Source Filmmaker

[Bolty]

Some of you may be aware that recently, Valve released their Source Filmmaker. This is a program that Valve used internally to develop their trailers and videos used for marketing their games. See how it works below:



It's pretty awesome, and it allows people to make machinima much more easily than pretty much any other method to date. Now that it's been out for a bit, some amateur movies are starting to come out. You have simple stuff such as Zip It:



But there's some original stuff too. Check out Practical Problems for a laugh:



Any other good ones out there yet, or is it still too early?

[kandrathe]

Wow. This stuff blows me away. I've been tangentially involved with animation over the years, most heavily in the early 80's SIGGRAPH era. It was the advent of ILM, Bell Labs work, and etc. Disney's Steamboat Willy was an 8 minute short, made in 1928 and took 3 animators 3 months to produce. 84 years later... Just amazing really.

[NiteFox]

Practical Problems skyrocketed to very high on my list of favourite machinima the moment I saw it. I agree with one random commentor that I've read in that the wrist movements are a little stiff, but it's still one of the best videos I've seen and about as close as you'll probably get to Valve quality at this stage.