Christoph "Vaarscha" Neijenhuis

Contact: vaarscha ( at ) clan-fear.de

Age: 20

Location: Germany

Modding career

I began mapping with Q3, stayed there for several years. Started HEAT (http://www.heatmod.com) for HL2 as a leader and during development I taught myself various techniques, including texturing, modeling, animating, skinning and scripting for source. However I still enjoy mapping most of all modding activities (well, except playtesting, maybe :) ).

Since I've learned a lot reading tutorials here, I thought it's a good idea to give something back and share my knowledge with you.

Tools

VAAT (http://www.heatmod.com/vaat/)

This simple PHP script takes your uploaded animation .smd and can invert it (it's played backwards) plus give back the first and last frame of the animation (you might want to use it for an idle animation).
This might be helpful if you got some animations that switch the weapon into another position. For HEAT (http://www.heatmod.com) I need 3 of those animations for every weapon (draw/holster, ironsight, lowering of the weapon when to close to a wall) so this scripts helps me speeding up animating. Maybe it's useful for someone else as well... If so, check VAAT (http://www.heatmod.com/vaat/).

Major contributions

• Creating worldmodels from viewmodels
• Viewmodel
• Normal Map Creation - The GIMP part and some additional info on normal maps
• LOD Models
• Fog tutorial - Custom skybox and general overhaul
• Multiple Skins for a Single Model

Current Projects

HEAT

Leader and founder of the HL2 modification HEAT (http://www.heatmod.com).

I'm basically working on every part of the modding except code. My main focus is, apart from organization and PR, mapping. Yet I have to help my team members to bring their models, sounds etc. into the game. I'm the one doing all the compiling and script-stuff for the content.

It's my main project and what I spend most of my (free-)time with.

Check www.heatmod.com for more info (we're also recruiting!). More writing on my work can be found in my .plan updates (http://www.heatmod.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3).

Half-Drive

A recreational / just-for-fun project. After playing around with the sdk_vehicle map, I decided to built some maps with stunts.

I got 4 maps nearly finished. They're really difficult, I'm not sure if someone will enjoy them...

EnigmaComplex

I'm doing mapping, mostly, but I'm also involved in some other aspects.

Please check it out at www.enigmamod.com, the site has just been released so you probably haven't seen it before.

Releases

Snowking for AKG contest

A HL2:DM map for the AKG mapping contest, my first public release on the source engine. Features both DM and TDM while the latter one has a King Of The Hill-style mission.

Download here (http://www.heatmod.com/offtopic/akg_snowking.rar)