Team Fortress 2: Polycount Pack - Questions and Answers
polycounter lvl 17
To coincide with the launch of the new Polycount site, Polycount is teaming up with Valve Software to bring you the Team Fortress 2 Polycount Pack. Yes! That’s right, an exclusive Polycount Pack for Team Fortress 2.
The guys and gals at Valve were impressed with the number of items created by Polycount members in the first ever community content update, that now they are dedicating a community content update entirely to Polycount.
Would you love to have your work be apart of that update? Then read on for our newest contest here at Polycount!
Pick a single Team Fortress 2 class and create a minimum of three custom items for them. These items can be made up of any combination of weapons (melee, primary, secondary), Engineer buildings and/or hats. These items must be cohesively themed and fit within the Team Fortress 2 universe and time period. Make sure your replacement item set maintains the existing functionality of the original items they’re replacing, specifically any Primary, Secondary or Melee weapons you replace in your set. Valve will be selecting the top entries to make it into the Team Fortress 2 Polycount Pack and the winners will be announced 2 weeks after the contest end date, on July 12th, 2010.
But wait… There’s more!
Runners up will get the chance to have their custom content appear in a future community content pack to be released some time down the track.
To maintain the Team Fortress 2 style and budget, here are some specs to guide you. The polygon budgets are not hard limits and use your best judgement for your items, based on these loose numbers.
Weapons
The full contest brief and rules write up can be found here. Please read this as it has instructions on how to submit your final work and a very helpful FAQ.
The guys and gals at Valve were impressed with the number of items created by Polycount members in the first ever community content update, that now they are dedicating a community content update entirely to Polycount.
Would you love to have your work be apart of that update? Then read on for our newest contest here at Polycount!
Pick a single Team Fortress 2 class and create a minimum of three custom items for them. These items can be made up of any combination of weapons (melee, primary, secondary), Engineer buildings and/or hats. These items must be cohesively themed and fit within the Team Fortress 2 universe and time period. Make sure your replacement item set maintains the existing functionality of the original items they’re replacing, specifically any Primary, Secondary or Melee weapons you replace in your set. Valve will be selecting the top entries to make it into the Team Fortress 2 Polycount Pack and the winners will be announced 2 weeks after the contest end date, on July 12th, 2010.
But wait… There’s more!
Runners up will get the chance to have their custom content appear in a future community content pack to be released some time down the track.
- You must be a member of Polycount – Register Here
- You must create a Work In Progress thread in the Contests and Challenges Forum for your entry and must show your progress from start to finish
- All work created MUST be your own
- You must be able to supply all source files of the finished products
- You must create a minimum of three unique items for only one particular class (e.g. 1 x primary weapon, 1 x secondary weapon, 1 x hat - you cannot do 2 or more of the same item)
- Items must be themed to Team Fortress 2 and should fit in the Team Fortress 2 universe and time period (e.g. No clown suits for the Heavy Weapons Guy!)
- Contest deadline: 00:01 PST, June 28th, 2010 (5 weeks after the start date!)
To maintain the Team Fortress 2 style and budget, here are some specs to guide you. The polygon budgets are not hard limits and use your best judgement for your items, based on these loose numbers.
Weapons
- 8,000 triangles
- 512 x 512 texture
- Dispenser:
- 10,000 triangles
- 512 x 512 texture
- Teleporter:
- 3000 triangles
- 512 x 512 texture
- Sentry Turrets
- 10,000 triangles
- 512 x 512 texture
- 800 triangles
- 256 x 256 textures
The full contest brief and rules write up can be found here. Please read this as it has instructions on how to submit your final work and a very helpful FAQ.
Replies
and how much theme creativity freedom can we have exactly? If I make something to replace the pyro's axe, I'm under the assumption now that whatever I make will work exactly like the axe, right? so then if I make a model, does it have to be an axe? or anything that functions like one - say, for instance, a polearm? chainsaw? would those be ok?
just guessing, though.
a question i have is, why is the limit for the weapons 512x512 ? when valve uses 1024x1024 on pretty much every weapon. same for the dispenser, teleporter and sentry.
The easiest thing for them is if you did a model swap. BUT, thats not to say they'll immediately dismiss your idea, especially for further pack releases.
Anyways it would be good if someone could specify that. And also it would be good to sticky one thread with source tutorials that one could post interesting/helpful materials there to help other put items in game, or make jiggle bones, animations and so on
ps. damn I was making this post so long that you already answered it all :>
Also:
- Are we limited to three items, or can we make more, as long as they still form one set? (Because there are three weapon slots + a hat slot + a misc slot)
sorry if its a dumb question, just wanted to be sure.
scrawld - You can replace any item, certainly.
willy-wilson - Totally.
should we submit only "w" model (external view of weapon)? Cuz it seems to me that the texture budget of the "v" model (the 1st person view) have higher texture budget and so on...(and then valve should work some more to add details on the model to make it a 1st person view if they add it in game).
Or the submission budget should fit for both view?
To clarify, I only wanted to know since I know nothing about modeling and have some ideas, but a friend of mine is getting into modeling, but has very little in ideas.
If I forfeit rights on some ideas/sketches, he can still make the models of them and have them as his own submissions with a note of who made the initial concept?
I plan on at least attempting at making some models myself, but I'd like to help him out as well.
Like, say I am making a replacement for the teleporters. Since it is a new building and a replacement for them, does it still need to teleport? Considering what valve was working on before in the engie update, it seems new buildings can have different functionality than their counterparts. I hope they can at least, I have already modeled most of the replacement.
