@Marcus Aseth Yeah the neck was a really tricky part to skin to the rig. The poses they use in the animations are weird and ended up not working well with my bindpose.
@Motenai Thanks. The hair and skirt are Sailor Moon inspired, and that seems to be the only thing anyone can talk about, for better or worse. Love that CK set btw sick work!
So I'm trying to make a cool looking eye-of-sauron type thing, but without all the fire and burning stuff. and I think I have a neat little design right now, but for some reason, the particles that are lowest, physically, always appear above my dark, smokey particles for some reason?
also i see a lot of questions here and there about particles, maybe we should just start a particle help & resource thread? Would that be useful?
for the pupil, I'm using a render_rope, similar to how the Watcher from one of Warlock's set. I'm planning on making my own with its own shape but I'm using that one for reference at the moment. (the rope's file is particle\beam_generic_3_oriented.vmt)
for the render_animated_sprites on the pupil, i'm using particle\smoke\steam\steam.vmt for the smokey affect, and particle\particle_flares\aircraft_white_usez.vmt for blue snowflake embers.
for the colored "iris," the blue and white that should be below the eye is a render_animated_sprites of particle\particle_ring_wavy6.vmt
is there something with these textures that make some appear above the rest?
I would love to have some help with this silly project i decided to embark myself into, would like to remark beforehand that im not really talented, i do my best to learn from whatever resource i can find on the web, but i don't think im quite good yet, that said let's move on.
So i decided to start working on creating dota2 workshop items, and for whatever reason (maybe 'cause i play support almost all the time) i decided to create a ward as my first item, while doodling i ended up coming up with this "design", which i kind of feel is good looking and would fit the game well.
The problem i'm having is the following, i'm using blender as my modelling software, and even tho it's almost finished, i'm lost as to how to proceed with bump mapping, texturing, and so on to create a ward; i have found tutorials regarding hero items, but nothing about wards, and valve documentation is really not that helpful for people that don't have experience like me, soooo, yeah, could some body give me a hand/teach me, i don't mind if the work ends up becoming a collaboration work, what i want to do is have the idea finished, see it done, and be able to learn so that i can keep going. Thanks in advance to anybody reading, sorry if this is not the right place to put this, or if my work is too awful.
Sorry for the double post i was not aware of the need for a moderator to approve my post and ended up doing it twice just to notice the message about said rule/politic the second time y posted.
So what is the word on single sided cloaks/capes? I see many characters with single sided capes and cloaks but I don't know if the policies have changed lately or if Valve favors one over the other. Any idea on this?
The designs you guys are posting are amazing, by the way!
Edit: I don't know if this is the correct section to post this so feel free to move my post. :poly136:
Should you really be using Blizzard music to market a product you are trying to sell for their direct competitor?
Hey Drew, MDK and I searched long and hard for music to accompany the video. After hours of fruitless search and other examples in the workshop we decided it wouldn't be a big deal to use it. I would love to hear other peoples opinion on the matter, since there are indeed many songs used from many franchises for promotional purposes. It's an easy enough change to make, but we figured the focus of the promo is not the music but the visual content we put our days into making. Thanks for the concern, like I said I'd like to hear other peoples opinion on the matter as well.
Should you really be using Blizzard music to market a product you are trying to sell for their direct competitor?
I don't really think that it's relevant. Dota being a competitor of a Blizzard game doesn't influence the use of a song (from Warcraft I think? Sorry but I'm not familiar with the series) on a Workshop submission, specially when the video isn't being use for profit. It's more of a way to merge cool stuff together, and since it's really hard to come by fitting and good music for those kind of videos, I personally don't mind the use of 'known' songs. I had some similar response to the showcase video of my Nature's Prophet set, which used a music from Bastion. People either really liked to hear something familiar to them or kept saying stuff about having permission to use it or whatever, so I'm probably not using songs like that again.
It's not that big of a deal, but personally I think it's not right.
You may not be taking direct profit from the video, but it's adding value to it with zero effort from your part regardless, so I guess it's as wrong as taking a game picture and using it as background.
So my take on it is either go for stuff that has explicit permission to use (i.e. common license or public domain) or ask the owner - two things that most certainly won't apply to a Blizzard game soundtrack.
Maybe it's good to at least give a proper credit to the owner/creator of those songs.(in the video or in the description or both)
After all the song is playing a role in your video
That a side, Amazing work. you guys managed to put those blue gems in a very nice and subtle way, but I'm not a fan of those things coming off his mouth
Technically the video IS being used for profit if it's promoting an item being sold on the workshop. I wouldn't risk it.
