While we're saddened that the end of the Seventh Annual Saxxy Awards is here, we're thrilled to be handing out the golden Saxxy statuettes for the winners! We're also incredibly excited to be extending an invitation to the overall winners to visit us at Valve headquarters.

Go see which of your favorite entries won!

We're approaching the culmination of another Saxxy Awards filled with some really amazing Source Filmmaker videos! Today we're announcing the nominees for the Seventh Annual Saxxy Awards, and there are entries that had us laughing, crying, and shouting in surprise and excitement. So make some popcorn, grab a drink, and go watch the Seventh Annual Saxxy Award nominees!

Once you've watched the nominees, and rewatched your favorites, remember there are many more entries available that may still end up on your personal favorites list. And don't forget to come back tomorrow and find out which of your favorite nominees were chosen as winners!

We'd like to thank all of the entrants for their hard work and creative vision, and as ever, there are a few specific entries that didn't make the cut, but are exceptional nonetheless:

Honorable Mention

The Box Mann

Inside Surgery

Meet the Janitor

It's our favorite time of year! That time when all the Saxxy Awards entries have been submitted, and we can watch videos all day long instead of working. More importantly, so can you! Upvote the ones you enjoy, downvote the ones you don't, and just as importantly, downvote the ones that have violated the Saxxy Awards contest rules. Specifically: no advertisements, YouTube annotations or cards allowed, any music and other assets must have links to their authors in the description, and entries should abide by the per-category duration limits. You have until 3PM PDT on Tuesday, March 13th to vote, so don't wait!

For those who have submitted entries to the Saxxy Awards, please make sure that your videos are marked public, tagged with the appropriate categories, are free of advertisements, cards or annotations, and that you've attributed the creators of any music or other assets you've used, and received permission for their use.

Nominees will be announced on Wednesday, March 14th, and winners on Thursday, March 15th. Until then - go vote!

After submitting your video, remember to tag entries over three minutes as Extended, and all other entries as Action, Comedy and/or Drama. Entries up to one minute should also be tagged as Short. (in addition to the genre tags)

Don't forget to provide links to any music or other IP that your entry uses, and add your co-authors as contributors. Lastly, make sure that your submitted video is publicly visible, allows embedding, and is free of advertisements, YouTube annotations or cards. The guidelines contain more details on all of these requirements, so check there first if you have any questions. The SFM Steam Community is filled with many experienced SFM users and Saxxy contributors, and can be a good resource for questions as well.

We're looking forward to your submissions, so get those entries in!

It's time to announce the Saxxy Awards for 2017, and we couldn't be more excited!

We can't wait to see what variety of amazing videos you create! Don't forget that all Valve universes are available for use, and SFM shorts that were submitted to the Dota Short Film Contest are also eligible for this year's Saxxy Awards. The submission deadline is March 8th, 2018, but as always, we'd like to remind you that you can upload non-final versions up to a week in advance of the final deadline, to guard against last-minute computer failures, internet outages, YouTube login problems, etc.

Check out the guidelines for details on the rules and deadlines, and get your entries ready!

While we're saddened that the end of the 2016 Saxxy Awards is here, we're thrilled to be handing out the golden Saxxy statuettes for the winners! We're still laughing at some of the short and comedy entries - probably more than is really healthy. We're also incredibly excited to be extending an invitation to the overall winners to visit us at Valve headquarters.

One of the unexpected pleasures of the Saxxy Awards for us is that by flying the overall winners to Seattle, we've often been bringing teams together for the first time. Many of the winning teams were spread across multiple countries, and for those teams, getting to meet each other in person on the Valve trip was a fantastic extra bonus.

We're approaching the culmination of another year filled with some really amazing Source Filmmaker videos! Today we're announcing the nominees for the 2016 Saxxy Awards, and there are entries that had us laughing, crying, and shouting in surprise and excitement. So make some popcorn, grab a drink, and go watch the 2016 Saxxy Award nominees!

Once you've watched the nominees, and rewatched your favorites, remember that there are many more entries available that may still end up on your personal favorites list. And don't forget to come back tomorrow and find which of your favorites were chosen as winners!

