Probably by now you guys have heard of this, it's Valve's in-house video creation tool on the source engine that they use to make all their trailers.

Well, it's about to go public! Right now it's in closed beta, but I can tell you for a fact (I'm in I'll say later what you can do to get in) it is going to be awesome.

It features keyframe animation on ANY model, including static props (though these don't have bones so the animations generally aren't as complex), recording gameplay-to-animation (scout running through the scene is recorded as completely editable animation), and complex scene setup (timing, sound, lighting, etc)

Right now it only includes TF2 stuff, though you can load in any mod and later today I'm gonna try to mount the portal 2 stuff.

How to get in? Well, you can take the hardware survey to be put on the list, and your chances can be improved by having a good workshop item, or emailing [email protected] with some examples of work that you think qualifies you for having SFM (I mailed them with my portal 2 wallpapers on deviant art and apparently they liked them).

For more info visit sourcefilmmaker.com

Yeah I took the hardware Survey two days ago, and I'm still not in it. I guess that is Valve showing their hard love towards me. :/

But yeah, its really cool that this finally came, I really can't wait for mod support/any engine support. It will make mod trailers better then just noclip flies through maps.

I took the hardware survey on the day it was available and still nothing. Oh well. Although, I did get to see it in action during my Tech camp's field trip to Valve, so I know what It's like.

reepblue wrote:
Yeah I took the hardware Survey two days ago, and I'm still not in it. I guess that is Valve showing their hard love towards me. :/

But yeah, its really cool that this finally came, I really can't wait for mod support/any engine support. It will make mod trailers better then just noclip flies through maps.

You're not perfect.

Sven wrote:

reepblue wrote:
Yeah I took the hardware Survey two days ago, and I'm still not in it. I guess that is Valve showing their hard love towards me. :/

But yeah, its really cool that this finally came, I really can't wait for mod support/any engine support. It will make mod trailers better then just noclip flies through maps.>

You're not perfect.

Yh but VALVe seems to always have things set up in such a way that Reep and/or mappers are put at a disadvantage, although most of them are global.

I'm annoyed i'm not in but I'm not surprised i'm not.

groxkiller585 wrote:

Sven wrote:

reepblue wrote:
Yeah I took the hardware Survey two days ago, and I'm still not in it. I guess that is Valve showing their hard love towards me. :/

But yeah, its really cool that this finally came, I really can't wait for mod support/any engine support. It will make mod trailers better then just noclip flies through maps.>>

You're not perfect.>

Yh but VALVe seems to always have things set up in such a way that Reep and/or mappers are put at a disadvantage, although most of them are global.

I'm annoyed i'm not in but I'm not surprised i'm not.

Mappers are not movie makers. Don't be surprised to NOT be chosen for once. /mad

Sven wrote:
You're not perfect.

Wow, that is news to me (:V), and I did not mean it like that. It's hard to explain without sounding butthurt.

But I'm not too crazy about not being in, as I'll most likely never use it in TF2, but for mods which is currently not supported.

reepblue wrote:

Sven wrote:
You're not perfect.>

Wow, that is news to me (:V), and I did not mean it like that. It's hard to explain without sounding butthurt.

But I'm not too crazy about not being in, as I'll most likely never use it in TF2, but for mods which is currently not supported.

Yeah, I'm not really getting much use out of it at the moment because I'm not much of a TF2 player/don't really care about TF2, and the mod support is really sketchy (not reading from GCF's, and when I port things in, half the maps and models crash the program)

Sven wrote:

Mappers are not movie makers. Don't be surprised to NOT be chosen for once. /mad

Uhh, i'm not saying I want it because i'm a mapper, or expect to get it because i'm a mapper. (Hence the "i'm not surprised i'm not" bit. Getting in is hard for everyone, not just mappers. I said mappers because I was goballizing on things VALVe has done semi-recently. (addons don't work, vpk overriding is a bitch, a lot of things get broken with a major update, etc.)

I'm annoyed because i'm jealous lol. It sounds like a really fun (if buggy) program, and I wanna try it out. If I don't get in the beta then i'll wait for it to come out, it's not a huge deal.

The SFM has been available on the internet cough for a while, that's why we could have masterpieces like Nope.avi

The thing is it only worked with TF2 beta (not the TF2 beta on Steam, the "pre-release"), in which a lot of weapons were not implemented, adding to that the "old" SFM in which a lot of functions were broken and un-clear, so it wasn't quite fun to play with it. At least now there is official tutorials and the SFM seems better, I'll try the new version if I get a key.

[yt:2jhmau4z]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyvXJZhgE0&feature=player_embedded[/yt:2jhmau4z]

Made this in the Filmmaker over the past few days. Most of the exporting options don't work right at the moment, so I had to export as a PNG sequence and recompile in virtualdub, which made me add compression so it looks kinda bad (the turret eye wasn't so flashy in the original).

