Once you showed the Fresnel map stuff I recalled seeing it in the mask guide. They say its used pretty infrequently. Thats good to know how to create one. I went ahead and disconnected and turned off that slot. Is the diffuse warp texture easy to extract per/character? Im wondering if that is something I can just grab somehow as needed.
The reason I asked about the rim positioning is in-game it should be in a pretty fixed position on the character since the camera is relatively fixed. Right now in maya it is hitting the character from y z somewhere Here is what it looks like from the front game perspective in maya. (I plugged in Drew's latest version of the shader). You can see it a little bit hitting the bottom of the feet.
This is what happens when I rotate the model.
This is what happens when I rotate the camera.
I did try freezing and resetting transforms. At the moment Id probably disable the rim light for most working purposes since it tends to get in the way. I guess what would make sense is if the rim effect remain constant if you rotate the model since the scene lights would remain fixed.
Hmm, I starting to wonder if maybe it's a model issue, since some of the latest models are also displaying said issue, I can't say but will need to look into it, also, about extracting the Light-warps, yes it is. Just download CGFScape here: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=26
Start the program and navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\dota, in there you will see a pak01_dir.vpk file, open it with CGF and extract folder you need under materials/heroes/
You then can use VTFedit to convert any file that has the name Fresnel or Lightwrap in it. It should get you what you need.
Once you showed the Fresnel map stuff I recalled seeing it in the mask guide. They say its used pretty infrequently. Thats good to know how to create one. I went ahead and disconnected and turned off that slot. Is the diffuse warp texture easy to extract per/character? Im wondering if that is something I can just grab somehow as needed.
The reason I asked about the rim positioning is in-game it should be in a pretty fixed position on the character since the camera is relatively fixed. Right now in maya it is hitting the character from y z somewhere Here is what it looks like from the front game perspective in maya. (I plugged in Drew's latest version of the shader). You can see it a little bit hitting the bottom of the feet.
This is what happens when I rotate the model.
This is what happens when I rotate the camera.
I did try freezing and resetting transforms. At the moment Id probably disable the rim light for most working purposes since it tends to get in the way. I guess what would make sense is if the rim effect remain constant if you rotate the model since the scene lights would remain fixed.
Thanks again, this shader will be a great help.
Wow thats strange! Definitely a Maya error... Make sure you're not displaying in Viewport 2.0... There's some issues with that, almost exactly like what you're showing.
Actually, what I thought was the rim light was light 2. I will see how the rim light looks without light 2. Sorry for the confusion. Also, it looks like it works without scene lights now as well. Yay! So with scene lights linked and multiple lights enabled I think my first test was all bungled up. I'm putting together a new batch of screengrabs.
The rim light is masked by the first light, which is the skylight... So it should be coming from the sky. But I wonder if it's getting masked by the last light you assigned ( which might not be the skylight ) I'll have to test that out!
That "error" is actually just a warning. It basically just didn't save the light in the proper slot.
I'm working on fixing all of this as soon as possible and adding new features! Btw, do you have an AMD/ATI or Nvidia GPU?
Cool. So I am still experiencing the same issues but it's a bit clearer now that I removed the scene lights. Here's a sample with 6 rim light scenarios.
Had a bit of time to play around with the shader last night in maya. It's looking good, I did have a problem getting the rim lighting to work though. Not all of my objects have their masks set-up yet so things like the skull are over shiney!
You could also make the no-scene-lights option use the camera position itself as an assumed light source, that way you always get a view-aligned effect without having to manage lights in your scene.
I can't get the shader to acknowledge Mask 2's blue channel (tint spec by base) in Max 2010, 2011 or 2012. There's no change in the specular color at all.
And a pic from the example scene:
Tested on nVidia 460 SE and nVidia 680 GTX, 310.64 drivers.
Hmm, I starting to wonder if maybe it's a model issue, since some of the latest models are also displaying said issue, I can't say but will need to look into it, also, about extracting the Light-warps, yes it is. Just download CGFScape here: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=26
Start the program and navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\dota, in there you will see a pak01_dir.vpk file, open it with CGF and extract folder you need under materials/heroes/
You then can use VTFedit to convert any file that has the name Fresnel or Lightwrap in it. It should get you what you need.
So I tried this out today. I did a search for all the lightwarp textures, and attempted to run vtf edit on them but was getting this error:
"Error loading witchdoctor_lightwarp.vtf.Error: File version 7.5 does not match 7.0 to 7.4." on all but one of them.
I noticed that there are only lightwarps for a handful of heroes though and there was one called default_lightwarp.vtf I'm guessing that is the one used for any characters that don't have a custom texture lightwarp if anyone has better luck converting it to a tga.
Yeah that's an error for Maya... I'm not sure why it shows up, it does it in every single profile. It's like a texture loader issue. Hopefully I can find a work-around.
But for now, disable Fresnel warp, and diffuse warp.
I was able to convert the lightwarp texturs with StudioCompiler. After checking out default_lightwarp, it looks on the dark side so I'm not sure if that is supposed to be used for everyone. I set up all the shaders for both characters here using earthshaker's lightwarp and 2 lights (no scene lights). It looks like metal parts are being displayed too dark or not using the masks the same way they are in-game.
Thanks
I was able to convert the lightwarp texturs with StudioCompiler. After checking out default_lightwarp, it looks on the dark side so I'm not sure if that is supposed to be used for everyone. I set up all the shaders for both characters here using earthshaker's lightwarp and 2 lights (no scene lights). It looks like metal parts are being displayed too dark or not using the masks the same way they are in-game.
Thanks
Which metal looks too dark? The stuff from Phantom Assassin? Not sure if you know this already, but it looks like that model uses the "diffusewarp" texture from Drow, a specular exponent of 15, a specular scale of 10, a rim light color of "0.5, 0.6, 0.4", and a rim light scale of 10. Maybe that will brighten things up a bit
-Feel free to add me on Steam. My user is: drewwatts
The maps work fine in game, so I don't think it's a mask problem. It even works in one instance in Maya, that's what makes it extra weird. The shader works fine for my bracers but produces these weird shadowed areas for my cloak and shoulders. I'll post another pic tonight.
Which metal looks too dark? The stuff from Phantom Assassin? Not sure if you know this already, but it looks like that model uses the "diffusewarp" texture from Drow, a specular exponent of 15, a specular scale of 10, a rim light color of "0.5, 0.6, 0.4", and a rim light scale of 10. Maybe that will brighten things up a bit
-Feel free to add me on Steam. My user is: drewwatts
Thanks! I've only started playing around with all the tools and compiling stuff. Are the shader settings for each character something I can dig up from the in-game materials? I'm kind of wondering if the settings are different per/slot item.
These are the results of plugging in the settings. In the middle are the settings you listed, which give a pretty blown out specular hightlight. I adjusted them by eye to match a bit more closely to the in-game on the right but some subtlety is still missing like specular on the hair and pants. The default torso on the stomach is really dark as well. Maybe these are just maya display bugginess. I'll be trying the max version soon.
I know at one point Valve mentioned you could make and modify your own VMT files, but not sure if they still put in support for that.
They said that they would not support alphas for items for heroes that don't natively support it so we might conclude that they wont let us write our own VMTs. It's a bit of a leap, I admit but there it is.
What kind of image do you need for the Ambient IBL? I tried a regular .tga an HDRI and both were giving me errors
They said that they would not support alphas for items for heroes that don't natively support it so we might conclude that they wont let us write our own VMTs. It's a bit of a leap, I admit but there it is.
What kind of image do you need for the Ambient IBL? I tried a regular .tga an HDRI and both were giving me errors
I guess if they like a set enough, they'll enable it so the set can be put on the store?
(Which is a little annoying as I could have really used alphatest in my submission).
I doubt the VMTs will be editable as, as I understand it, the textures for each hero and their items are automatically atlased together into one texture page per player character - so they'll use the hero's base texture VMT settings.
Correct, they did say that, but at the same time, I know based from some info for the previous Beta versions that Valve did quietly add Alpha's for certain models that didn't have them in the first place.
As to if they will keep on changing that or not...we'll have to wait and see I guess? I mean those two posts are almost 10 days apart from one to another, especially when you consider people must have butted Valve to no end about such silly decisions, such as the lack of Alpha for cloth-heavy characters, like Drow-Ranger and Warlock.
Also, the IBL is an ambient cubemap, just go to the Source wiki and it will show you what it look like, it also needs to be in DDS format.
Please note as Drew previously showed, anything that is a Cubemap kind of map (Color Warp as example) cannot be exported from the game since VTFedit, cannot export DDS Cubemap files properly. You will need to make your own, which isn't too hard.
Also, when I mentioned about changing VMT files, I mean more hard values like the Gloss value, Fresnel, etc, since a few random comments here and there indicate you should be able to do that. As to if Valve allows that or not, again, time will tell.
Check if your uv texture set is called the default map1.
I found dota doesn't load textures if uv set isn't called texture and cgfx shader doesn't work if uv set isn't called map1, so pretty much it.
If I'm understanding that correctly, he's saying that the UV set should be named "map1". I tried renaming my UVset but after I did, the 'UV Sets' dropdown menu in the UV editor still shows the old name...
Also, might it have something to do with whether or not your scene is set up for Y-axis up vs. Z-axis up?
Ugh yeah my bad! Maya has some problems renaming the default set for some reason, i managed to rename it but can't remember exactly how. But anyways, easiest way: UV editor window> polygons menu> Copy UVs to UV set> Copy to new uv set optionbox> name it map1 . That worked for me.
Also i have 1 other issue, only 1 light affects the shader and if i add more nothing happens.
Any ideas?
edit: also i'm using Nvidia gtx260 if that is of any help
Ugh yeah my bad! Maya has some problems renaming the default set for some reason, i managed to rename it but can't remember exactly how. But anyways, easiest way: UV editor window> polygons menu> Copy UVs to UV set> Copy to new uv set optionbox> name it map1 . That worked for me.
Also i have 1 other issue, only 1 light affects the shader and if i add more nothing happens.
Any ideas?
edit: also i'm using Nvidia gtx260 if that is of any help
Yeah that's uv stuff is problem with Maya CgFX plugin :V I can't do anything about that.
And make sure you have the active lights set at two, or three!
What's this called? It looks like image degradation or something, these are the 1024.
What can I do in max to fix this? I'm trying to use the shader to work with stuff and I see this and can't put details on the sides that show this, also lights don't help the situation.
Well I don't know if the "map1" UV name is adressed towards the blackness.
If yes, then I have to say all my maps are namend properly and the only UV map I have is called map1. Just as required.
If this is not meant for me, well...
Sadly I can not get it to work.. For some reason it wont recognize and use my normal maps. It just slightly lights up the model, but Its not giving the mesh any detail at all from the normal map.
Also, the rim lights wont display either. I must be doing something terribly wrong.
I've tried pretty much everything. Parameters look ok according to what I see everyone else using. I've tried with using point light and directional light setups. Not previewing in renderer 2.0, and Im using maya 2013.
Any hints?
Edit: Yeah nope tried with multiple files, no history, nada niet nothing. It wont apply my normal maps.
Hi, I'm kinda new here and I must say this is absolutley amazing to see, I'm glad i can finally use something to preview how my work will look before I send it off to the workshop. However, I come from using blender almost exclusively (my personal preference of tools)...so, I decided to grab a student version of 3DS max and give this a shot. Although, i'm kind of at a loss for how to set this up EXACTLY in 3ds max. Sorry, I haven't used 3dsmax/Gmax in many years and while i've gotten to know the program again, but the material system is VERY different since the last time i used it. So when i'm using this shader for the model, how do i make sure the shader is loaded and assigned to the model? Maybe I missed someone explain this somewhere in this thread, if not...it would be great if some of you could enlighten my on the correct process?
What's this called? It looks like image degradation or something, these are the 1024.
What can I do in max to fix this? I'm trying to use the shader to work with stuff and I see this and can't put details on the sides that show this, also lights don't help the situation.
me still love you long time..
I'm not sure what is causing this, generally it's a texture issue, either it's saved in a lossy format or something like that, or the shader it having issues in working with the given texture properly.
Any information you can give us on your end? I could speculate it's a Max/Maya limitation to display the texture with banding, since I noticed this happening alot in the shadows, but not to the extent you're experiencing.
Well I don't know if the "map1" UV name is adressed towards the blackness.
If yes, then I have to say all my maps are namend properly and the only UV map I have is called map1. Just as required.
If this is not meant for me, well...
Honestly, I have no idea again what is happening here, did you try and see if Light 2 and 3 as Drew mentioned is working or changes anything?
Also, what happens if you just apply the material as is, without any textures, are there still these issues? Does it display the mesh as should be, or does it darken for no reason?
Sadly I can not get it to work.. For some reason it wont recognize and use my normal maps. It just slightly lights up the model, but Its not giving the mesh any detail at all from the normal map.
Also, the rim lights wont display either. I must be doing something terribly wrong.
I've tried pretty much everything. Parameters look ok according to what I see everyone else using. I've tried with using point light and directional light setups. Not previewing in renderer 2.0, and Im using maya 2013.
Any hints?
Edit: Yeah nope tried with multiple files, no history, nada niet nothing. It wont apply my normal maps.
I can't confirm if the latest version works with Maya 2013 or not, do you have access to earlier versions of Maya? Even 2012 would be a good test (I can confirm it works in Maya 2011 for example).