We'd like to thank all of the entrants for their hard work and creative vision, and as ever, there are a couple specific entries that didn't make the cut, but are exceptional nonetheless:

Audience Choice Award
Lunch Break

Best Movie Homage
Protonic Morons

Best Unfinished Entry
A Shattered Dream

It's our favorite time of year! That time when all the Saxxy Awards entries have been submitted, and we can watch videos all day long instead of working. More importantly, so can you! Upvote the ones you enjoy, downvote the ones you don't, and just as importantly, downvote the ones that have violated the Saxxy Awards contest rules. Specifically: no advertisements, YouTube annotations or cards allowed, any music and other assets must have links to their authors in the description, and entries should abide by the per-category duration limits. You have until 3PM PST on Wednesday, November 16th to vote, so don't wait!

For those who have submitted entries to the Saxxy Awards, please make sure that your videos are marked public, tagged with the appropriate categories, are free of advertisements, cards or annotations, and that you've attributed the creators of any music or other assets you've used, and received permission for their use.

Nominees will be announced on Thursday, November 17th, and winners on Friday, November 18th. Until then - go vote!

After submitting your video, remember to tag entries over three minutes as Extended, and all other entries as Action, Comedy and/or Drama. Entries up to one minute should also be tagged as Short. (in addition to the genre tags)

Don't forget to provide links to any music or other IP that your entry uses, and add your co-authors as contributors. Lastly, make sure that your submitted video is publicly visible, allows embedding, and is free of advertisements, YouTube annotations or cards. The guidelines contain more details on all of these requirements, so check there first if you have any questions. The SFM Steam Community is filled with many experienced SFM users and Saxxy contributors, and can be a good resource for questions as well.

We're looking forward to your submissions, so get those entries in!

It's time once again to announce this year's Saxxy Awards, and we couldn't be more excited! Last year we shook up the rules a bit by reducing the length of the themed categories (Action, Comedy, Drama) and adding a five-minute Extended category. This year we're letting things settle, to give everyone a chance to adapt to the new format. We were overwhelmed with so many incredibly high-quality entries to the Extended category last year, there were some great entries that didn't get the recognition they deserved. If you're working on an entry to the Extended category, it may be worth reevaluating whether you could edit your piece down to three minutes, and submit to one of the themed categories instead. We value solid editing and every year there are good entries that could have been great, if only they had been edited down to carve off a minute. (or two!) We won't pretend that's an easy task, but we've found that our videos have benefitted from being pretty brutal in the edit, trimming frames, shots and sometimes whole sequences. Some of our favorite gags have ended up on the cutting room floor, and made the piece as a whole better in the end.

As always, we can't wait to see what variety of amazing videos you create! Don't forget that all Valve universes are available for use, and SFM shorts that were submitted to the Dota Short Film Contest are also eligible for this year's Saxxy Awards. The submission deadline is November 11th, but as always, we'd like to remind you that you can upload non-final versions up to a week in advance of the final deadline, to guard against last-minute computer failures, internet outages, YouTube login problems, etc. Check out the guidelines for details on the rules and deadlines, and get your entries ready!

We say this every year, but we had an especially hard time this year choosing the winners of the Saxxy Awards. The Extended category in particular was overflowing with quality submissions - who knew that the Heavy could be so adorable or so creative, how dark Nick's backstory was, and how hilariously terrifying a plane full of Scouts could be!

Congratulations to all the winners of the 2015 Saxxy Awards, who will be receiving the coveted Saxxy Award, equipable in Team Fortress, and to the Overall Winner, whose team will be flown out to meet the folks that make movies and games here at Valve.

Lastly, we'd also like to congratulate the creators of a few more entries that we feel are deserving of recognition:

Most Horrifying Use Of Combine Technology
Secret Lives

Best Sketch Comedy
Blu Team's Day Off

Best Reveal Of Our Secret Plans
Mann Vs. Hat

It's been an action-packed Saxxy Awards this year, full of twists and turns, laughs and surprises! We have shorts from well-known members of the community from whom we've seen great things in the past, and from newcomers who are submitting their very first Saxxy entry. All of the entrants are winners in our book, but there's only so much space on Saxxy Awards web page, so we need to narrow down the entries to the best of the best.