The animation itself took a few hours to make. This is the portal 1 turret model (because the portal 2 model doesn't load in the SFM yet - I guess I could look for a gmod one), so no eye animations, unfortunately.

I'm kind of disappointed I'm not in this beta as well. I signed up for it right as I was done watching Meet The Pyro and I've yet to hear anything back from Valve which to me is rather frustrating. Then again I never get accepted into betas for anything really, the only one I ever got was Gmod 13 and not much has changed with it in my own opinion. (I never used it to make movies and what not though, just to goof off.) I've honestly come to expect to get passed over by Source Betas, but it's no big deal really seeing as how it can't do L4D or Portal 2 videos at the moment and that's what I'd like to do, I love TF2 but I just can't see myself making any interesting videos with that game in particular. I did join the Steam group to keep up with updates though. I'm hyped for the release.

Why's everyone all "not in beta so I'm giving up " It's been less than a week since it was announced! Valve gave out CS:GO keys for months!

Plus its been a weekend, they weren't at the offices.

p0rtalplayer wrote:
Why's everyone all "not in beta so I'm giving up " It's been less than a week since it was announced! Valve gave out CS:GO keys for months!

Plus its been a weekend, they weren't at the offices.

I can hardly call a program that's been used since, what, 2007(?) to be a "beta." I realize that Valve usually has remarkably long development times, but I refuse to call it a beta.

Sven wrote:

p0rtalplayer wrote:
Why's everyone all "not in beta so I'm giving up " It's been less than a week since it was announced! Valve gave out CS:GO keys for months!

Plus its been a weekend, they weren't at the offices.>
I can hardly call a program that's been used since, what, 2007(?) to be a "beta." I realize that Valve usually has remarkably long development times, but I refuse to call it a beta.

Imo your right. 5+ years does not a beta make.

Actually I wonder if VALVe's version is different because they can load newer version models, and the one the betatesters have apparently only likes TF2. Everything else comes with problems attached.

p0rtalplayer wrote:
Why's everyone all "not in beta so I'm giving up " It's been less than a week since it was announced! Valve gave out CS:GO keys for months!

Plus its been a weekend, they weren't at the offices.

I heard some rumors of Valve giving away all their keys in a day because so many people asked for them. They can always make more, but I'm sure they want a certain number of keys out at a single time. I also know for a fact that they were handing out keys over Steam chat.

To be honest, I think its kind of ridiculous to go above and beyond and personally ask for one. It is going to be free anyway, that is Valve's nature.

groxkiller585 wrote:
Actually I wonder if VALVe's version is different because they can load newer version models, and the one the betatesters have apparently only likes TF2. Everything else comes with problems attached.

Of course they do! How else do you think they made the other trailers? It is more likely too unstable for the public. Things at Valve always seems to work better inside Valve.

reepblue wrote:

Of course they do! How else do you think they made the other trailers? It is more likely too unstable for the public. Things at Valve always seems to work better inside Valve.

cough hammer cough

What I've heard in the context of game support is that their first priority is getting support for the modern TF2 (right now its on a very old, but heavily modified, tf2 engine). I hope they do that fast though because I want Portal and Portal 2 support

As for it being in beta, are you saying that it's too early, or too late for it to still be beta? Because if it's the latter, I must disagree. It is still rather unstable and has quite a few bugs, hence the closed beta testing.

I would guess the reason they haven't made it an open beta is the same reason Portal 2's DLC wasn't an open beta. I could make numerous guesses as to this reason but regardless, it's probably to keep the feedback manageable but helpful.

reepblue wrote:

To be honest, I think its kind of ridiculous to go above and beyond and personally ask for one. It is going to be free anyway, that is Valve's nature.

groxkiller585 wrote:
Actually I wonder if VALVe's version is different because they can load newer version models, and the one the betatesters have apparently only likes TF2. Everything else comes with problems attached.>

Of course they do! How else do you think they made the other trailers? It is more likely too unstable for the public. Things at Valve always seems to work better inside Valve.

Usually this is the case, but SFM seems like a bigger project than usual given the feature list i've managed to make from snippets of info here and there,so many useful things for mappers and moviemakers alike, (albiet half are broken/bugged) so i'm not so sure.

Then again Hammer, Faceposer, P2 Auth Tools, L4D/2 Auth Tools, TF2 and AS are all free (P2 + L4D/2 do require thier games but the tools themselves are free), so that might just be me worrying about a worst case scenario. I do that a lot.

p0rtalplayer wrote:

As for it being in beta, are you saying that it's too early, or too late for it to still be beta? Because if it's the latter, I must disagree. It is still rather unstable and has quite a few bugs, hence the closed beta testing.

I had a very long reply to this, but I can't say it without coming off as a jerk. So, I'll just say "I disagree with you" and move on.

Sorry for the bump, but the Source Filmmaker is [strike:3ibu8all]now Live[/strike:3ibu8all]. Hopefully it will bring more discussions.

Correction, those who took the Survey now have it.