In an interesting move which will enable gamers to make their own movies on their home computers, Valve announced a new, powerful movie-making tool – dubbed Source Filmmaker – on Wednesday.

According to the information which Valve - the company behind blockbuster titles such as "Portal," "Left 4 Dead" and "Team Fortress" - shared about the new software, the Source Filmmaker tool essentially makes use of the company’s Source game engine for creating high-end, animated movies.

Despite the fact that work on the Source Filmmaker software has been underway at Valve, and its staff has been using the tool to create their own game-centric short films as well as marketing videos, the company will launch the tool to the public — without any charge — later this year through its online Steam service.

Revealing that the release of the Source Filmmaker software will give the gamers the ability to create their own movies within Valve's popular games, Valve designer Bay Raitt said in a video announcing the software that the “story-telling” tool will be launched with the key objective of creating computer-animated films “more efficiently, and with greater creative freedom."

Further adding that it has been, for some time now, become quite evident that “gamers like to do more than just play games,” Raitt said: “We all like to watch movies and we all like to participate in the worlds we spend so much time in."