So go watch the nominees for the 2015 Saxxy Awards, and see the best that the community has to offer! We'll announce the winners tomorrow, so while you discuss and debate who you think they'll be, you can also check out the rest of the entrants here.

As usual, there are some specific entries that weren't nominated, but we felt were worthy of special mention, and here they are:

Audience Choice Award
Mechanical Mishap

Best 2D/3D Mashup
A Spark Of Life

Best Commercial For Another Game
No Time To Waste

It's time once again, for you, the SFM community, to vote for your favorite entries to the Fifth Annual Saxxy Awards! Voting is open until 3PM PST on Monday, November 16th, so you have until then to watch and vote. Don't forget to down-vote those entries which have violated the rules for the Saxxy Awards: No advertisements allowed, any music and other assets must have links to their authors in the description, and entries should abide by the per-category duration limits.

For those of you who have submitted to the Saxxy Awards, please double-check your videos, and make sure that they have the appropriate category tags, are marked public, have no advertisements, cards or annotations, and that you've attributed the creators of any music or other assets you've used, and received permission for their use.

Nominees will be announced on Tuesday, November 17th, and winners on Wednesday, November 18th. But enough reading - go vote!

Once you've submitted your video, you'll need to add it to the appropriate categories by updating the tags associated with the video. Don't forget that entries up to a minute should be tagged as Short, entries up to three minutes should be tagged with Action, Comedy and/or Drama, and entries over three minutes should only be tagged as Extended.

Don't forget to provide links to any music or other IP that your entry uses, and add your co-authors as contributors. Lastly, make sure that your submitted video is publicly visible, allows embedding, and is free of advertisements. We've updated the guidelines with more details on all of these requirements, so if you have any questions, check there first. If you have further questions, the SFM Steam Community is filled with many experienced SFM users and Saxxy contributors who may be able to help.

We can't wait to see what you've all been working on, so start those submissions coming!

Update: If you have links embedded in your videos using YouTube annotations or cards, please remove them before voting starts on Wednesday, November 11th. These embedded links are advertising those videos or channels, and aren't allowed in submitted videos. Links are allowed in the description of your video, so if you want to thank contributors or give viewers a way to find you online, that's where to put them.

It's our favorite time of year again! It's time to announce this year's Saxxy Awards, and lay out the rules and deadlines for submissions. We're especially excited to find out how the mix of universes for entries this year is affected by both the release of the SFM within the Dota 2 Reborn Beta and the Dota 2 Short Film Contest.

We're mixing up the categories again this year, to encourage more of you to submit entries. (and encourage the overachievers among you to submit more entries!) The Action, Comedy and Drama categories are all changing to have a 3 minute limit, and there will be a new Extended category that has the 5 minute limit from prior years. We believe that there are a great many stories to be told in the new 3 minute format, and we hope to see more of them by adding categories in the gap that existed between 1 and 5 minutes.

On a more technical note, we're also changing the way that submissions are uploaded, so you upload your entries directly to YouTube, and add them to your Steam profile, instead of uploading through the SFM. The submission deadline is November 11th, but once again, we'd like to remind you that you can upload non-final versions up to a week in advance of the final deadline, to guard against last-minute computer failures, internet outages, YouTube login problems, etc. Check the guidelines for details on the rules and deadlines, and get your entries ready!

Source Filmmaker is being reborn in the Dota universe! The new SFM will be included in the Dota 2 Reborn Beta, and will work natively with Dota 2 and Dota's custom games. This includes recording gameplay, new Dota-specific features, and integration with the new Source 2 engine and all the latest tools. We're incredibly excited to make creating Dota movies much easier, and are looking forward to both growing the SFM community with folks from the Dota 2 workshop community, as well as expanding the choices for the existing community!

While there are a bunch of exciting new features in the new engine, new tools, and the new SFM, there will also be some missing features as well. Check out the wiki to see all the differences that are coming with the Dota 2 SFM. Since this is a beta, you should expect less polish and more bugs for the time being, but you can also expect a more frequent update cycle than the SFM has seen recently. The new SFM is 64-bit only, so while it will allow you to create longer movies and more intricate worlds, it will also require a 64-bit version of Windows to run.