Also, screenshot on how you setup the material? Maybe a switch somewhere was skipped on.
Hi, I'm kinda new here and I must say this is absolutley amazing to see, I'm glad i can finally use something to preview how my work will look before I send it off to the workshop. However, I come from using blender almost exclusively (my personal preference of tools)...so, I decided to grab a student version of 3DS max and give this a shot. Although, i'm kind of at a loss for how to set this up EXACTLY in 3ds max. Sorry, I haven't used 3dsmax/Gmax in many years and while i've gotten to know the program again, but the material system is VERY different since the last time i used it. So when i'm using this shader for the model, how do i make sure the shader is loaded and assigned to the model? Maybe I missed someone explain this somewhere in this thread, if not...it would be great if some of you could enlighten my on the correct process?
Replies
Once you showed the Fresnel map stuff I recalled seeing it in the mask guide. They say its used pretty infrequently. Thats good to know how to create one. I went ahead and disconnected and turned off that slot. Is the diffuse warp texture easy to extract per/character? Im wondering if that is something I can just grab somehow as needed.
The reason I asked about the rim positioning is in-game it should be in a pretty fixed position on the character since the camera is relatively fixed. Right now in maya it is hitting the character from y z somewhere Here is what it looks like from the front game perspective in maya. (I plugged in Drew's latest version of the shader). You can see it a little bit hitting the bottom of the feet.
This is what happens when I rotate the model.
This is what happens when I rotate the camera.
I did try freezing and resetting transforms. At the moment Id probably disable the rim light for most working purposes since it tends to get in the way. I guess what would make sense is if the rim effect remain constant if you rotate the model since the scene lights would remain fixed.
Thanks again, this shader will be a great help.
Start the program and navigate to Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\dota, in there you will see a pak01_dir.vpk file, open it with CGF and extract folder you need under materials/heroes/
You then can use VTFedit to convert any file that has the name Fresnel or Lightwrap in it. It should get you what you need.
Wow thats strange! Definitely a Maya error... Make sure you're not displaying in Viewport 2.0... There's some issues with that, almost exactly like what you're showing.
That "error" is actually just a warning. It basically just didn't save the light in the proper slot.
I'm working on fixing all of this as soon as possible and adding new features! Btw, do you have an AMD/ATI or Nvidia GPU?
Anyway thought I'd show my results here:
If I could afford drinks I'd buy one for each of you, Thanks again.
Kudos Apples, nice model you got going there
Aye !nz, in the mean-time, you can send us an E-Cookie :P
And a pic from the example scene:
Tested on nVidia 460 SE and nVidia 680 GTX, 310.64 drivers.
Quick Fix:
3DS Max
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8510078/Dota2/Dota2Hero_Shader_2.0/Dota2Hero_Shader_2.0_Max.fx
Maya
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8510078/Dota2/Dota2Hero_Shader_2.0/Dota2Hero_Shader_2.0_Maya.cgfx
So I tried this out today. I did a search for all the lightwarp textures, and attempted to run vtf edit on them but was getting this error:
"Error loading witchdoctor_lightwarp.vtf.Error: File version 7.5 does not match 7.0 to 7.4." on all but one of them.
I noticed that there are only lightwarps for a handful of heroes though and there was one called default_lightwarp.vtf I'm guessing that is the one used for any characters that don't have a custom texture lightwarp if anyone has better luck converting it to a tga.
Thank you for all the work and effort.
Great job.
Anyone else getting large black areas?
My settings:
More lights even result in larger black areas.
Maya 2012. Latest cgfx. Viewport Renderer. Clean history and scene before rendering.
What am I doing wrong?
But for now, disable Fresnel warp, and diffuse warp.
Not a big deal because I can just re-select It, just a heads up.
@Spudnik, Make sure you have the proper masks setup! Specifically Mask 1. I can't think of why it would be doing that
Also everyone using this shader: Do you use an AMD/ATI or Nvidia gpu?
I was able to convert the lightwarp texturs with StudioCompiler. After checking out default_lightwarp, it looks on the dark side so I'm not sure if that is supposed to be used for everyone. I set up all the shaders for both characters here using earthshaker's lightwarp and 2 lights (no scene lights). It looks like metal parts are being displayed too dark or not using the masks the same way they are in-game.
Thanks
Which metal looks too dark? The stuff from Phantom Assassin? Not sure if you know this already, but it looks like that model uses the "diffusewarp" texture from Drow, a specular exponent of 15, a specular scale of 10, a rim light color of "0.5, 0.6, 0.4", and a rim light scale of 10. Maybe that will brighten things up a bit
-Feel free to add me on Steam. My user is: drewwatts
The maps work fine in game, so I don't think it's a mask problem. It even works in one instance in Maya, that's what makes it extra weird. The shader works fine for my bracers but produces these weird shadowed areas for my cloak and shoulders. I'll post another pic tonight.
