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Hey, my name is Bay Raitt
I’m one of the filmmakers at valve.
Before coming here, a lot of us had worked on blockbuster movies.
During those experiences, we realized that movies could be made much more efficiently,
and with more creative freedom.
So we joined Valve, and for the last 7 years we’ve been creating movies in a very different
way.
I’m going to talk to you today about the storytelling tool we built inside Valve’s
source engine. We condensed the entire pipeline of
an animation studio down onto a single gaming PC.
We’re calling it, the source filmmaker.
To date, we’ve created over 50 animated shorts. These have actually served a dual
purpose for us. The first, to be the marketing materials for our
various games. And the second, has been to be technology
tests for the source filmmaker.
For a while now it’s clear that gamers like to do more than just play games, we all like
to watch movies and we like to participate in the worlds
we spend so much time in.
We built the source filmmaker so that we could efficiently share our creative efforts across
all aspects of the entertainment experience.
This means that we create our movies on location inside the video game world.
While the movie is playing back, we can pause, reach into the frame, and change something.
That’s not a 2D video that you’re looking at, you’re looking at the 3D world of the
video game.
This allows us to combine the arts of cinematography, film editing and animation so that we can
make late project story changes .
We can Blade a shot - Frame the camera and change meaning of a scene immediately.
did anyone happen to kill a red spy on the way here? no? then we have a problem.
So here’s a deeper look at the character animation tools inside the SFM.
You can capture motion.
You can insert clip motion.
Or you can animate new motion from scratch.
No matter how the motion was created, you can use powerful motion editors to modify
any of it.
and worst of all, he could be any one of us.
The source filmmaker also features a GPU powered facial animation system that allows for multiple
characters to deliver subtle nuanced facial performances with feature film quality lip-sync.
basically, kind of a big deal.
So lets show you what it’s like to use the source filmmaker.
Normally a film director yells lights camera action.
The source filmmaker however allows us to do backwards.
Action, camera, lights.
Here you can see a group of us using the multiplayer game to mock in an idea for meet the medic.
The source filmmaker allows us to capture the game world, blade up shots, place cameras,
add anything in the game world, pose characters, perform facial animation, re-perform a
new take, tune lights and adjust sound - all without leaving the context of what it looks
like for the final audience.
aaaaah... ah hah hah hah I am bullet proof!
All this means you can think of these video game worlds as massive backlots for creative
exploration. As contributors to the Steam workshop continue
to expand these worlds, the resources for storytellers are going to
increase exponentially.
With the source filmmaker you can animate, create posters and make movies -- all by re-purposing
the video game world into a virtual movie studio.
Today we’re pleased to announce that we’re starting the beta of the source filmmaker
so that you can make your own animated movies.
We’re also going to be including the working session of ‘meet the heavy’ so that you
can re-shoot, re-animate and re-edit it to make it your own.
You can learn more at sourcefilmmaker.com
whooosh.