For those of you who live and love Team Fortress 2, don't worry - the standalone SFM you know and love isn't going away, and it's still the best place to create shorts in the Team Fortress universe. It will also continue to have the workshop with the greatest variety of contributions, and remain the best place to create shorts in all the other universes we've released DLC packs for - including Day Of Defeat, Blade Symphony, Portal, Black Mesa, Left 4 Dead, Dino D-Day, and The Stanley Parable.

So get back to making movies - and while you're waiting for your renders to complete, download the new Dota 2 Reborn beta, and check out what's new in the SFM Reborn!

We haven't been completely idle ourselves, and after seeing multiple reqeusts for help on how to make characters run along animated paths instead of in a straight line, we've updated Import Sequence to make this easier. We've added an option "Root Drives Pose Params" to the Import Sequence dialog that allows you to animate the rootTransform of your character, and the SFM will figure out how to animate the move_x and move_y pose parameters to make the character animate along that path. Don't forget that the Steady preset is a great way of smoothing out motion speed while keeping the path intact, and have fun making guys run in circles!

It was one of the tightest Saxxy races we've ever had, with a lot of heated debate here at Valve. But even with so many great entries, it's still a contest, and someone's got to win.

Luckily, someone did! Announcing the winners of the 2014 Saxxy Awards! Head over and check them out. All winners will get an exclusive, highly rare in-game Saxxy Award, and The Overall Winner's getting flown out to Seattle to spend some time with us here at Valve.

We laughed. We cheered. We cried. Some of us wouldn't stop crying, and it got awkward. Then we laughed and cheered again.

We say this every year, but we were blown away at the quality and inventiveness of this year's entries. And now we're proud to present the absolute best of best from the 2014 Saxxy Awards. Check out the nominees here.

Of course, as with any contest, not everyone can win. But that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of recognition. Below, some fantastic entries that just barely missed the cut:

Best Late Entry
"Defuse on The Fly"

Best Five-Minutes-Exactly Piece
"Wanted Warehouse"

Best Original Character
"Cubey"

Best Crossover
"The C4 Courier"

Best Tackling of a Serious Subject
"Behind the Mask"

It's that time again! Time for you, the community, to help decide which videos are truly the best of the best! Remember that in addition to helping choose the best videos, you're also helping to find the videos that violate the rules for the Saxxy Awards.

If you've submitted a video, make sure you've included links to any music or other assets you didn't create yourself, and double-check that you've removed any YouTube ads from your submission!

The voting period ends at 11:59PM PDT on Monday, September 29th. So submitters, you have until then to finalize your contributors; voters, you have until then to help decide which videos will win a coveted Saxxy Award!

Nominees will be revealed on September 30th and winners of this year's Saxxy Awards will be revealed on October 1st. So get voting!

We can't wait to see everything that you've all created, but before you submit, here are a few reminders and clarifications.

While the deadline is Wednesday, September 24th at 4PM PDT, we strongly urge you to submit early versions, both to guard against your internet connection going down on the last day, and to give yourself time to make any changes after reviewing the uploaded video. (Found in the Videos tab of your Steam Community profile.)

Note that the deadline is the time at which entries must be FINISHED with the submission process, not the time at which they start. So give yourself plenty of time for the upload process, just to be safe.

If your entry uses music or other intellectual property (IP) that wasn't created by Valve or part of an SFM downloadable content pack, don't forget to provide links to the included work in the description for your submission. For workshop items, you can generate the list of used items in your session within the SFM via Show Used Workshop Items under the File -> Community submenu. While you should provide links to used workshop items, you don't need explicit permission from the creators, since it is implicitly granted by submission to the workshop.

Once your entry has been submitted, please add your co-authors as contributors. Remember that only people who worked directly on the entry are considered contributors. If you used workshop items in your entry, the creators should only be considered contributors if they created those items specifically for this entry.

Lastly, remember that entries must be free of advertisements, otherwise they will be disqualified.

