Once Valve officially released Source Filmmaker to the public, it was only a matter of time before some fans would do some truly great things with it — after the slew of derivative “x movie in Team Fortress 2″ videos, of course. Well, it seems we finally have a worthy machinima entry, straight from the fan community.

Sort of. Although James McVinnie is a Team Fortress 2 fan, he also happens to be a cinematic designer at Bioware. Which probably explains why his new short, Practical Problems, is so well done. In addition to spending 130 hours in both Hammer and Source Filmmaker to get the job done, James also worked with his friend Zach to do some motion capture work via 2 Kinects.

So, yeah. The results are rather entertaining, and quite faithful to the spirit of Valve’s own work with Team Fortress 2.

Thoughts?

It’s a good day to be a Valve fan as we’re being treated to two new releases from everyone’s favorite gaming company. First is Meet the Pyro, which finally takes us behind the mask of the mysterious flame-spewing class…kind of. It’s not the strongest of the Meet the Team videos, but it has its moments.

The big news though, is that Valve is putting out Source Filmmaker, and there’s a video you can catch after the jump.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: TheDuoGroup makes some of my favorite machinima out there. Their new piece, a trailer created for Gears of War 3 titled What Have I Become, might be some of their best work. It was created in collaboration with Dave Tyner of Treadster Media.

Anyway, I don’t watch too much machinima these days, but I’m sure to catch everything these guys put out. Honestly, this got me more pumped for Gears of War 3 than anything else has to date. Give it a watch!

One thing that makes PC gaming great: the ability to infuse new life into a gaming via the modding community. In what I hope to be the first of many Dragon Age: Origins releases, a new DLC trailer is available that showcases some hilarious tweaks made to the game and how it’s played.

Not only is this a look into what is available to modders, it also showcases some of the machinima tools available to users. I really can’t wait to see more of what people come up with. I’d have to say my favorite portion is the Morrigan slapping, as well as mastering “the taint”. Do watch this. Now.

TheDuoGroup is at it again, with yet another excellent machinima short that combines some snazzy effects with Halo 3 footage. I really love the work these guys do, so it’s cool to see them make a trailer for Halo 3: ODST, a game in which we have no actual footage yet. Very creative.