By Nathan Grayson on July 11th, 2012 at 9:00 am.
I, like many of you, have dreamed of creating the next great cinematic masterpiece since I first laid eyes on Kindergarten Cop. Unfortunately, I just never had the tools, so my gift to the world remained wrapped and hidden away. And then I got horribly distracted by Meet The Heavy meme videos created in Source Filmmaker, and that’s a hole I don’t see me digging myself out of any time soon. So my magnum opus has probably been shot by a regular magnum. There is a small spot of good news here, though: Source Filmmaker’s now available to everyone and, more importantly, Valve’s updated it with Meet The Engineer. So hooray, more memes that make me giggle uncontrollably for some reason.
For the less cinematically inclined, you still get a Source-Filmmaker-specific Steam Community page, so you can go laugh at silly videos in an organized fashion. Something to note, however: Filmmaker is still technically in beta, so there might be a hiccup or two. Also, it comes in at a hefty more-than-10GB download, and it’s definitely no toy. Valve’s posted a handy set of tutorials, though, so you won’t be taking meticulously angled and choreographed shots in the dark.
And now, because I can, here are a bunch of silly videos so I can justify the somewhat upsetting amount of time I spent watching them.
11/07/2012 at 09:12 Drake Sigar says:
I have to watch The Incredibles right now!
11/07/2012 at 09:13 President Weasel says:
Who is your daddy, and what does he do?
11/07/2012 at 09:18 Didero says:
The download is only 5.5 GB for me. Which is still weird, because the installer popup claimed it only had to download 1 GB.
Maybe it depends on what other Source games you already have installed?
11/07/2012 at 19:21 Vandelay says:
Mine told me it would be 10 GB, but is only 5.5 ish. I reckon it depends on what Source engine games you have installed, as they share assets.
11/07/2012 at 09:43 State says:
That last video is fantastic!
11/07/2012 at 09:44 Kadayi says:
Pretty damn impressive. Hats off to Valve for just giving it away for free tbh.
11/07/2012 at 12:51 Kollega says:
I think i’ll have to wear a helmet just to protect myself from the awesome.
11/07/2012 at 20:22 Fumarole says:
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here; most of the output will be crap.
11/07/2012 at 16:18 nemryn says:
Hats off? HERESY
11/07/2012 at 10:14 kael13 says:
Moar! Time to go hunting on Youtube for more of these gems.
11/07/2012 at 10:28 Real Horrorshow says:
It took me about 6 seconds after loading it to realize that it’s way too complicated for me.
11/07/2012 at 10:40 MeestaNob says:
Those were all incredible. The worst part is, I downloaded the Filmmaker planning on making the Best Video Ever and these have destroyed everything I could even imagine doing.
Me –> Drawing board.
11/07/2012 at 10:41 Didero says:
There’s some good tutorial videos in this blog post.
Edit: This was supposed to be a reply to ‘Real Horrorshow’
11/07/2012 at 11:44 Roshin says:
I’m patiently waiting for the haters to tell me why this is a terrible blow to gaming in general.
11/07/2012 at 12:00 MistyMike says:
Here you go:
So Valve employees are wheeling their desks around and making bullshit projects such as this one while H-L ep. 3 DOES NOT get made. They are sitting one such huge piles of cash that Steam brings them that they can’t be bothered to actually take a risk to make a game. All the creative people who want to make games are leaving the company to start their own, like that Quantum Conundrum gal.
11/07/2012 at 12:07 Apples says:
I assume you were joking, but it is weird when people complain about Valve ‘wasting time’ not making games, since Portal 2 only came out last year. How fast do you want them to go!?
11/07/2012 at 12:14 Dominic White says:
Valve have put out a game every year for the past six years or so.
Clearly, they’re slacking.
11/07/2012 at 13:40 MistyMike says:
A game but not ‘the game’. Portal and Left 4 Dead are very cute, sure. But it’s Half-Life that made history.
11/07/2012 at 18:49 Nevard says:
If you’re claiming that Portal didn’t “make history” then uh…
Well, you’re pretty obviously wrong.
11/07/2012 at 19:31 MistyMike says:
@Nevard
Portal has its place, sure, but not as eminent as HL. Nowhere near.
11/07/2012 at 12:21 Ninja Dodo says:
They’ve obviously been building this since forever (all recent cinematics were made with it) and something like this enormously speeds up the creation process leaving *more* time, not less, for making games.
Also worth noting: though I don’t know that this has been explicitly mentioned anywhere, this also makes it much easier to quickly create interactive scripted sequences for say, Half Life… which, you know, they tend to have a few of.
11/07/2012 at 20:54 alice says:
Serve me! Make what I want!
11/07/2012 at 11:48 buzzmong says:
Oh wow, that “Just one more hat” video was unexpectedly good.
11/07/2012 at 13:12 ZyloMarkIII says:
I would agree it was the best out of the five, though I was kind of partial to Meet the Family.
11/07/2012 at 19:24 Vandelay says:
Anyone else wanting a TF2 musical after watching that?
11/07/2012 at 20:26 Fumarole says:
I’m expecting some Meet the Showtunes videos now, damn you all.
11/07/2012 at 12:27 Lemming says:
All of those are great, but the last one is a great showcase for what TF2 actually is to someone who doesn’t know what the game is about.
11/07/2012 at 12:55 thedonkeyvote says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YrrAroK6bI The best video, just needs to be finished.
11/07/2012 at 15:38 thegooseking says:
First the Portal 2 puzzle creator and now this. I think the message they’re sending is, “Make your own damn
sandwichsandvichHL3!”11/07/2012 at 20:49 niuqqa says:
http://dv.gd/oej
11/07/2012 at 23:42 Wololo says:
Is this like, TF2 only or can you do stuff with say, Gmod aswell?
12/07/2012 at 21:42 The Magic says:
it works with any source game right up to Dota2, including gmod with any custom model you want, (though since it’s still in beta i believe, there are issues)
12/07/2012 at 04:54 Aardvarkk says:
Some good videos collected at ign.com here, the Pulp Fiction one is one of my favorites..
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/12/source-filmmaker-shorts-you-have-to-watch
17/07/2012 at 05:55 Uninteresting Curse File Implement says:
I think I’ll wait for the Internet to start producing some bizarre shit with this.