It's a very finicky line since pretty much _everything_ put online is intellectual property unless explicitly stateed otherwise, such as with Deviant Art's open common licensing that artists have the option of using when they upload work.
Try looking at sites like Freesound.org and searching for Fantasy/Warcraft styles.
I have to agree with the others here. Using music from other games/movies without permission is risky and not a good habit. Lets not forget that the composers/performers are artists too. Just check out moddb or reddit indiedev sub, there are composers there that want to spread their name and will let you use their music for free under CC attribution. Soundcloud should have some music that you can use too.
It's been a while since I wrote some game music, but if I upload some more later on it's ok for anyone to use it if it should fit your theme. Only one there right now, can check if I have some more at home that I can upload. https://soundcloud.com/victor-takala/
Technically Windrunner wasn't a big deal but even Valve changed it to Windranger. I say if you don't have rights to use it or its not free to use search for something else.
In the end its only music no one actually listen to it To be honest I don't even watch dota promo videos for sets lately. I just check screenchots for sets because I am to lazy. Probably many people do the same.
I just released a package for Unity including Dota 2 shaders. But I want to go further.
Let me explain what I want to add to this package.
When you want to show what you've made for Dota 2, you basically post screenshots or gifs for example.
I want to offer you the possibility to show your 3D art to everyone dynamically in full 3D as it will be in the game. What you'll need is just Unity Free and the Game Shaders 1 : Dota 2 package.
For that here are the tools you'll be able to use :
Simple system to merge your art with Dota 2 Art
Preconfigured materials
Preconfigured scene set-up
Simple publication process
But to build this, I need you. I need your help to give me your comments and ideas to make a very simple and efficient process.
Of course, I also want to know if such system is relevant and useful for you and if you are interested.
first of all welcome! glad to know that polycount influenced you to start
actually is a pretty good item that you starting with but i have some suggestions
In dota,sometimes less is more, specially when you go over texture details. like the one you have the swords guard. When you render it looks nice but maybe in game those small details will turn into noise and instead of being a good addition to your design they will just act on a bad way
other suggestion about your sword is that the overall shape looks too flat, i saw that you made some bevel on the round handle but that is a point that we don't see because of the hand, you could use those polygons on a more important part
also is nice that you posted an study of silhouette, that shows that you are going on the right path when creating it.
your item is really nice and with a good quality, just keep improving, learning and sharing knowledge here. I am looking forward to see you getting your first item in game =]
Cheers!
edit - also i believe you need some work on the masks 1 and 2 to make the materials contrast more
I'm with Vidotto, I'd personally make the surface of the gold area way less bumpy as it's pretty noisy in the previewer shot you posted which means it'll be worse in-game.
Think of it like this; If you want nice details in dota.. make them bigger than you think they should be. Large shapes and forms read well, tiny ones do not. It either becomes noise or it just becomes unreadable which is wasted effort.
If you look at any of the Valve items you will see lots of big, easily readable shapes and details on everything. As workshop artist's we're definitely pushing the boundaries on how far we can take things, but there's still a soft limit we can't cross, and tiny, intricate details is one of them.
@Tvidotto @bewsii
Thanks for the feedback guys! I definitely see what you mean by the small detail.
Seems like knowing how to utilise the masks properly makes a big difference too. I kept on improving on my mask2 quite a few times from where it started but I never rly played around enough with the mask1.
Also, there's something I wanted to ask about the LOD1 and LOD0 models.
For this entry I only ended up creating the lower detail LOD1 model after running into some issues when adding more geo to break up the silhouette bit more.
I just ended up making a mess of how my normal and texture maps showed up on the model (unaligned UV's), and in the end I just couldn't be arsed anymore
Is there any "easy" techniques to add more geo/detail without having to bake out completely new maps, or do I just need to suck it up and get on with it?
Just wanted to post this link here as well. I'm sure many of you guys know about it already (since the support is found here in polycount too), but I found the nDo plugin to be a great help when creating some detail maps Will most likely end up investing into it after it comes out of beta! http://quixel.se/
@whatever
I thought the attack animations looked quite cool can add couple of gifs to the workshop page after the weekend.
Is there any "easy" techniques to add more geo/detail without having to bake out completely new maps, or do I just need to suck it up and get on with it?
.
In a situation like this you should always rebake your normal map. When you are adding geo you are adding more tangents, and normals to the mesh, so for the best quality you should rebake so you have the proper normal map for that specific mesh. As far as baking xNormal with the Handplane plugin is wicked fast for perfect normals. Hope this helps :poly124:
Replies
@Motenai Thanks. The hair and skirt are Sailor Moon inspired, and that seems to be the only thing anyone can talk about, for better or worse. Love that CK set btw sick work!
