[thenomad]

Needless to say, as one of the few pro Machinima filmmakers in the world, I'm absurdly excited by this. Haven't used Source for years...

The key point about this tech? If you're using your own art assets, it's usable for commercial movie-making, with no license fee.

Any of the learned HN types know how the Source engine stacks up graphics algorithms-wise with other engines like Unreal 3 and Crysis? Specifically, how are their lighting standards, and do they support Global Illumination / Indirect Lighting stuff, and/or Ambient Occlusion?

Update - apparently they do support SSAO, but on a per-material basis. Not ideal, but hey. And they do Indirect Lighting, but baked, not dynamic.

[teamonkey]

Source isn't on the cutting edge, to put it mildly. It's continually updated to meet the needs of the games they release, but Valve's priorities are very different from those of Epic or Crytek.

[rplacd]

Case in point: their toolchain remains good ol' Hammer, vis, rad, and bsp. They're stretching lightmaps to the limit with a toolset from Quake that's constantly being pushed. God knows how long it'll be before the returns from refactoring start diminishing... it'd make a good case study, actually.