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I am still playing Starcraft 2 like crazy, whenever I possibly can. Now that I have found some worthy teammates to team up with instead of taking my chance of paring up with someone “worthy”. My head is full of Starcraft right now, like literally. Then something hit me today, not literally though. I thought to myself, there are official licensed Star Wars Lego models out there, but why not Starcraft 2? I’m pretty sure it will be a hit, at least I will buy them that’s for sure. I’m guessing one of the reasons might be licensing / loyalties all those legal mumble jumble.

But if they did decide to make Lego Starcraft 2, you bet I would be one of the first to get them. Well not the “I will wait in line 2am in the morning” kind of first. Oh you know what I mean.

Google “Lego Starcraft” and you will be amazed by what some people can do with Lego. My god I was mighty impressed. Now if someone could build a 1/8 scale Kerrigan that would be epic!

All images found are © all rights reserved and by no means taking credits for these, but merely sharing them.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pepa_quin/

So while I’ve been enjoying playing with my buddies and total random strangers. I’ve also been experimenting more with reflection and refraction in Blender 2.49 as well as some lighting. One thing I found out is the fact that my computer can barely handle higher than the preset settings for the reflections and refractions. That is unfortunate, on the bright side that kind of gives me an excuse to upgrade my computer (right now I’m still using a very old E2xxx series Dual Core chip. I thought my recent 1 extra gb of ram upgrade would help out a bit but I guess it was not too noticable. Starcraft 2 does indeed load faster though so its not too bad afterall. Oh yea, I also bought a new ATI HD5670 just for Starcraft 2 so it turned out to be a $200+ game.

Anyway enough of Starcraft 2, here are the two images resulted from all the reflection and refraction tickering.

First came the fire:

Then came the fire AND ice:

I’ve been playing Starcraft 2 non-stop these days, first finished the story and now onto the multiplayer world. And that’s the reason why I created this, my own battlecruiser in Blender. Still trying to figure out how to do better lighting for the windows though (the bridge, windows etc.). Hopefully I will figure out in upcoming projects.

I thought I could resist not getting Starcraft 2 right away but I was wrong, so very wrong. After watching this campaign overview. This evil trailer is making me have second thoughts. Even if I decided to get it right away, would there actually be any stocks on the shelf? I doubt it!

I`m still debating though, since I won`t be playing the online multiplayer as much (I am still very addicted to Modern Warfare 2), is the story still worth the $59.99 plus tax? Another concern is whether my computer can actually handle it. I think the latter is the bigger question.

I can so see myself giving in to temptation….

Update: I went to EB Games today after work just to see if I was lucky enough. I didn’t get it obviously due to popular demand and everyone pretty much pre-ordered the game, what a surprise! I was told there were still copies at a nearby mall, but I didn’t bother to drive opposite way just to get it since I was 5 minutes away from home. I will try my luck again tomorrow.

Proporta’s solution to the Apple iPhone 4 antenna issue

If you’ve been keeping up with the Apple press conference from Friday, you’ll know that they’ve generously offered all iPhone 4 customers their bumper case for free.

Guy Monson co-founder of Proporta says “We at Proporta think it’s very generous of Apple and admire their commitment to solving the problem. We believe that it’s good for Proporta as it’ll help open people’s eyes to the need to protect their mobile devices – something we’ve been saying for the past 14 years. CASEFREE at www.proporta.com

As a mobile device accessories company with over 3,000 cases, power solutions and screen protectors, we realise that a free case is a free case and that a lot of customers will still want fully surrounded protection. So we’d like to offer customers 20% off any Proporta Case or Screen Protector for the iPhone 4, if they return their bumper case to us, with the promotion code

Some other Proporta cases available with this offer are:

The Silicone Reception Case with SteriTouch, which kills 99% of all germs and also solves the antenna problem.

The Mizu Shell is a super tough silicone style case with a soft touch finish that will also remedy the antenna issue.

For those customers who don’t want a case at all, Proporta is also offering a Front, Back and Side Protector Film Kit which offers protection from scratches, scrapes and fingerprints, and also helps prevent loss of signal from the antenna by cleverly covering up the reception “hot spot” that can be restricted by your hand when using the iPhone. and is available to pre-order from Proporta today. And don’t forget Proporta ships worldwide so this offer extends to US customers too.

The first image turned out pretty nicely and so I have moved on to the second render. This time I tried to play around with some interior lighting techniques.

I started out with this initial test just to experiment the some lighting as well as reflection/refractions:

Then I moved on to the actual interior design:

Ended up with:

While I was playing with the lighting I also accidentally generated this rather cool looking effect where most of the light source is coming from the three columns on the left. It was totally an accident though! The space ship to the right is actually an existing model that I created a few years back, I thought putting something long above the rectangular shelf would make a nice decoration piece.

Hope you guys enjoy!

I was 15 at the time, I was bored and just wanted something free and fun to create 3D things with. I literally typed in free graphic software (or something similar) and this was how I found Blender. Boy what a piece of treasure I found. It is still free and if you are interested, don’t hesitate and grab a copy yourself here.

This is the first project ever in years, probably more than 5 years. Still trying to figure out all the existing and new functionalities.

Image courtesy of SR Auto Group

I wet my pants quite often these days and I’m not sure why, maybe I’m getting old? I’ve recently stumbled upon yet another great site while bored – SR Auto Group. It showcases some of the best auto photo shoots for some of the world’s sexiest cars. Oh how I wish they could do one for my Audi A5 as well after looking at their S5 shots (here’s one of them).

The only thing I would suggest to them is to change how the images are displaying. Currently from the main page, the images are popping up as a new window, which is fine but would look definitely better using one of those widely available jQuery image/photo gallery scripts. Same goes for the gallery page where all the images are displayed on the same page after clicking their thumbnails.

I will keep visiting for sure though.

Update: the gallery page DOES use the jQuery script for displaying the images, I probably didn’t wait until all the images are loaded before clicking them (the script had probably not loaded yet). The ones from the main page does not though.