So with that out of the way, let the submissions begin!

UPDATE: We were having some configuration issues with the submission process, but they're fixed now. If you tried to submit a video, you will need to resubmit. Sorry for the inconvenience...

As the last of our content pack DLC before the run-up to the Saxxy Awards, we're thrilled to be able to share assets from The Stanley Parable. If you haven't played it, we can't tell you what it's about without spoiling it. Well, we can probably tell you that The Stanley Parable is a game about games. Or rather, in some ways, it's not really a game at all. Or perhaps it's the game that is the most aware of being a game. Or... Well, we've already said too much. All we can say is that it's now available as a DLC from within Source Filmmaker, and that it's under a similar video monetization policy as the rest of the content pack DLCs.

One other thing that we definitely can tell you is that we're very excited for the upcoming Saxxy Awards. We know that many of you are madly making series of final changes punctuated by over-night renders, so we've posted some information on the wiki that we've found helpful when optimizing render time to get those long renders to be a little more manageable.

Today we're excited to be able to share a double DLC update with you! First, the Blade Symphony folks have fleshed out their DLC with some beautiful new environments, props and music. There are now snow-covered pagodas, eastern temples, western castles, and even a near-future shopping mall for your virtual location scout to explore. They're also sharing music by their composer Tom Stoffel, so you have new options for music under their media monetization policy.

We're also adding a new DLC today, from the fine folks at Dino D-Day, the World War II first person shooter - with dinosaurs! So now you can give your video that extra oomph - with dinosaurs! They're releasing all of their weapons and player models (including dinosaurs!) under the same style of usage policy as the other DLC in the SFM. So if you've been wanting to give the Pyro a pet T-rex, or have the Soldier wrestle an archaosaur, now's your chance! Get animating!

Today we're releasing our latest DLC, the Left 4 Dead Content Pack! It contains the props, infected and all eight survivors from Left 4 Dead 2, including The Passing and The Sacrifice. We're also releasing music and voice, including all of the stems that were used to dynamically compose the distinctive music for Left 4 Dead. So now you can compose your own soundtrack out of those little snippets of oboe, banjo, saw and vocals to create something recognizably Left 4 Dead but also uniquely your own!

Both the SFM and L4D communities have been asking for this for a while, so we expect great things! Start the download from the Downloadable Content item in the File menu of the SFM, and get animating!

Ten years ago, a group of ambitious and talented volunteers decided to recreate and reimagine the original Half Life on the (at the time) brand new Source game engine. Two years ago, they released the first section of Black Mesa, which was subsequently greenlit by the Steam community. Today, we're excited to announce that they're sharing their assets with you, the Source Filmmaker community! The Black Mesa DLC includes maps, models, sounds, and particles, and is available under the same usage policy as the other DLC in the SFM.

So if you've been wanting to return to the world of Black Mesa, back when humanity still controlled its own fate but vortigaunts were still slaves of the Nihilanth, get going! We can't wait to see why houndeyes make better pets than debeaked head crabs, or watch the events that led to Eli Vance losing his leg!

We were sitting around reminiscing about our favorite SFM videos, when we realized it's time to start this year's Saxxy Awards! We're still reeling from the great videos from last year, and are looking forward to even more!

One thing we'd especially like to see more of, is videos made in other universes. Since the Saxxy Awards started as a Team Fortress 2 video contest, and the SFM runs a modified version of TF2 itself, we've naturally seen mostly videos in that universe. We're hoping to change that by shipping assets from other games as optional DLC.

So starting today, you'll be able to download Portal assets directly in the SFM through the Portal Content Pack DLC! All the models, particles and sounds from Portal 2 will be included, but unfortunately the SFM isn't able to render the Portal-specific effects like light bridges, gels, or well, portals.

As exciting as that is, we're even more excited to be offering our first non-Valve content pack! Puny Human Games have offered up assets from Blade Symphony, their tactical sword fighting game, for you to use in your movies! You'll be able to download the assets they've provided in the Blade Symphony Content Pack DLC, and even submit images and videos to their community hub! See their Media Monetization Policy here.

