How to make awesome movies and games in the same engine
July 5, 2012
Valve's killer Portal 2 animated movie/videogame: the engine to make movies/games like this is now available. Are you up to it? (Credit: Valve)
Interested in making amazing animated movies that also work as games — and vice versa? Thought so.
Now you can sign up for a (limited) beta key for the Source Filmmaker (SFM) from leading videogame maker Valve (requires Steam to be running on your PC). Valve is the creator of Steam, “the pioneering game platform that distributes and manages over 1,800 games directly to a community of more than 40 million players around the world.”
Questionable characters found lurking on Valve's Steam page (credit: Valve)
The Source Filmmaker is the movie-making tool built and used by Valve to make movies inside the Source game engine, says Valve.”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.”
To celebrate the announcement of the SFM, Valve has released “Meet the Pyro” — the ninth installment in the “Meet the Team” series, made using the SFM.
Also check out the Source Filmmaker showcase. And send us your first video/game to review!
Comments (7)
by Angèle
Step aside Linden Lab, here comes Dreamworks & Cinema Class:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27338/
by Ian
I would LOVE something like that, Bri. Could do with it sooner than 20 years, though. Not getting any younger here lol!
by Bri
They basically do it right now, with computer generated graphics. I love the scene in 2012 , when the yellowstone super caldera explodes. Can you imagine walking around that in slow motion! Seeing the forces at work! And you woulnt even get a scratch! The computational substrate they use is comparable to top of the line computers today, but our cell phone is comparable to them twenty years ago! Read Trancend, live a little longer, and then the most powerful opiate of them all will be here. A chance to live your dreams. Just, where will it take you. Who will come with you, and would you want to come back?
by Gorden Russell
You really make it sound good, Bri.
by Bri
Right now these programs are relatively simple and only do cartoonish animation. Soon when you see a film, you’ll also be able to buy it as a game/film. By that I mean, you’ll be able to have raw components, and reassemble them. Take Harry Potter for instance. You would be able to have all the graphic backgrounds, houses, castles, lakes , cities,etc. Kind of like in Inception , where one dreamer made the background, while the other populated it with their subconscious. In this case the other characters and plot would also be their, but you could alter it’s outcome. Even star in it. You could introduce your own stars, say the Terminator young Arnold could go with you to Hogwarts. Maybe you like the glowing plants from Pandora for your dorm room, or a good aliens vs predator fight with Snipe. Soon making your own movies will be as easy as talking, and from there you’ll be able to go into them virtually. Like those avatars, but in this case, instead of actuating a real robot, you’d actuate a simulated avatar. Literally this could happen in less than twenty years, maybe far sooner!
by Joe
This is sure going to help people who are imaginative BUT not good with hands become superartists. Then we will have a ARTISTIC SINGULARITY.
by Khannea Suntzu
/me shamelessly makes the inescapable *porn* interjection somewhere halfway the article.