Valve releases 'Meet the Pyro' video, announces Source Filmmaker

Valve released its "Meet the Pyro" video and announced its free movie-making software Source Filmmaker.

"Meet the Pyro," Valve's ninth and final video in its Team Fortress 2 "Meet the Team" series, was released today, alongside the announcement of Source Filmmaker, Valve's new in-engine machinima tool.

The release capped off the three-day Pyromania event, which began on Monday with the announcement of the video and a new map called "Doomsday." On Tuesday, the company detailed the addition of six new weapons for the free-to-play shooter, four of which were user-created.

Valve also used the occasion to announce the release of Source Filmmaker, a movie-making tool that the company developed to create animated short films like "Meet the Pyro" from inside the Source Engine. Currently in a closed beta, the Source Filmmaker will be available free through Steam later this year.

"The goal of the SFM was to develop a story telling tool that allowed us to create computer animated movies more efficiently, and with greater creative freedom," said Bay Raitt, designer at Valve. "Over the past five years, we've produced more than 50 animated shorts with the SFM. The Source Filmmaker will allow our community to create their own movies in Team Fortress 2 and in their own Source SDK-created mods."

"We condensed the entire pipeline of an animation studio into a single gaming PC," said Bay Raitt, a filmmaker at Valve in a video released today, which you can view below — right underneath the "Meet the Pyro" short.