A rainy day near the beach

I have so many things to tell about this picture. First of all, I actually came up with a small backstory for the characters in order to make it easier for me to decide what objects to include in the picture. These three people are travelling from [some place] to the rebel camp near the antlion beach (the camp in HL2 where you get the pheropods). However, they have been staying in the small house in the picture for a while in order to stock up on supplies before they can move on. I won't write the rest of the story here, thus leaving more space for reader/viewer interpretation, but every single object in the picture is there for a reason (except the explosive barrel).

The label of the explosive barrel is in the exact center of the picture. It was done intentionally.

I put a couple of dirt emitters outside in order to try to make it look like it was raining. It didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it, but it was good enough.

In order to get the glow from the muzzle flash, I put an invisible light inside it.

The antlion is a ragdoll. Antlion ragdolls are incredibly hard to pose. Luckily, I managed to pick an angle where most of it is hidden by the wall, so you can't really see how bad it's posed.

When it comes to colours and post-processing, all of it was done in-game. I messed around a lot with colour modification, bloom and super depth of field to make this picture. To be more precise, in colour modification I set the blue add value to 1 and the red multiply value to 3. I also increased the contrast, lowered the saturation, and lowered the brightness. For the bloom effect, I chose a blue bloom colour. All of this gave me a nice blue-orange colour scale. Actually, when it comes to blue and orange, I suggest reading this blog post I found a while ago. Seriously, if you read it you will notice it in every movie you see that was made within the last 30 years. Video games too, for that matter.

Addons used:

Enhanced Citizen Redux

More Emitters

Easy Bodygroup Tool

Campfire

Yes! Finally something new! Now maybe I'll be able to come up with more ideas, so I can update this blog more often again. At least I hope so.

This picture was taken near the end of the Water Hazard chapter. There's a hidden cave there where you can find a vortigaunt. There's also an achievement for finding him (in Half-Life 2, not in Gmod). The vortigaunt on the right is that specific NPC. Garry's Mod messes up the faces of every single vortigaunt in the game, so I had to use the face poser on him.

I originally intended the leftmost vortigaunt to be sitting down with his legs crossed, instead of lying down. However, the ragdoll was not flexible enough, so I let him lie down instead. Actually, it even looks better with him lying down than it would have if my original idea had worked, because by making him lie down I was able to include the subtle detail of him resting his head on that little extra-arm that vortigaunts have.

The vortigaunt in the middle, standing behind the fire and holding a spear, uses a model that is slightly different from the other two. In the beginning of the Point Insertion chapter, you see a vortigaunt that's wearing restraints, implying that he's a slave. The vortigaunt here is a ragdoll of that model. You can see the restraints if you view the full-size version of the picture (by clicking it).

I did some colour modification on this picture. I made it a bit darker and increased the contrast, so I could get darker shadows. However, when I did so the picture got very red. Sure, I wanted red to be the most prominent colour, but it got too red, so I made sure to add some blue and green to neutralize a little of the redness.

In this picture, I didn't use any addons.

A couple of old pictures

In order to keep this blog going during this period when I'm out of ideas, I'll post a set of pictures I made a while ago. I must have been very tired when I made these, otherwise I would never have come up with the idea of putting Garrus Vakarian holding a guitar, wearing sunglasses, and getting blown up along with Legion.

The guitar is not an addon. It's there in Gmod from the beginning. In the "Spawnlists" tab you can find it at Browse\Games\Garry's Mod\props_phx\misc.

When I made these pictures, my inital idea was just to make the first of the pictures. The explosion and the inclusion of Legion was something I came up with in "the heat of the moment" (pun intended).

Actually, when posing Legion for the second picture, I noticed that they (I call Legion "they" because it has more than a thousand minds within the same "platform") looked somewhat creepy in the dark:

Also, I made a shot of picture 4 from a different angle as well, but a flashlight is visible in it:

Addons used:
Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect 3)
ME3 Legion
AvP Corporate Megapack or Metropolice Pack (NPC's, (sic) playermodels) (I don't remember which one of those two the sunglasses are from.)

A note about the recent lack of updates

First of all, I would like to mention that this blog is not "dead" (in a lack of better words). There are four reasons of why I haven't updated it for a couple of days.

