Step by step, Compositing birthday card design

Ok so my moms 60th birthday was coming around the corner, and i couldn't think of anything to buy her beeing last minute and all. Pulled an all nighter and put together this designed birthday card for her.

Some people have already told me it looks too harsh and cold to give to your mom. Just want to point out that we're a family of German ancestry, we're like that.

Started fiddling around in 3D Studio Max because of superior text tools until i landed on something i found fitting design-wise, then exported it over to Maya. Made a ton of shaders and layers. Then exported everything to Images.

After working up a result i was decently happy about, I concluded that the image lacked flare. Lens flare to be specific.

As it is usually frowned upon to use lens flares I hid it by making the general image a tad overexposed.

Building Starcraft 2 Maps

This time the subject matter is of a, to me, rather different nature. I recently started to dabble in the art of making competetive Starcraft 2 maps and wanted to share some of my failures with you.
My first map was of a horribly wrong scale and contained an unbalanced amount of resources.

Here are the rules for resources:

• The fixed amount of starting resources are 8 minerals and 2 vespene geysers.
• A normal expansion contains 6-8 minerals and 2 vespene geysers.
• A golden expansion contains 6 rich minerals and 2 vespene geysers.
• Rich vespene is never used

Map sizes (effective):

1v1 : ~120x120
2v2 : ~150x150
3v3 : ~170x170
4v4 : ~190x190

Map expansion count:

1v1 : 3~4 / player
2v2 : 2~3 / player
3v3 : 2~3 / player
4v4 : 2 / player

The grid system uses 8 units for a big grid square (G) and 4 for a small (g).

Building rules:

• Start locations should be contained on a at least 14 G² (/ player) big plateu.
• Expansions should have ~6 G² empty space around it.
• A number of Xel'Naga towers (1-4) can be placed around central positions.
• LOS (Line Of Sight) blockers should be placed around key locations (e.g. so that micro unit controls can be used more effectively.
• A fun level has one/several central point(s) to battle over.

Cross version compiling in AS3

Ever wanted to make a flash application behave differently depending on the plugin version of the user? That type of behaviour requires some planning beforehand and is totally doable.


Method availability could be done like this.

package
{
 public class PluginCapable
 {
  public static function methodAvailable(object:*, methodName:String):Boolean
  {
   try { object[methodName]; return true; }
   catch (error:Error) { }
   
   return false;
  }
 }
}

Say you wanted to check if the user could save locally...

var file:FileReference = new FileReference();
if (PluginCapable.methodAvailable(file, "save")) file["save"](data, "file.txt");

or simply hide the save button or something.

XML Serializer 1.1.0

Added some useful functionality and removed some showstoppers on certain xml-files.

Added Features

• Specify entry level of parsing.

Download

XML Serializer 1.0.3

Decided to simplify yet another step in my work process and make an app that automatically maps xml-data to a class in AS3, this was the result of that.

Features

• Drag & Drop XML files directly onto application.
• Analyzes data and suggests variable types.
• Exclude unwanted nodes from serialization.
• Generates .as class file for use in ActionScript 3 projects.

Coming feature

• Specify entry level of parsing.

Download