Valve’s Source Filmmaker and ‘Deep’.

Jun 28, 2012

In exciting news out of Valve today, the same filmmaking tool used by Valve to make movies inside of the Source game engine, Source Filmmaker (SFM), has been released to the public. An example of these videos can be seen in the Team Fortress promotional clips, including the latest in ‘Meet the Pyro’, and from first impressions the the system appears a whole lot easier than Gary’s Mod.Further, SFM offers filmmakers a high quality platform for their previsualisation workflow.

Because the SFM uses the same assets as the game, anything that exists in the game can be used in the movie, and vice versa. By utilizing the hardware rendering power of a modern gaming PC, the SFM allows storytellers to work in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get environment so they can iterate in the context of what it will feel like for the final audience. – SFM

This news comes after it was announced that Shane Acker, whose credits includes the Oscar-nominated ‘9’ (produced by Tim Burton), has teamed up with Irish animation studio ‘Brown Bag Films’ and Valve to develop a  new animated feature film titled ‘Deep’.

According to Brown Bag Films, the link up with Valve – best known for producing the huge-selling games ‘Half Life’ and ‘Portal’ – will allow the studio use “new technologies that result in high-quality production value at a fraction of the time and cost”. The new tools are based on the developer’s Source game engine. – IFTN

While the relation between game developers and filmmakers has existed in the traditional transversal realm of marketing, where feature films may be accompanied with a game title or video games with a feature film, this move offers a refreshing departure and hope that we may see more out of Valve: perhaps even a Half-Life film.

Sign up for a free invite at SFM!