You can check a video here.
Thanks! I've only started playing around with all the tools and compiling stuff. Are the shader settings for each character something I can dig up from the in-game materials? I'm kind of wondering if the settings are different per/slot item.
These are the results of plugging in the settings. In the middle are the settings you listed, which give a pretty blown out specular hightlight. I adjusted them by eye to match a bit more closely to the in-game on the right but some subtlety is still missing like specular on the hair and pants. The default torso on the stomach is really dark as well. Maybe these are just maya display bugginess. I'll be trying the max version soon.
VMT files will contain your Gloss number, color, etc. just open them with a Text Editor.
I know at one point Valve mentioned you could make and modify your own VMT files, but not sure if they still put in support for that.
"HUGE THANKS!!!"
that shader is awesome and helped a lot =] great work
They said that they would not support alphas for items for heroes that don't natively support it so we might conclude that they wont let us write our own VMTs. It's a bit of a leap, I admit but there it is.
What kind of image do you need for the Ambient IBL? I tried a regular .tga an HDRI and both were giving me errors
I guess if they like a set enough, they'll enable it so the set can be put on the store?
(Which is a little annoying as I could have really used alphatest in my submission).
I doubt the VMTs will be editable as, as I understand it, the textures for each hero and their items are automatically atlased together into one texture page per player character - so they'll use the hero's base texture VMT settings.
As to if they will keep on changing that or not...we'll have to wait and see I guess? I mean those two posts are almost 10 days apart from one to another, especially when you consider people must have butted Valve to no end about such silly decisions, such as the lack of Alpha for cloth-heavy characters, like Drow-Ranger and Warlock.
Also, the IBL is an ambient cubemap, just go to the Source wiki and it will show you what it look like, it also needs to be in DDS format.
Please note as Drew previously showed, anything that is a Cubemap kind of map (Color Warp as example) cannot be exported from the game since VTFedit, cannot export DDS Cubemap files properly. You will need to make your own, which isn't too hard.
Also, when I mentioned about changing VMT files, I mean more hard values like the Gloss value, Fresnel, etc, since a few random comments here and there indicate you should be able to do that. As to if Valve allows that or not, again, time will tell.
If I'm understanding that correctly, he's saying that the UV set should be named "map1". I tried renaming my UVset but after I did, the 'UV Sets' dropdown menu in the UV editor still shows the old name...
Also, might it have something to do with whether or not your scene is set up for Y-axis up vs. Z-axis up?
Also i have 1 other issue, only 1 light affects the shader and if i add more nothing happens.
Any ideas?
edit: also i'm using Nvidia gtx260 if that is of any help
Yeah that's uv stuff is problem with Maya CgFX plugin :V I can't do anything about that.
And make sure you have the active lights set at two, or three!
thanx a lot!
What's this called? It looks like image degradation or something, these are the 1024.
What can I do in max to fix this? I'm trying to use the shader to work with stuff and I see this and can't put details on the sides that show this, also lights don't help the situation.
If yes, then I have to say all my maps are namend properly and the only UV map I have is called map1. Just as required.
If this is not meant for me, well...
Sadly I can not get it to work.. For some reason it wont recognize and use my normal maps. It just slightly lights up the model, but Its not giving the mesh any detail at all from the normal map.
Also, the rim lights wont display either. I must be doing something terribly wrong.
I've tried pretty much everything. Parameters look ok according to what I see everyone else using. I've tried with using point light and directional light setups. Not previewing in renderer 2.0, and Im using maya 2013.
Any hints?
Edit: Yeah nope tried with multiple files, no history, nada niet nothing. It wont apply my normal maps.
Any information you can give us on your end? I could speculate it's a Max/Maya limitation to display the texture with banding, since I noticed this happening alot in the shadows, but not to the extent you're experiencing.
Honestly, I have no idea again what is happening here, did you try and see if Light 2 and 3 as Drew mentioned is working or changes anything?
Also, what happens if you just apply the material as is, without any textures, are there still these issues? Does it display the mesh as should be, or does it darken for no reason?
I can't confirm if the latest version works with Maya 2013 or not, do you have access to earlier versions of Maya? Even 2012 would be a good test (I can confirm it works in Maya 2011 for example).
Also, screenshot on how you setup the material? Maybe a switch somewhere was skipped on.
Here you go: