One of the top video game makers today, Valve, recently released a free tool that allows anyone to create their own awesome content without hiring actors, buying cameras, or worrying about distribution. The software is the same platform the developers use to make their games, so it’s not some watered-down freeware. In fact, an increasing number of powerful video creation tools are becoming widely available empowering individuals to create content that would have taken large teams and huge sums of money to produce before.
As a testament to the power of this new tool, a fan posted a remake of a famous movie scene that is pretty impressive:
Before this video, the movie’s creator, LiveCurious95, had only posted one video using the software the week before, if that’s any indication of how easy the software is to use.
It’s always cool to see companies open up the software development engines for use by anyone, and likewise, it’s awesome to see more ways for enthusiasts to produce content like machinima. Valve’s software, called Source Filmmaker, goes a long way to helping users create a video that looks professional. You can learn more about how the software works and what motivated the company to give away their software in the following video:
In recent months, Valve has been aggressively busting out of the standard game-developer box, using its digital distribution platform called Steam. The company started last year when it opened up Steam Workshop, an editor that allows players to come up with their own in-game items and maps. Valve has been adding Workshop to an increasing number of games, allowing fans to make mods and share their content with the Steam community. Earlier this year, the company announced its effort to use Portal 2 to teach science and math in a campaign it calls Teach With Portals. Then in July came the announcement about Steam Greenlight, allowing game developers and publishers a way to pitch their ideas to the community and give gamers a voice in what games they play and buy. In the last few weeks, Valve has revealed that it will soon offer creativity and productivity software for sale through Steam, released numerous updates to improve its community pages, and indicated that its games will be supported on Linux.
Valve is clearly not satisfied being a one-trick pony.
Valve’s community on Steam has 40 million users, according to Forbes, and its a fairly active group producing lots of content and building social connections around games. So it’s a safe bet that Filmmaker will see good use and become even more powerful as the library of content creation tools continue to make their way into the hands of enthusiasts worldwide.
[Media: YouTube]
[Source: Valve]
