Quba HQ

Spin by ASD

Ever since my first Commodore 64, I have been an avid follower of the demoscene. For many years groups like Fairlight, Kewlers, The Black Lotus, Orange, Farbrausch and more recently ASD (Andromeda Software Development) have been pushing the art of realtime graphics into new extremes.

While entertaining to watch however, demos usually had a tendency to lack in the art direction department. The would excel in cool visual effects, pumping more and more graphics at better framerates and higher resolutions – but being primarily created by coders, not artists, the majority were more of a technical showcase rather than an artistic pursuit. In the recent years, the new breed of demos started emerging – one where art and code truly go hand in hand. One that can easily rival the amazing vfx and motion design pieces from the world renown motion design directors.

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Portal 2: Just the beginning?

It’s been a few days now since the launch of Portal 2. Looking back at the events leading up to the release I can’t help myself but awe at the skill and imagination of the Valve team. First came Portal (1) – an amazing game, introducing completely new gameplay mechanics to the FPS genre. It spawned cult following, multiple memes (The cake is a lie anyone?) and made countless players fall in love with a gray box with a pink heart painted on it. On March 1st, 2010 the first ARG was launched, eventually leading to the announcement of Portal 2.

The second ARG, running between April 1-18, 2011 sent users on a crazy scavenger hunt throughout 13 indie games (as well as real life locations) in search for the new clues about the sequel. The event culminated in a GLaDOS@home event where thousands of players contributed to releasing the game early. Finally came the game itself. I am not going to dwell on how good Portal 2 is – there are dozens of reviews all over the Internet that evaluate the game in-depth. All I’m gonna say is: if you haven’t done so yet, get it, play it. It’s well worth it. Hell, it is probably one of the greatest gaming experiences I had in a long time.

But is that it? The game is launched, single player and co-op campaigns are played through… I believe not. In this article I am going to speculate on what I believe is yet to come. Please, keep in mind that I am writing it assuming you have finished the game and therefore all matter of spoilers are to be found in the following paragraphs. If you haven’t played Portal 2 yet, do yourself a favor and do it first. If you don’t mind, however, hear out what I think is coming soon.

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Poll for Y’all

With the new system up and running, I am slowly getting ready to resume producing new tutorials. On the old system I always kept a copy of After Effects CS3 installed and made all the tutorials using that version for all the folks using older versions of AE.

I have migrated my workflow to CS5 quite a while back and was wondering – which version of After Effects do you use? Is there even a need to make the files CS3-compatible anymore? Do I really have to install the old program on my computer?

The results of this poll will help me determine how to proceed. It will remain open until the end of October, so cast your vote and let others know to do the same – the larger the voting base the more accurate the information will be. Also, feel free to comment on this post if your answer cannot be summarized with a simple 1-choice selection.

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The poll is now closed.

Portal for Mac: Free until May 24th

Hello Mac people! It is not too late to still grab your free copy of Portal – probably one of the best games ever made, now available for OSX.

To celebrate the launch of Steam platform for Mac, Valve software made Portal free to all the Mac users until May 24th. They also produced this cute little infographic announcement animation, promoting the… promotion.

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Gotta Play: The Orange Box

If you like gaming, have a PC that’s not yet a museum piece, but you don’t yet own The Orange Box (or all the games that comprise this amazing collection), do yourself a favor: Stop reading this article, go to the Steam page of The Orange Box, purchase it for for $30 and let it download in the background while you continue with this post. It’s that good.

Released in October 2007, The Orange Box is a compilation of some of the best titles produced by Valve Software: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episodes One and Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. They even throw in a tech demo Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, just in case the rest is not enough for you. You will be playing this stuff for months.

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Mousepaths

I have recently come across a very cool java applet developed by Anatoly Zenkov (kickass idea for the flash background on the site, by the way). It’s a quite simple, open-source code that tracks your mouse movements on the screen and creates a visual representation of your activity.

The following image was generated while I played through the Retrieve the IFF device mission in Mass Effect 2. I superimposed the graphic against some watercolor splashes, since with all the doodles QubaHQ started becoming a bit too monochrome.

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Knoll Chromatic Lens 2 for VC Optical Flares

One of the most frequently (over)used After Effects lens flares is undoubtedly Chroma Lens 2 preset available in Knoll Light Factory Pro. As many other motion designers I, too am guilty of using this effect in a few projects too many.

As I am currently migrating my flare workflow to Video Copilot’s Optical Flares plug-in, I decided to re-create this client-favorite preset inside the VCOP.

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Gene Pool

By now, most likely, everyone-and-their-extended-families have seen the Gene Pool application. On the odd chance you haven’t, I decided to feature this awesome program/game/simulation here.

Gene Pool allows the user to observe evolution of miniature digital creatures known as swimbots as they travel around a pool of liquid in search of food and mates. The user can decide on the composition of the pool, amount of food, types of swimbots and the rules of attraction between them. Once set, you sit back, relax and watch little swimbots go at it in merciless fight for species survival.

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Tutorial: Enhance Your Images With HolOS

The tutorial for Image Enhancement (Hollywood Style) is ready. As announced last week, this video will teach you how to create your own HolOS (Hollywood Operating System) image enhancement effect using After Effects.

Go and watch it now at:
http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/ae-plus/enhance-your-images-with-holos-ae-plus/

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Graffiti Analysis 2.0

“Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study in the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen motion involved in the creation of a tag.”

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