Source Filmmaker

[Alyxx Thorne]

I'm pleased to hear it.

[CTN]

After watching the tutorials I'm confident that SFM will allow me to achieve the professional results I was striving for when I picked up and greatly overestimated the Source SDK. I still have some unanswered questions but it's a big step forward from current tools. Hopefully, the machinima I'm working on now or the next one will be the last made with the SDK. Then I plan to test the limits of creative potential and freedom the SFM has to offer. Interesting times to be a no budget filmmaker!

[Ross Scott]

I don't understand why the hell they have to make it a private beta instead of just making it an open one and saying it's currently unsupported.

[Pinkie Pie]

I don't understand why the hell they have to make it a private beta instead of just making it an open one and saying it's currently unsupported.

Agreed. Still waiting on that 'You've been accepted!' confirmation, though.

[Alyxx Thorne]

I don't understand why the hell they have to make it a private beta instead of just making it an open one and saying it's currently unsupported.

More control over the input, I suppose.

[Ross Scott]

I've come to understand that facial animations can't be done on HL2 characters for this, only TF2 ones. Since TF2 lacks the ability to call forth faceposer scenes from within the map (has to be done in console, which is too sloppy of a way to do it), this really limits the usefulness of the tool outside of TF2.

 

So I guess I return to my original stance before I edited the news post. And that's until the code to this gets hacked, it's going to produce spectacular TF2 videos, and not a lot else, or at least nothing with facial expressions.

[Pinkie Pie]

There's gotta be something like that in the works. I know Ross mainly does HL universe videos atm, or at least I'm talking about Civil Protection, but can anyone comment on this stuff for L4D, CS, etc? Or did he literally mean ONLY TF2?

[Lord Sinister]

There's gotta be something like that in the works. I know Ross mainly does HL universe videos atm, or at least I'm talking about Civil Protection, but can anyone comment on this stuff for L4D, CS, etc? Or did he literally mean ONLY TF2?

 

Q. Does the SFM work with other Valve Source games and mods?

At this time, the SFM is only being released for Team Fortress 2. Users familiar with modding with the Source engine will be able to mod the SFM build of TF2 to create new worlds.

 

http://www.sourcefilmmaker.com/faq/

 

It's just TF2 for now, but it doesn't sound like working with other stuff is outright restricted, it would probably just require some work. However you never know, maybe when the beta is over they might allow it to work with other Valve games.

[Wheatley]

I really don't understand why they would limit it to just TF2 for any reason other than time constraints. I would guess that eventually they'll add in support for the other games, as I can't think of any reason to avoid including support for them... Honestly, their vague answer of this question and the release of the tool as a closed beta is really frustrating me.

[Ross Scott]

There's gotta be something like that in the works. I know Ross mainly does HL universe videos atm, or at least I'm talking about Civil Protection, but can anyone comment on this stuff for L4D, CS, etc? Or did he literally mean ONLY TF2?

It will import a lot of maps and models from other games, you just won't have facial animation for the characters, so it depends on what kind of video you're trying to make.

 

EDIT: Looks like it actually is possible, just had very hidden settings.

[Brian234]

From what I have seen with experimenting with it, the only files I can't load from Half Life 2 are the maps, but I am still messing around with it.

[Lord Sinister]

It's now out for everyone to use!

 

http://teamfortress.com/post.php?id=8378

[ArcticAvenger]

That was unexpected from Valve.

[Ross Scott]

Here's a quick breakdown from what I've seen compared to regular Source SDK with HL2:

 

+Much better camera controls

+improved lighting

+more flexibility with model manipulation

+easier to record and export video

+supports depth of field

-having a non-TF2 character walk up / down a hill and look good is about 10x more work than with Hammer

-doesn't support scene file playback from faceposer

-missing many npc manipulation options that Hammer has

-Less flexibility on AA use

-Misc. limitations of things that would be possible in HL2 Hammer.

-Haven't figured out how to have use of physics objects

-Can't do 1080p video

 

 

The short version is that compared to the HL2 SDK, some things are much better, some are much more limited. There is a straight tradeoff of functionality in various areas. The only thing I see being a pure advantage are the lighting and the camera controls. Everything else has a downside to it compared to what you're getting. I think my original assessment was correct in that if this is the best Valve has to offer, UDK really makes sense for the long term.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Yeah, I'm guessing Source Filmmaker is more aimed at the masses and not for specialized and more serious machinima makers.

[Ross Scott]

Well it occupies this weird hybrid space between beginners and more advanced users. The animation tools I've heard are pretty similar to what you get from Softimage, so that's hardly beginner stuff at all. Like if you want to animate EVERYTHING, but don't want to create a bunch of new assets, the SFM might be pretty helpful for you. On the flipside, the player recorder function is incredibly useful for people who want to make more Red v. Blue Machinima, but don't have the actors for all the roles, they can run around and do it all themselves.

 

For me, I'm drifting towards having more flexibility in what I animate, but still be able to take as many shortcuts as I can without having things look too bad. I WANT to have the AI figure out the best way for a character to walk down a hill, or to takeover some physics simulations, etc. Anything I can do to make the animation process easier without having it look worse I'm likely in favor of. The SFM seems to drift away from that direction for a lot of things.

[Alyxx Thorne]

Whatever works best for you. If you know SFM isn't going to cover your needs then there's no point in using it.

[Eedo Baba]

The SFM seems very user friendly to me. Note that if you're going for true quality, it's a very slow process, but hey, that's animation.

 

Here's the first thing I made with it. Note that just this 8 seconds of solid character animating took 8-10 hours to do manually.

 

XosRVWOQPzo

[Lord Sinister]

-Can't do 1080p video

 

The patch notes here suggest that it is now possible to render in 1080p, if that helps.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/news/8384/

 

- loosened resolution restriction to allow rendering in 1080p at any game window size

 

 

The SFM seems very user friendly to me. Note that if you're going for true quality, it's a very slow process, but hey, that's animation.

 

Here's the first thing I made with it. Note that just this 8 seconds of solid character animating took 8-10 hours to do manually.

 

XosRVWOQPzo

 

Was so good I looked it up on the Workshop page and rated it up!

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=81440989

 

And that was a practice run!? I look forward to seeing more!

 

 

On an unrelated note, I'm still waiting for my copy of the Source Filmmaker to download.

[Lord Sinister]

For those of you who have used the Source Filmmaker, have any of you experienced a weird sound-cut-out issue?

 

From looking at the console, it says 'Stopping all sounds' when playing recordings, and viewing recordings in-game. It also affects the final render. I'm finding this somewhat frustrating and have found no solutions to my problem.