The Filborna Map

No, I haven't spent the last week shopping for Christmas presents. I happen to believe that Christmas I overrated, especially Christmas presents (To all my family: you can give me money and presents any day of the year!) What I've actually spent time doing (and a very long time, thank you) is to build a map for the game Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. If you love thrillers and have not read the book (Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy) you should do it during your Christmas holiday. The game uses the Unreal Engine 2 and that means that the Unreal Editor 2 is now on my top tree most used programs. I wouldn't say it is the most user-friendly of programs but most things actually works.

So where or what is Filborna? It is my previous school. A number of students have tried to put it on fire but amazingly it still stands (considering IKEA built it it's a miracle) and I have always wanted to make a map for my favourite game. Now it has reached a beta stage (basically it means: it works but just barely) and so I decided to post a download link to the beta version. The map has only been tested with Raven Shield 1.6 so I would recommend using that version. Read about known problems below:

• No breakable windows (but I hope to fix this a.s.a.p).
  
• No textures behind windows.
  
• Hall-of-mirrors-effect in some rooms.
  
• Proportions are a bit off (not going to fix this).
  
• More static mesh is needed to make the map look realistic.
  
• Update1
• Lack of Path Nodes (working on that)
• Minimum number of terrorists is 31 (isn't that great!)
• Terrorists spawn in the same place every time (working on that)

But on the whole the map is playable (31 terrorists in place) and if you like Raven Shield and have been in the Filborna School you should enjoy this. I will post the final version when it's ready.

 

How to Create Star Trails

For those of you who haven't seen my star trail picture on http://ruub.jalbum.net can check it out here. Because I didn't know if this would work with my cheap Samsung L73 compact camera I decided to only make a 150 second exposure. I obviously read how to do this in Practical Photography, issue November 2008. In Practical Photography they took 120 photos with an exposure of 30 seconds. The photos were of an interesting foreground object with a clear night sky in the background. I didn't have an interesting foreground object so I directed my camera at the night sky and started firing off shots, each with the longest exposure I could get, which is 15 seconds. If you want to make a star trail photo, here is how to do it:

1. Check the space on the memory card; you want to take a lot of pictures. I used 10 photos for the final image, and I wished I had taken 50 at least.
   
2. Put your camera on a tripod, directed at the sky. You don't have to direct it exactly at the polar star but it looked great in Practical Photography. I directed my camera NNE and it still turned out great.
   
3. Set your exposure to the longest possible. If you own a compact camera you might want to switch to Night Mode or something similar, to get the longest exposure.
   
4. If you can, set your camera in continuous shooting mode. Then you could use tape to keep the shutter button pressed down. Better still; buy a D-SLR and a cable release to go with it. That's what I'll do when I get richer. If you cannot put the camera in continuous shooting mode at least turn off the automatic preview function so there is as little delay between the pictures as possible.
   
5. Start taking pictures. My camera processor took a while to process each 15-second photo, which can be seen on the original photo as gaps between the stars' different positions.
   
6. After 5:48 minutes I decided it was cold and I wanted to see the result. If you want longer trails you'll have to stay out longer.
   

Now it's time to combine all these exposures so you get a nice looking trail:

1. Open up Paint.NET or GIMP.
   
2. Add all the images into layers. There is no specific order required.
   
3. Change the blending mode of all the layers to Lighten. In Paint.NET select each layer and press F4 and change the blending mode in the bottom of the properties box. In GIMP select each layer and change the blending mode in the layers dock (top right).
   
4. You should now have a star trail. If your camera needed some processing time between each photo, resulting in something resembling LEDs: continue reading.
   
5. Flatten your image (in both Paint.NET and GIMP go to Image>Flatten)
   
6. Select a group of star trails that have roughly the same angle (pointing in the same direction). In Paint.NET go to Effects>Blur>Motion Blur leave the effect to 10px and drag the angle in the circle so that it matches the angle of the selected star trails. In GIMP go to Filters>Blur>Motion Blur… adjust the angle by dragging the angle slider and keep an eye on the effect in the preview window.
   
7. Repeat the above step for all angles of star trails.
   

The effect is really cool and if you feel like it add a foreground object. Remember to "paint" some light onto the foreground object in the last photo (using a flashlight, flamethrower etc). Actually don't use a flamethrower or if you do don't blame me (but send me the pics).

Focus Stacking

Not too long ago I was introduced to HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography; a fun and inspiring technique which can, if done properly, give mind blowing results. When you create a HDR you merge a bunch of images with different exposures which results in one picture with a wider range of colours and luminosity, which could not have been created in one picture (unless you shoot in RAW and tweak around a bit). After reading an article on an interesting technique where you merge photos with different focus in this month's issue of Practical Photograpy I decided to try it out. The focus stacking technique is brilliant and here is how you do it:

1. Take your camera and put it in manual focus mode (if you have a function dial you can probably find this setting when it is turned to P (program mode), M (manual mode) or something similar; if unsure consult the instructions book that came with your camera).
   