1. I've been a bit out of ideas. As soon as I come up with an idea for a picture to make, I'll make it and post it to this blog. This update void is probably just temporary.
2. I just installed Microsoft Visual Studio C# 2010 on my computer, and have spent a lot of my spare time programming.
3. I've started playing Mass Effect again.
4. Lots of homework.

Still, I would like to mention again that I will start updating it again soon. I just need to come up with new ideas. Suggestions are appreciated.

A couple of non-Gmod pictures.

Final Moment:

Flying Mantas:

Encounter:

Jump:

Before I bought Garry's Mod, I used to stage pictures in other games instead. I figured I could show a couple of them here (since I'm in another creativity void at the moment). The above pictures were made in two games from the Unreal franchise. Pictures 1, 3 and 4 were made in Unreal Tournament (1999), while picture 2 was made in Unreal Tournament 2004 (commonly known as UT2k4).

Making this kind of pictures in other games than Garry's Mod is somewhat hard, because there is no physics gun, no camera tool, and so forth. All you've got is a couple of console commands. There is one command for freezing the time, and other commands for spawning every single object in the game. Unreal Tournament actually contains all content from its predecessor Unreal (1998)  (in my opinion, the best game ever made (it even beats Mass Effect)), so therefore you have a huge variety of objects and characters you can spawn. Just like I mentioned before, there is no such thing as a physics gun in Unreal, and therefore you need to freeze the time, fly to the place where you want the character/object to be and use the console command to spawn it. Unless you unfreeze time afterwards, there is no way to move them, but it's possible to remove them with another console command. Therefore you have to spawn and de-spawn (is that the correct word?) objects until you get them where you want them. Unreal Tournament 2004 also has a few of the enemies from Unreal, since they are featured in one of the game modes. However, Unreal Tournament has more of them.

Before I start describing the pictures, I need to give some information about the characters that appear, so it's easier for me to explain:

Nali = Beige four-armed aliens. Primitive, peaceful and religious. Some plot points in Unreal hint at a darker past with higher technology than you ever see them use.

Skaarj = Reptilian humanoid aliens. Their society is like a bee hive, centered around a queen. They tend to look similar to the Predators from the Predator franchise, though there are different kinds of Skaarj, with varying appearences. However, their queen is more centaur-like.

Manta = Flying animals that resemble manta rays.

So, starting in on the pictures, I'll begin with picture 1, Final Moment. The character cowering at the lower left of the image is a Nali. To make him stand the way he does, I had to unfreeze the time briefly, shoot him once so he took on a defensive pose, and then freeze time again. Then I spawned the rest of the characters. The huge creature in the middle of the picture is a Skaarj Queen. That thing in the upper right corner is a Skaarj Trooper.

Picture 2, Flying Mantas, is the only one of these four pictures that was made in Unreal Tournament 2004. Those creatures in the picture are so-called mantas. Just like in Mourning, a tree had an unfortunate placement in the picture, but I leave it to you to figure out which one.

In picture 3, Encounter, I fired an Instagib Shock Rifle (a weapon from the game) at the statue that depicts a Nali to make the ring that can be seen in the picture.

Whe it comes to picture 4, Jump, I used pixlr to blur out the character that has just jumped off the crane. I wanted it to seem like he preferred suicide to getting caught by the Skaarj Warrior. I actually remade this picture in Gmod at some point during the first two weeks after I bought it. Back then, my posing was still awful, but I'll post it here anyway:

No addons were used for any of the pictures in any of the games.

A different perspective

This is supposed to be a picture of a zombie getting attacked by Gordon Freeman, seen from the zombie's perspective. I'm a little bit unsatisfied with the posing and lighting (I know I can do better), but it turned out pretty much the way I wanted it. I tried to make it look like the zombie was trying to defend itself, and I tried to make Gordon look "evil".

Those things burning behind Gordon are actually four radiators that I set on fire.

When it comes to colour modification, I lowered the brightness and increased the contrast. I intended to increase the amount of red in the picture, but I forgot to do so. Of course, I could have imported it into an image editor afterwards and increased the redness there, but since the picture is a JPEG, the quality would have been decreased when I re-saved it. Of course, I do extra editing outside the game on some of the pictures I make (Window, for example), but this time it didn't feel important to do so.

Just for the sake of fun, I'll also include a production photo, showing what this looks like seen from a different angle and without colour modification:

I deflated the zombie's head so it wouldn't get in the way. I had a lamp shining down on the zombie, otherwise its arms would have been too dark. I originally intended Gordon to be lit from below by a lamp, but the angle made the shadow of his glasses look really weird. Therefore I decided to use an orange light bulb instead, since they glow with a softer light and thus don't make such sharp shadows.

Since Gordon's feet weren't visible from the angle I chose, I didn't do any work on them at all, I just let them hang. Even though I decided a while back that I will do most of my posing so it looks good from almost every angle, I've decided to not always do so. This picture is one example of a picture that was posed exclusively for one specific angle.

Addon used:

Gordon Freeman fixed

Minutes too late

Feel free to interpret this picture however you like, but I intended it to seem like the woman on the left got back to her hometown (or refugee camp or whatever) just a few minutes too late to prevent everyone in it from getting massacred by someone or something.

Please note the bloodstain on the window behind all the smoke, as well as the explosive barrel on the left. Also note that two of the corpses are holding each other's hands. I wanted it to seem dramatic.

Anyway, in case you desperately want an explanation for who killed everyone, here is a picture I made in less than five minutes:

Addon used:
rp_apocalypse

Some things look better in 3D

This is just something I put together in a few minutes. I was forced to rush it, because I didn't have very much time to make it in.

I've always been fascinated by 3D pictures. A few years back I used to take lots of stereographic photos. I don't really have very much to say about this picture. I also made a stereoscopic one with a higher resolution:

Once again, I haven't used any addons.

Window

It didn't take very much work to make this picture. I just placed a dead guy on the floor and put a ragdoll zombie leaning over him. The zombie live spawn that stands near the window is one that I originally put there to use as a comparison to make sure that I got the headcrab properly posed on the zombie at the corpse. However, I decided to keep it in the finished picture, because having only one zombie seemed too minimalistic and gave no sense of depth in the picture.

I tried to put a crying woman outside the window, in order to make it seem like she knew the dead guy. However, I couldn't pose her in a way that looked good, so I removed her and put more focus on everything else instead.

When it comes to post-processing, I did some in-game colour modification. But after I saved the image, I also used pixlr to darken the corners and add a noise filter to it.

[UPDATE] Damn. I should have given it a bloom effect as well, or at least checked what it would look like with one.

Addon used:
rp_apocalypse

Avalon

This is nothing fancy, really. It's just a remake of a single frame from a Japanese/Polish action movie called Avalon. Due to the original picture being copyrighted, I can't show it here for comparison, but I can give you a link to the movie's IMDb page, and then you can try to find it yourself. It's a great movie, and I recommend it to everyone who can find it.

I couldn't find a HL2 map that had an area that looked like the one from the movie, so I just picked a place (almost) by random. (If you've seen the movie, it's the part when Ash meets up with some people in "Ruins C66" trying to find out more about the Nine Sisters. If you haven't seen the movie, you can tell from the picture that things do not go as planned.)

(Almost) the whole movie is in a black-and-yellow colour scale, so that's why I gave this picture such a colour scale as well. I couldn't find a gun prop that was as small as the gun used in that scene. That complicated the posing a bit. Also, at one point while working on the picture I had AI enabled for too long, so I got attacked by manhacks from behind while at the same time the NPCs started shooting in every direction (but most of them at me):

Please note that there are fewer bullet holes on the wall in this picture. Also, I can mention that right outside the field of view there is a large blood stain.

Addon used:
Metropolice Pack (NPC's, playermodels)

Rampage

Without extra blood:

With extra blood:

I couldn't find any working blood emitter in the Steam Workshop, so I tried to draw blood trails in pixlr instead. However, that ended up looking weird, so I decided to publish both the picture without a blood splash and the picture with the incredibly fake-looking blood I drew in pixlr.

All characters I've used are ragdolls. I was thinking of having a live-spawn Combine soldier standing somewhere and pointing a gun at the vortigaunt, but then I realized it wouldn't look good, so I threw in a bunch of corpses instead and tossed them around by random with the physics gun. Then, I used the paint tool to spray blood on one of them.

I don't know where I got the idea of putting a dropship in the picture. Anyway, the smoke is from an emitter.

This time I didn't use any addons.