So once again, get your entries ready! The submission deadline this year is September 24th, but don't wait until the last day to submit! You can submit a non-final version up to a week early, and we encourage you to do so, just to safeguard against network outages, computer problems, or getting the time zone conversion to Pacific time wrong. Full submission rules with complete dates and times are available here.

Secondly, the SFM Workshop now supports all of the commonly requested asset types. So maps, particles, materials, textures, scripts, sessions, shots and animation dmx files can now all be submitted to and downloaded from the workshop. Once you include their dependencies, maps, shots and sessions can get quite large pretty fast, so we've also increased the workshop quota to 1 GB.

So for those of you with some free time over the holidays, we're expecting big things! (Or comically small things - your choice.) Go share your maps, animations, textures or even entire shots, and earn the respect and admiration of the SFM community. Or just see if you can make anything more popular than the (multiple? really?) Scout's Mom-bots!

In addition to watching all the great submissions to the Third Annual Saxxy Awards, we also really enjoy the heated discussions and accolades. Although with everything coming to a close, we're actually a little sad that it's over, to be honest.

But as sad as it is that the Third Annual Saxxy Awards are over, it's even more exciting to be able to show you the winners! So what are you waiting for?! Go see which of the nominees have won themselves a Saxxy!

If you're still here, (or better yet back from watching all the nominees again) we've also made all of the submissions visible, so you can continue to watch Saxxy videos to your heart's content!

Wow. Just wow. Once again, we're just amazed at the quality of this year's entries to the Saxxy Awards. We laughed, we cried, we were hanging off the edge of our seats, and now we're ready to show you the best of this year's Saxxy Awards.

Of course, in any contest, there are entries that don't win, but only just barely. Either because there were too many other great entries in their category, or they didn't fit into a single category well, they just missed the bar. We feel that those entries deserve recognition, so here they are:

Best Callback to a Team Fortess Update
War

Best Meet The Team Homage
Meet the Fem Sniper

Best GMod Style Animation
The Advantages of Sandviches

Best Musical
Down In The Intel Room

Best Late Entry
A Wrench in the Gears

The Oscars sputtered out after only two years, the Grammys are of course fictional, and the Stanley Cup has yet to be awarded to anybody. That means that with the Third Annual Saxxy Awards, we will officially be the longest-running awards event of all time. Help us make history by voting, from now until midnight PST on November 24th!

And if voting wasn't exciting enough, how does sending people to jail sound? Because that's what you'll be doing by helping us police the entries for following the rules. Filmmakers will rot in jail on your say-so! In fact, the lawyers tell us they've updated the SFM license to also include an ancillary license to kill! And hold on, there's even more late-breaking news, because the lawyers are now telling us--are in fact typing this right now--that the SFM does not grant you the right to kill and you can't send anybody to jail. Okay, the lawyers stopped typing. I know we're all pretty angry about this turn of events, but we still do need your help checking entries for rule-breaking.

If you've submitted a video, note that we've extended the deadline to add contributors to your submission until the end of voting Sunday night at midnight PST, so if you haven't finalized your contributors yet, do it now! While you're at it, you'll want to remove any YouTube ads from your submissions - videos with ads aren't eligible for nomination.

Nominees will be revealed on November 25th and the winners of this year's Saxxy Awards will be revealed on November 26th, so get voting!

That's right, it's that time again! After all the amazing videos from last year, we couldn't not host another Saxxy Awards! We can't wait to see what you can all do after having the SFM in your hands for a year, instead of only a few months.

So get your entries ready - we will be accepting submissions from 4PM November 11th through 4PM November 18th, Pacific Standard Time. Don't wait until the last day to submit, however. We encourage you to submit early in the prior week, and then re-submit any refinements later in the week, so that if your computer dies, your power goes out or you get confused by the time zone conversion to Pacific time, you still have a version submitted. Full submission rules available here.

While you're working on your entries, note that there are a few changes to the categories this year.

Since the Saxxy's have grown into a contest about movies, we felt that the Replay category doesn't fit as well as it did in previous years. There are some great replays showcasing some impressive skills (or equally entertaining, showcasing an impressive lack of skills) but they weren't generally able to tell stories the way that entries to the other categories did.

