You’ll have a whole bunch of new Source Filmmaker (SFM) videos coming at you soon. The SFM community is relaunching the Saxxies, an awards program for the best machinima created using Valve’s free tool.
While much of what people create with SFM is available on YouTube, it’s been a great pointer to some of the best content we may not have come across. While a lot of the machinima deals with Team Fortress 2 characters and is videogame related, as time went on, more teams used it for large, general, non-game related videos.
It’s the same tool that Valve used to create the “Meet the __” videos, like the below:
Valve is a big company with a novel structure that allows small teams to work on passion projects. There’s a lot it’s done over the years that’s worthy of criticism, and there’s also a lot of really cool things it’s brought to the table.
Source Filmmaker definitely falls into the category of those cool things. It’s pretty amazing that anyone can download the program, have access to Valve’s characters (as well as other models people have uploaded through the workshop), and create animations for videos or just pose characters for screenshots.
For some weird reason, there was a time when 50% of the SFM Workshop was Five Nights At Freddy’s models, but every community has its quirks eh?
Up until recently, Valve had supported the SFM community with the Saxxies a celebration of what everyone was making with the free tool. That was discontinued, but the community has proven strong enough to self-organise and keep it going.
You can join in on the community Discord, whether you want to enter a video or just watch them and be a part of it all.
Of course, not every SFM video makes it into the Saxxies, and there’s a whole non-Saxxies rabbit hole you can fall down on YouTube. Take, for example, the below piece of modern art:
Categories for this year’s awards are expected to be roughly the same, with awards for best short, action, comedy, drama, extended, and overall video.
If you’re interested in entering, see the below rules and check out the Discord.
Winners will be announced on January 21, 2022.
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