[DOTA2] - Pudge - "Ro'sies keeper" set.
polycounter lvl 9
FINISHED!!
Evening all,
I've decided to create a new thread for the revised character (with additional story).
You can find my old thread here:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107326
Initial thumbnails
Speaking to one of the concept artists at work, he suggested that instead of thinking of the kit as a means of protecting himself against other heroes, think of it as protecting himself from a creature he himself is guarding (such as a vicious beast).
After taking this into consideration, I decided to take this approach and create a lore surrounding this idea. In this scenario, Pudge is the guardian of this dragon (who he has "fondly" called Ro'sie"). The armour and weapons aren't just used to attack and strip his victims of meat, they are used as a defence against Ro'sie so that he can get close to her without being torn apart. I felt that due to the semi-comical look of the character, this light hearted approach (the relationship between Pudge and his dragon) would be a better approach then trying to force his existing lore into something that might not be as interesting to approach. Here is the current sculpt.
I will be taking a look into the weapons tomorrow, I already have some ideas (the 5th hook silhouette playing a major part in them
)
A special thank you to the concept guys at work (John McCambridge, Neil Richards and Yann Blomquist) as well as Darren Bartley (fightpunch) for helping me push this character past its original design and into this new interpretation.
Evening all,
I've decided to create a new thread for the revised character (with additional story).
You can find my old thread here:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107326
Initial thumbnails
Speaking to one of the concept artists at work, he suggested that instead of thinking of the kit as a means of protecting himself against other heroes, think of it as protecting himself from a creature he himself is guarding (such as a vicious beast).
After taking this into consideration, I decided to take this approach and create a lore surrounding this idea. In this scenario, Pudge is the guardian of this dragon (who he has "fondly" called Ro'sie"). The armour and weapons aren't just used to attack and strip his victims of meat, they are used as a defence against Ro'sie so that he can get close to her without being torn apart. I felt that due to the semi-comical look of the character, this light hearted approach (the relationship between Pudge and his dragon) would be a better approach then trying to force his existing lore into something that might not be as interesting to approach. Here is the current sculpt.
I will be taking a look into the weapons tomorrow, I already have some ideas (the 5th hook silhouette playing a major part in them
)A special thank you to the concept guys at work (John McCambridge, Neil Richards and Yann Blomquist) as well as Darren Bartley (fightpunch) for helping me push this character past its original design and into this new interpretation.
Replies
none of the weapon designs do it for me at the moment, I would like to see some large roughly sharpened cleaver.
I was thinking about the armour issue after you mentioned it, particularly on the left arm (i.e. whether it was necessary there).
Here is a comparison
By removing the armour I get more resolution and polys to play with on the left arm. As a side effect, it may appear a bit too lacking, upsetting the balance between the right and the left arms. I will start making the low poly tomorrow and come up with a decision then....
Now I think its low poly time
Will the key dangle from his belt as well as the small chain on the right arm?
Just the belt as I don't think there are any bones to support dangling objects around that area (which is why I removed some chain links from that area already).
yep, red version is the best imo and it keeps the colour scheme. The grey version is nice too but a bit too dark for pudge
You are awesome
Cool armor design to go with it as well.
I'd like to see a little bevel on the inner edging of his armor. Feels like you're losing that nice chunky outline when baking down to normal map - it's only just visible in the AO.
Unfortunately, the polycount is tiny and I can't really afford to pull polys out anywhere else. Still got to do LOD1
Just a quick update, attempting to test some of this stuff in game (Playing around with the masks for some of the weapons).
Some Q's. the red glow on the axe, is that due to the Rim value as it looks a lot better on the shot to the right than in the portrait view.
Also, can you view multiple assets at the same time within the client...andddddddd how have people gone about testing their masks without having to constantly insert stuff into the client....Is there a model viewer floating around? (EDIT: It seems there is only the Alien Swarm one around and its a bit of a faff to set up, I guess i'll stick to the client...)
Cheers.
Red glow on the axe: You're correct, that's the rim value (Mask2_Green). It looks like it's picking up each individual spike which is why it looks a bit messy with red. The in-game looks great though.
You can test multiple items in-game at once but there's a whole lot of compiling and stuff you need to do; check a few pages back in the http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=100016&page=101]Dota 2 Workshop Thread it was discussed there.
There's no official Dota 2 SDK yet but the Alien Swarm SDK seems to work with some people and if you're using Maya then in that same thread I linked someone's created a custom shader that, while imperfect, does mimic the Dota 2 shader.
Hope that helped!
No only one object at a time only once you submit your set can you see them together from what I have read anyway, sucks big time i know.
Also heard they don't want to release anything relating to the shader because they are working on other titles that will utilize that shader or a variant of it, so stuck with client on all fronts but, they could make the client better to preview pieces by probably just adding a [+] sign at the import/compiler screen and we would all be happier.
Looking good man, go go go!
Cheers for the help regarding the client and model viewers. Hopefully when the SDK come out it will be quicker to view updates on things like masks.
Some texturing (flat textured in Max). Just balancing out the details. Will move onto skinning and LOD1 now before going back to the textures to give them another look (or a proper second pass).
Isometric:
The bloody parts don't mix in well with the red on the armor the two reds get lost I know this is just a rough but I might as well critic what's shown so perhaps it might be something you can think about when going through the 2nd/proper pass.
I like the update never the less glad to see it coming along.
The contrasting issues are definitely something I have to look into as im hoping that once the lighting system and spec maps are active then this may do a lot of the work for me.
Changes are i'll be getting rid of the red trim completely and instead going for a darker (slightly tinted grey). Right now, its very hard to distinguish between the blood and the red metal areas and I think changing those parts completely will help massively (in a way going back to variation 4 of the colour schemes on the previous page).
My major regret is not having the polycount available on the pauldrons/belt/sacks (700 for LOD0, 400 for LOD1) to be able to get more definition in the silhouette.
Quick paintover to show the belly thing.
Done some texture and spec updates (using Marmoset to test). I've messed with the settings so that I have a similar result to what I can expect to achieve in game (Seems to be a lot of spec on the pudge in game).
Will be loading these into game soon for final submission.
Looks great that's marmoset?
Did you see ace-angles 3dsmax dota shader in technical section? might help a bit didn't test it yet myself.
You'll get a bunch of thumbs up for this once you send it on in.
Nice work, I like it.
Hey, aye I took the spec maps from the existing in-game mesh and copied them over from the R channel to the RGB channel and loaded them into Marmoset. Once I did that, I played with the spec settings to try and match the in-game view and then created all my other spec maps to try and match the existing ones.
Marmoset allows colour spec maps so I used colour in a lot of areas (particularly the blue metal and the blood) however this will be converted to the tint channel for the in-game client. To help ensure that my spec levels remain constant, I used the following Photoshop function (Thanks to one of the concept guys at work who showed me this).
Turning this on and off allowed me to test the specular levels easily without directly affecting the colour.
I saw Ace's DOTAS shader, it looked quite intersting so I may give it a look at some point.
Good luck to everybody else.
Workshop Collection
Really dig this one.