(Lots of pictures) Mass Effect Meets Half-Life

I've been a bit out of ideas for pictures to make lately. I guess it's some sort of equivalent to writer's block (or whatever it's called), so I'll call it poser's block. Anyway, I've been trying to come up with new ideas for pictures to make, and this is an attempt at doing so. I couldn't find a good angle, so I decided to post all pictures I made.

When it comes to colour modification in these pictures, I just increased the contrast and saturation, as well as the amount of red. Just to make gordon's suit and the red areas of Shepard's armor stand out a bit more.

I was thinking of putting Garrus and Barney somewhere in this scene as well, but eventually decided not to.

Additionally, I've saved the pose with Gordon and the gun he's holding as a dupe and published it to the workshop.

Addons used:
Gordon Freeman fixed
John Shepard player model
ME Quarians
Mass Effect: Weapons

Mourning

This picture did not turn out the way I wanted it to. Let me make a list of what went wrong:

• Alyx's family portrait got too bright.
• Due to a collision box that is larger than her head, Alyx's hands could not be posed properly.
• Gordon's upper body is twisted in a strange way. I knew about it but forgot to fix it.
• Gordon's feet are hovering an inch above the ground. Damn you, collision boxes! I knew about this but couldn't fix it.
• The decision to make Gordon's left hand a fist (was that gramatically correct?) makes it look like he's about to punch Alyx, when I actually intended to make it look like he was comforting her.
• I decided to place Gordon's head outside the frame, figuring the picture would look more dramatic if I did so. It did not.
• There's a freaking pine tree between Gordon's legs! And its placement looks vaguely suggestive! I swear that it was not intentional, and I didn't notice it until I was messing around with the picture in pixlr.

Anyway, if we pretend it turned out the way I wanted it to, I guess I better write something about it other than just complaints.

This is supposed to take place after the events of Half-Life 2: Episode 2. A few days after [SPOILER ALERT] the Combine Advisors show up and kill Eli Vance [END OF SPOILER]. In order to make Alyx's jacket black instead of purple, I had to set my player character as her, choose black as character colour (the colour is only altered in some areas, different for each character), and then find the player character ragdoll in Browse\Games\Garry's Mod\player. I wanted Gordon's suit to really stand out, so I gave it a higher saturation than the rest of the picture. (That's what I needed pixlr for.) Also, I've realized that I seem to use high contrast and low saturation in almost every picture I make. I should break out of the loop and try something different.

Addon used:

Gordon Freeman fixed

Another Cross-Franchise battle

Since the first picture I posted to this blog was a picture of Garrus Vakarian beating a xenomorph with a baseball bat, I figured I could make something similar again. This time, however, it's Tali fighting a Predator with a sword.

Like ever so often, this is not the angle I originally intended the picture to be taken from. I've decided to start posing the ragdolls so they look normal from almost every angle, figuring I'll save myself some re-posing when trying out different angles for pictures in the future. Actually, I think I'll do all the posing first, and then choose angle. I did some face posing on Tali's eyes. Too bad it's not visible from this angle.

I think I might have used a bit too much red in the colour filter, and I should have put in some fog. Additionally, the sparks come from an emitter.

Addons used:
avp3 predator
ME3 Cerberus Soldiers
ME Quarians

Defending White Forest Base

This is pretty much how I experienced the climactic battle from Half-Life 2: Episode 2. You need to drive back and forth, trying to protect a military base from endless waves of striders and hunters. (Damn! I just realized I forgot to put a Magnusson device in the picture.) Anyway, the reason of why the strider's legs look so weird is that I originally intended the picture to be taken from a different angle, and did my posing accordingly:

However, I was trying out several different angles, and eventually decided that the one I used in the picture at the top of this post was the one that looked best, but when I did so, I forgot to re-pose the strider's legs for the new angle.

Also, I like working with strider ragdolls. Like I've mentioned before, they are not hard to pose at all, as a matter of difference from what some others claim (see the note at the bottom of the page the link leads to). I know that, in the actual games, striders don't stand the way I've posed this one, but ever since I watched this youtube video, I've thought that pose looks more awesome than the way they actually stand in the games. Also, if I'd wanted a strider that was standing like they ususally do, I would have just used a live spawn instead of a ragdoll. One more benefit with this pose is that it's much easier to make it fit in the frame.

Addon used:
Gordon Freeman fixed