program and their reasoning:
It is how we have been making all of our animated short movies. Because the Source Filmmaker uses the same assets as a Source-engine game, what goes into the game can be used in the movie, and vice versa. By using the hardware rendering of a modern PC gaming machine, the SFM allows storytellers to work in a “what you see is what you get” environment so that they can iterate in the context of what it will feel like for the final audience.
I still cannot believe this is free.
And SFM goes to all the great lengths to help the future filmmakers of the world (though unfortunately they have yet to make a Mac version).
Check out the Resources and system requirements and start filming!