2. Put your camera on a tripod or anything that will prevent the camera from moving around.
   
3. Take your first image with your foreground object in focus.
   
   
4. Take another image where something else important is in focus.
   
   
5. Take some more photos continuously moving your focus further from the camera.
   
   
   
   
6. It is important that the focus goes from macro to micro (close -> further away).
   
7. Download CombineZM and install it. It will run (according to forums) smoothly on a Linux machine using Wine. I don't know if there exists a program like CombineZM for Mac OS X. Update1: On the Focus Stacking Wikipedia page there are some programs listed for focus stacking. Check it out. Those who are afraid of spiders don't check it out.
   
8. Open up CombineZM and in the main (large) window click: File>New.
   
9. Select all the images you wish to include in the final image. Check if the file name of the photo is still the original one, assigned by the camera. This is important since the program uses the numbers in the filename to see which photo comes first, second etc.
   
10. Go to Macro>Do Stack or press Shift+F1. You can follow the progress in the CombineZM Progress window.
    
11. Prepare to be amazed. The image (usually) looks great and resembles those taken with lenses that can handle really large F-numbers.
    
    

All credit to Practical Photography for inspiring me and to Alan Hadley for programming CombineZM, which is completely free. Next: How to shoot star trails.

Enhance Clouds in Paint.NET (or GIMP)

I get really annoyed when people (read magazines) post photo editing tutorials which reads: "Try this at home for free" or "Photo editing on a shoe-string" and later refers to Photoshop specific tools. Photoshop CS4 will set you back 7912 DKK (£920, $1351 or €1065), which is a lot. And this assumes you have got Windows or OS X. When I say free I mean free (well you have to pay for the computer and a camera, of course) so let's roll.

Pictures often look very plain and boring if you have a gray sky. The problem is that usually there isn't happening much, contrast wise, in the sky. But there are ways to enhance detail between gray and gray and get more interesting pictures, sometimes even stunning (the example pictures aren't stunning I know). For this tutorial you need the latest version of Paint.NET or download the Curves+ plug-in.

1. Open your picture in Paint.NET or GIMP.
   
   
2. De-noise the image if necessary (In Paint.NET: Effects>Noise>Reduce Noise and in GIMP: Filters>Enhance>Despeckle)
   
3. Adjust the overall contrast and saturation settings to your liking (In Paint.NET: Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and Adjustments>Brightness / Contrast and in GIMP: Colors>Hue-Saturation… and Colors>Brightness-Contrast…)
   
4. Select the sky, since it is uniform use the Wand tool to select it (if it selects too much use the top slider (in the left dock when using GIMP), which is set to 50% by default (15 in GIMP), to decrease the percentage and increase if it selects too little)
   
5. With the sky selected go do Adjustments>Curves+ (in GIMP: Colors>Curves…).
   
6. What you'll see is a diagonal line and a histogram of your selection. By default it is set to Luminosity. The Curves+ window can be resized and I recommend making it bigger so you can see the histogram clearly.
   
   
7. Lock the diagonal line (by clicking on it) where the histogram starts and ends (use the vertical lines as a guide).
   
8. Lock the line in the middle of the two points you locked in the previous step. Click to the left of the middle point and slightly lower it (this makes darker parts darker).
   
9. Click to the right of the middle point and slightly increase it (this makes lighter parts lighter).
   
10. You can adjust the new curve by clicking and dragging a locked point around. Remember to keep an eye on your picture and don't overdo the effect, it quickly looks fake or edited. Also keep an eye on the foreground to see if the brightness of the sky matches.
    
11. When you're happy with the effect click OK, and press CRTL+D to deselect (Update1: In GIMP use CTRL+SHIFT+A to deselect)
    
    

The reason we don't use the Brightness / Contrast in this situation is that we can adjust which gray tones should be lightened and which gray tones should be darkened. Curves+ is by far the best plug-in in Paint.NET so be sure to play around with it. Use the RGB mode to enhance colours (only in Paint.NET), invert luminosity while keeping the original colours (drag the ends of the line to the opposite sides) are some things you can do with ease using Curves+ (only in Paint.NET).

My last example picture was quite boring until I retouched it. Of course it is easier to do this kind of editing if you shoot in RAW as all information is saved. If you shoot in JPEG you will find that some images cannot be fixed as there isn't enough information to work with.

Another Christmas Song

It's december and now I can sing christmas carols and listen to them without feeling bad (to be honest I've been singing them since august). Here's Another Christmas Song by Stephen Colbert. No, seriously it's called Another Christmas Song.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: Another Christmas Song

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview