Team Fortress 2 ‘Pyromania: Day 3’ Meet the Pyro and Source Filmmaker

Well it’s over. The Pyromania three day event is done, and it finished with flourish. Haaaaaave you met Pyro?

Well, that was…interesting. I can safely say that was the best “Meet The” video hands down. Today not only marks the end of Pyromania but it introduces the newest tool from Valve. The Source Filmmaker.

Source Filmmaker (SFM) is the tool Valve developed inside the source engine that it used to animate all nine of the TF2 shorts. It takes an entire animation studio and puts it inside a single gaming PC. From the Press Release.

The goal of the SFM was to develop a story telling tool that allowed us to create computer animated movies more efficiently, and with greater creative freedom,” said Bay Raitt, designer at Valve. “Over the past five years, we’ve produced more than 50 animated shorts with the SFM. The Source Filmmaker will allow our community to create their own movies in Team Fortress 2 and in their own Source SDK-created mods.

SFM is currently in a closed beta, but Valve is going to release it FREE OF CHARGE later this year.

I don’t like to throw this word around too often, but this is fucking AMAZING! What Valve is bringing to gamers and machinma artists alike is nothing but astounding. I cannot wait to see what groups like Lit Fuse Films will be able to do with this tool.

For more info on SFM check out the official page.

Day 2 of Pyromania is HERE.