@Harry Thanks Bro
@Sukotto So far I don't think I've seen any negative opinions. Who could hate Sailor Moon?
I added an arrow/javelin thing today. I tried to keep it pretty close in proportion and style to the original arrow for balance purposes.
@Motenai - Amazing work as always, I think this is my personal fav CK now
@StuBurrito - Sword turned out nice
Damn dude. I could watch this gif all day.
I finished up a CK weapon for this months comp.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=301556477&searchtext=
So I'm trying to make a cool looking eye-of-sauron type thing, but without all the fire and burning stuff. and I think I have a neat little design right now, but for some reason, the particles that are lowest, physically, always appear above my dark, smokey particles for some reason?
also i see a lot of questions here and there about particles, maybe we should just start a particle help & resource thread? Would that be useful?
for the pupil, I'm using a render_rope, similar to how the Watcher from one of Warlock's set. I'm planning on making my own with its own shape but I'm using that one for reference at the moment. (the rope's file is particle\beam_generic_3_oriented.vmt)
for the render_animated_sprites on the pupil, i'm using particle\smoke\steam\steam.vmt for the smokey affect, and particle\particle_flares\aircraft_white_usez.vmt for blue snowflake embers.
for the colored "iris," the blue and white that should be below the eye is a render_animated_sprites of particle\particle_ring_wavy6.vmt
is there something with these textures that make some appear above the rest?
I spent this weekend doing this little guy:
I would love to have some help with this silly project i decided to embark myself into, would like to remark beforehand that im not really talented, i do my best to learn from whatever resource i can find on the web, but i don't think im quite good yet, that said let's move on.
So i decided to start working on creating dota2 workshop items, and for whatever reason (maybe 'cause i play support almost all the time) i decided to create a ward as my first item, while doodling i ended up coming up with this "design", which i kind of feel is good looking and would fit the game well.
The problem i'm having is the following, i'm using blender as my modelling software, and even tho it's almost finished, i'm lost as to how to proceed with bump mapping, texturing, and so on to create a ward; i have found tutorials regarding hero items, but nothing about wards, and valve documentation is really not that helpful for people that don't have experience like me, soooo, yeah, could some body give me a hand/teach me, i don't mind if the work ends up becoming a collaboration work, what i want to do is have the idea finished, see it done, and be able to learn so that i can keep going. Thanks in advance to anybody reading, sorry if this is not the right place to put this, or if my work is too awful.
Thanks Tvidotto, and nice to read you (? :P).
Welcome!!
The designs you guys are posting are amazing, by the way!
Edit: I don't know if this is the correct section to post this so feel free to move my post. :poly136:
Love this little fella! Looking forward to seeing this completed and in my inventory
basically everything you need is here:
http://www.dota2.com/workshop/requirements
Look at the PDF's for shader mask guides. Valve laid it out pretty well.
I love it, quick question, how did you manage to create those edge lines desings?
But seriously soon we'll have a mini-courier version of every character available.
Some stuff I'm doing right now for Silencer
More info in my thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=134493
Shameless crosspost of the Treant set the awesome MDK and Propen collaborated on with me! Give it a vote!
@Cersei_Lannister - Great as always, LOVE this head piece
@Vovosunt - Love some of the shapes you have going on
@BladeofEvilsBane - Turned out great guys! See him in the next chest!
Should you really be using Blizzard music to market a product you are trying to sell for their direct competitor?
I don't really think that it's relevant. Dota being a competitor of a Blizzard game doesn't influence the use of a song (from Warcraft I think? Sorry but I'm not familiar with the series) on a Workshop submission, specially when the video isn't being use for profit. It's more of a way to merge cool stuff together, and since it's really hard to come by fitting and good music for those kind of videos, I personally don't mind the use of 'known' songs. I had some similar response to the showcase video of my Nature's Prophet set, which used a music from Bastion. People either really liked to hear something familiar to them or kept saying stuff about having permission to use it or whatever, so I'm probably not using songs like that again.
I'd love to read some thoughts on this too.
You may not be taking direct profit from the video, but it's adding value to it with zero effort from your part regardless, so I guess it's as wrong as taking a game picture and using it as background.
So my take on it is either go for stuff that has explicit permission to use (i.e. common license or public domain) or ask the owner - two things that most certainly won't apply to a Blizzard game soundtrack.
After all the song is playing a role in your video
That a side, Amazing work. you guys managed to put those blue gems in a very nice and subtle way, but I'm not a fan of those things coming off his mouth
It's a very finicky line since pretty much _everything_ put online is intellectual property unless explicitly stateed otherwise, such as with Deviant Art's open common licensing that artists have the option of using when they upload work.
Try looking at sites like Freesound.org and searching for Fantasy/Warcraft styles.
It's been a while since I wrote some game music, but if I upload some more later on it's ok for anyone to use it if it should fit your theme. Only one there right now, can check if I have some more at home that I can upload. https://soundcloud.com/victor-takala/
In the end its only music no one actually listen to it
Good to know what your thoughts on the music are, but I'll try steering this back into the focus here, the set.
That looks so cool
@BladeofEvilsBane: Best Treant set I've seen,really great work.
On my thread "Charge's workshop" there is in-game screenshots of this set. Thanks!
It's my first time posting here in Polycount but I've been following multiple threads for a quite a while now.
Just wanted to post my first Dota workshop submission here, and thank for the great community that got me started and through it in the first place!
Workshop entry found here
C & C welcome!
working working trallalalala
Hello everyone !
I just released a package for Unity including Dota 2 shaders. But I want to go further.
Let me explain what I want to add to this package.
When you want to show what you've made for Dota 2, you basically post screenshots or gifs for example.
I want to offer you the possibility to show your 3D art to everyone dynamically in full 3D as it will be in the game. What you'll need is just Unity Free and the Game Shaders 1 : Dota 2 package.
For that here are the tools you'll be able to use :
- Simple system to merge your art with Dota 2 Art
- Preconfigured materials
- Preconfigured scene set-up
- Simple publication process
But to build this, I need you. I need your help to give me your comments and ideas to make a very simple and efficient process.Of course, I also want to know if such system is relevant and useful for you and if you are interested.
To discuss about it, it's this way : Dota 2 for Unity
Thank you very much.
first of all welcome! glad to know that polycount influenced you to start
actually is a pretty good item that you starting with but i have some suggestions
In dota,sometimes less is more, specially when you go over texture details. like the one you have the swords guard. When you render it looks nice but maybe in game those small details will turn into noise and instead of being a good addition to your design they will just act on a bad way
other suggestion about your sword is that the overall shape looks too flat, i saw that you made some bevel on the round handle but that is a point that we don't see because of the hand, you could use those polygons on a more important part
also is nice that you posted an study of silhouette, that shows that you are going on the right path when creating it.
your item is really nice and with a good quality, just keep improving, learning and sharing knowledge here. I am looking forward to see you getting your first item in game =]
Cheers!
edit - also i believe you need some work on the masks 1 and 2 to make the materials contrast more
Think of it like this; If you want nice details in dota.. make them bigger than you think they should be. Large shapes and forms read well, tiny ones do not. It either becomes noise or it just becomes unreadable which is wasted effort.
If you look at any of the Valve items you will see lots of big, easily readable shapes and details on everything. As workshop artist's we're definitely pushing the boundaries on how far we can take things, but there's still a soft limit we can't cross, and tiny, intricate details is one of them.
Another quick undying concept sort of working from my first one
@bewsii
Thanks for the feedback guys! I definitely see what you mean by the small detail.
Seems like knowing how to utilise the masks properly makes a big difference too. I kept on improving on my mask2 quite a few times from where it started but I never rly played around enough with the mask1.
Also, there's something I wanted to ask about the LOD1 and LOD0 models.
For this entry I only ended up creating the lower detail LOD1 model after running into some issues when adding more geo to break up the silhouette bit more.
I just ended up making a mess of how my normal and texture maps showed up on the model (unaligned UV's), and in the end I just couldn't be arsed anymore
Is there any "easy" techniques to add more geo/detail without having to bake out completely new maps, or do I just need to suck it up and get on with it?
Just wanted to post this link here as well. I'm sure many of you guys know about it already (since the support is found here in polycount too), but I found the nDo plugin to be a great help when creating some detail maps
http://quixel.se/
@whatever
I thought the attack animations looked quite cool
In a situation like this you should always rebake your normal map. When you are adding geo you are adding more tangents, and normals to the mesh, so for the best quality you should rebake so you have the proper normal map for that specific mesh. As far as baking xNormal with the Handplane plugin is wicked fast for perfect normals. Hope this helps :poly124:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=304415052
and
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=304416104
Thanks guys, hopefully I'll join you guys with the 3D stuff too before too long.
may be try to make it longer? like thiz