We're also merging the Original IP category into the other categories. Our goal with that category last year was to encourage you to create new maps, models, textures, and sounds. Looking at the SFM workshop, as well as the various internet forums and download sites, it looks like that's something you're all already working on.

We're also adding a Short category this year, that is limited to videos no longer than one minute. There are a lot of you out there who may have time to create a great tight one minute piece but not the time for a five minute one, and now you have your chance to compete without feeling like you need to pad your videos out. One minute may not seem like much time, but when you have to animate all 1800 frames of it yourself, it starts to feel like plenty. Remember that the first six Meet the Team videos up through Meet The Sniper were only one and a half minutes each, and the Aperture Investment Opportunity shorts were anywhere from 45 seconds to just over a minute. We're looking forward to seeing the quality you can achieve when you're focused on a shorter experience.

Speaking of the workshop, one of the biggest hurdles in creating assets for the workshop has been the naming restrictions we added to ensure that users downloading those assets didn't run into naming conflicts. In retrospect, it's clear that we erred on the side of caution in that case, so we're removing the naming restriction for all future workshop items, leaving the task of keeping asset names unique up to the creators.

Check out the other exciting changes in this update, including the script extensions that allow you to create entirely new UI within the SFM!

So Happy Birthday to the SFM community, and of course to the SFM itself! We can't wait to see what you surprise us with next!

Don't worry, we're still plugging away at the Workshop. But we also think it's really exciting to experiment with putting up large content packs as DLC.

Incidentally, Day of Defeat was also the first game to get a trailer made in the SFM:

"Prelude to Victory" has a special place in our hearts because it was made with an early prototype of the SFM that only had game recording, clip editing and camera manipulation. There was no animation system, no posing, no set dressing, and no lighting. Everything you see in that video is us recording ourselves running around in the game, then later adding motion blur, depth of field and some film grain and color correction. Having a constrained set of tools with which to make a trailer meant we had to get creative with our process. It also taught us a lot about the process of telling stories using game assets.

We wanted to create the feel of squads of soldiers running, fighting and ambushing each other, and our first attempts to recreate this for the trailer involved simply getting a dozen folks connected to a server and recording them running, fighting and ambushing each other. Easier said than done, as it turned out. The first challenge we encountered with this approach is that it's surprisingly hard to get an in-game actor to walk a set path and shoot a designated target correctly each take, let alone trying to get a dozen people to do it simultaneously.

The second challenge (and this seems obvious in retrospect) is that when you get a dozen people together in a first person shooter, they tend to... well... shoot each other. On countless occasions while trying to get everybody in the right place hitting their marks, someone would inevitably shoot someone else, triggering a firestorm of bullets and rockets as everything promptly descended into chaos.

Learning from our mistakes, our next attempt involved recording a single person running down a street. Then we recorded that person again, this time following the first recorded player. And recorded a third following the first two recorded players, and again, and again. We found that recordings of players following their previous actions generated a surprisingly natural crowd behavior, and as opposed to the free-for-all of a dozen actors shooting each other at once, it was very easy to create.

We found that in general, recording multiple takes was useful - not just for larger, more ambitious scenes, but also as a way to find better camera angles. Since all of our animation was getting recorded, everything was rendered in real-time, which meant that it was easy to fly cameras around and discover better framing shots than we'd originally blocked out. The best example of this is in the shot where the German machine-gunner is sniped, and his helmet rolls onto the floor. Having recorded the gameplay first, and being able to fly the camera around afterwards, allowed us to find the right angle to see the helmet roll right up into the camera, which placed the viewer more in the scene than the higher-angle shot we'd started with (our first of many happy accidents with Source's physics engine).

Day of Defeat will always have a fond place in our hearts. It was the first time we'd ever tried telling any kind of story with the SFM, and while it looks kind of primitive compared to later efforts, a lot of it was us discovering the full potential of the SFM tool for the first time. Now that all the assets from Day of Defeat have been added as optional DLC, we hope you'll make some interesting discoveries of your own.

This doesn't just give us something to play on endless loop for the next few months, though--it helps showcase how talented some of the voice actors are in the SFM community, and hopefully gets filmmakers thinking about what more they could do with great acting, especially in the voice of the characters they're using. So...

Actors: upload some teasers!

Filmmakers: Start making requests!

Models and sounds will be the first asset types the SFM Workshop supports. We chose models because model sharing has been one of the most-requested features to date, and we wanted to ensure that the filmmaking community has a single destination for all models compatible with the SFM. Similarly, we chose sounds because the SFM community has made it clear that including dialog would allow filmmakers even greater flexibility in their storytelling. Also, the SFM team can assure you that the first time we hear a solid impression of Dr. Kleiner singing Baby Got Back, we at Valve will all collectively lose it.

So go see what's in the workshop! We've put up info on the wiki to walk you through it. Also, be sure to check out the discussion forum, where you might find like-minded collaborators eager to help create the models and sounds for your opus!

Granted, we've mostly been busy watching your videos. But we've been up to other stuff too. The two most noticeable changes are that the UI should be snappier all around, and the animationset editor now has a bunch of new scene management functionality. (Check out the release notes for details.)

We've also added a third tutorial to the Pose To Pose Animation Tutorial series, and starter sessions for all three. (All tutorial sessions are located in tf_movies\elements\sessions\tutorials.) Part 3 delves into the Graph Editor - the animator's secret weapon. By examining the subtle intricacies of a decapitated robot head in flight, this leisurely tutorial is designed to acquaint the discerning animator with tools helpful for fine tuning motion. So jump right in! This tutorial requires no previous experience.

Lastly, we've updated our video policy to clarify that you can receive ad revenue on videos using our assets. Check out the full details here.

Alright. Back to watching videos.

Half-Life 2 and Portal have both been nominated for Game of the Decade! You can vote here, then tune in at 9pm EST tonight to see the winner announced on Spike TV's Video Game Awards.

And make sure to check out the Video Game Awards pre-show tonight at 8pm EST, where we'll be unveiling the winner of the Best Overall category from the 2012 Saxxy Awards!

The Second Annual Saxxy Awards start in just 10 minutes! And to celebrate, everybody who participated in voting is getting a free Saxxy Clapper Badge!

Don't forget to watch the Spike Video Game Awards pre-show December 7th, where we'll announce the winner of the "Best Overall" category live!

Lastly, due to getting fewer submissions than we'd hoped for the "Best Original Universe" category, we didn't think it was fair to the other finalists to showcase it at the awards site, since they had to battle through stiffer competition to make it this far. But congratulations all the same to TheMike, Black_Stormy, Crazyb2000, Gamerman12, Oggnog, =|NLR|= Narry Gewman and Anton on their winning short "Elements". Your Saxxy's on the way, guys!

In just under a month, we'll start accepting entries for shorts made with the Source Filmmaker, Valve's filmmaking tool. You'll be able to submit in five different categories (Best Action, Best Drama, Best Comedy, Best Original Universe and now Best Replay) with the hope of taking home a Saxxy at the star-studded Second Annual Saxxy Awards. So if you've got an SFM opus in you, crack those knuckles and get creating — November 1st'll be here in no time.

Also, a couple of quick changes for entrants:

We've Added a Replay Category

The Source Filmmaker is the perfect resource for creators looking to dramatize the TF2 mercenaries' off-hours — but after we announced the Saxxy rules, we realized we'd under-represented some of the great dramatic, comedic or just plain violently entertaining moments in-game. So we've added a new category to celebrate all the creators out there who'd rather make their movie magic on the battlefield.

You Can Use Non-SFM Tools for Post-Production

Because the SFM didn't ship with a few post-production features, like titling and transitions, we've decided to let people use other effects and editing tools for this year's contest.

Remember, though, that nothing makes us happier than people using and giving feedback on the SFM. We want this tool to keep getting better and better, and to do that, we'll need creative folks like you pushing the SFM in new directions.

Basics

Recording

Editing

Sound

Manipulating

Time Selection

Curves

Clip Motion and Puppeteering

Locks

Facial Animation

Rigging

Lighting