You're not replacing the item and its functionality.
Sure.
"These items can be made up of any combination of weapons (melee, primary, secondary), Engineer buildings and/or hats."
So if I wanted to do a melee weapon, a secondary, and a hat that would suffice? I won't have time to make a primary. Any 3 will do? Thanks guys
1. The textures. How does valve do them? Are they normal mapping anything? Is it all diffuse? Colored spec? Are there any resources laying around where I can look all this shit up and take a gander at their source files. I want a style guide basically.
2. Custom animations. Do I need to get this shit into source if I want to give it to them?
3. Just how awesome are you guys?
Some objects are normal mapped, but most detail is either modeled or painted into the diffuse.
Source does not support colored spec maps.
You can use GCFScape to extract stuff from the GCF files that all the TF2 files are in. You'll need either the Photoshop VTF plugin or VTFEdit to look at textures. You'll need CannonFodder's MDLDecompiler and a program that supports SMD file import/export to look at models.
There's a short style guide on the Contribute! page.
2. You'd most likely have to do your own custom animations if you did something that required new animation. You don't need to submit things in Source-friendly formats. For example, I submitted the Pain Train as an OBJ with a PSD for the textures. Check the Contribute! page for details.
3. Valve and the Polycount team are awesome. Super awesome.
EDIT: After thinking it through it isn't a great idea to make completely new items like that because of the coding and testing required. Valve wouldn't spend the time I'm guessing to get them in game and balance them, at least for this.
Either way I would advise against it.
I have a question though. Do we have to make all new models for this contest?
Could some that we have made in the past be elligible? I have a knife that I made, but I could definitely go back and add custom animations to it in the contest time. Generally in comps you have to create all original content but figured I'd ask anyway since I didn't see it say no explicitly.
I ask because I actually started on a 3 piece spy kit back-when, but only finished one of the pieces. I think it turned out awesome too. Would be too bad if it was exempt because I made it in the past.
A triangle is what 3D geometric shapes are made out of.
anyway, i was wondering if you kind souls could point me in the direction to tf2 source files: character models/weapons. Is there a place I can download these or I am going to have to extract em out of steam? thnx alot!:)
I literally do not have this folder. Inside the model folder there is an npc folder and a player folder. I've checked every folder. Weapons are not there.
Just need the weapons for heavy... Just need to match up hand hold positions... I suppose I can guess... but that would be lame
My idea: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73083
Edit: I gave the thread a read and it looks like I'm wrong... Even if I provided the animations and particles? I really want to make this
Well, I have a few questions because I already created and uploaded 19 different weapons since valve started the TF2 Contribute event on January. I already read about all the rules and term for this contest and I might wanne post theese weapons here too. But on the other side, I might don't have the time to do that for all items. (If you wanne see those items, take a look at www.tf2ci.com)
Well, here are my questions:
1. Do I need to have at least 3 custom items for every character I made weapons for ? For e.g. is it possible to present 3 items for the Pyro and 2 for the sniper ?
According to my personal TF2 Custom Items website, you see that I have 3 Pyro, 6 Spy, 2 Heavy, 1 Scout, 2 Sniper, 1 Demoman, 2 Engeneer, 1 Soldier and 1 Medic Custom Items. And as I said, I may don't have much time, especially to make new concepts and items for the missing slots of the other characters.
2. Do I have to make thread for every single weapon ? Or for every single Weapon Class Set ? When I post every 19 items I have it will look pretty dominated/spammed in this forum and it also took a lot of time to make a thread for each item.
3. Do I really have to show the progress or can I just tell what I made/thought of while I was working on it ? I also can proof that those items belong to me then. by taking screenshots from my 3D Software tool and the UV map.
Hope you guy can help me with that XD. You are also welcome to take a look at my TF2CI Website Have Fun!
Ryu Ookami
"We" believe that the idea is to create different models for existing items. That it's supposed to have the exact same functionality as the original weapon(slot.. thing).
Snipergen believes the model can have it's very own functionality.
Please tell us we're right, so we can rub snipergen's face in it
Sorry if my questions have been already asked, I'm a little late for school so I haven't taked time to read the 2 pages.
Before asking my questions, I'm a French student (Sorry for my bad English, by the way), I have 17 years old (18 tomorrow), so, I am not a Pro in 3D and 2D art, I hope I won't be penalized for the contest.
Ok, so, here are my questions :
1. I suppose that the WIP topic that we must create are to abort stealing ideas or something like that, am I wrong ?
2. About the WIP topic, do we have a kind of presentation that we have to respect ? If yes, is there an example anywhere ?
3. As I said, I am a noob for 3D and 2D art. I don't know how to create animated texture and team-coloured texture, can anyone help me, please ?
4. Same thing about animations, how many animations do we have to do for the weapons ? (Idle, Firing, Walking, Jumping... ?)
5. Do we have to create completely our weapons (With particles effects, position/rotation on the wearer, from where the bullets goes out...), or it is accepted without it all and you (VALVe ?) will do it by following original ideas ?
6. What about dimensions ?
I thinked about decompiling official models to use it as example for dimensions, but I can't do it...
7. I don't know how to compile a Static Prop, so I let you imagine about compiling a weapon/hat...
Can anyone help me about it ?
That's all for now, I have to go to school.
Thank you in advance, sorry again for my bad English.
I still hope that I won't be penalized about other people that participate to the contest. (Pro ? D': )
And I also hope that my ideas will please you, because I haven't sleeped all that night for it. x')
See ya.