Just decompile the original fish, compile your model, rename it to the fish, put it together with the fish's skin file into the respective dota-directory with vpk-overwrite on and load tide into a game without items on his offhand/fish slot.
Oh and obviously rig the model to the proper fish bones
I havent decompiled stuff in a while, gonna reinstall GCFScape and I think there was a program called crowbar or studiocompiler for compiling? will try to figure this all out tonight. Thanks a bunch!
I havent decompiled stuff in a while, gonna reinstall GCFScape and I think there was a program called crowbar or studiocompiler for compiling? will try to figure this all out tonight. Thanks a bunch!
If this can be done with the vpk override you might be able to use the compile from the importer, just rename all these to the fish name, and just use the cloth file from the decompile with that Vovosunt mentioned
haha. If you work out the process/software, post a little tut here! I'd love to understand the process, being that I've not attempted to decompile myself.
I'd love to know how to get the animations into maya!!
I compiled my tentacle with the in-game importer, decompiled the dota vpk with GCFScape to get the original tidehunter files (tidehunter_fish.cloth (not skin >,<), tidehunter_fish.mdl and so on). I still have it in game, so all my tidehunders drag around a giant tentacle hand XD
@toasty: I suppose you could use MESA plugin and import the mdl? No idea really. MESA barely works to import reference mdl for me, so I pretty much use it only in the worst case scenario.
I actually like the silver more, since Tide's color pallete is on the cool side, with that said (if you guys opt to change it to silver), tinting it blue would probably help aesthetically. Gold, silver, either way I'm looking forward to seeing the end result
Question, since the green area's will basically be glowing, do you guys paint the green on the texture or just let the Mask1 Alpha do all the work with the bloom?
hehe, thank you. I'm curious what others think as well about the colors if anyone else wants to toss an opinion in
for the glowing areas, it's a mix of both. There's definitely green in the texture itself too that way the ball isnt just a flat color, then it's 'boosted' by the alpha channel to glow
I think the gold works because of the red armour plates you have. If you had gone for a green or blue armour you could of had some cool hues in the silver and it might have worked but for how it looks now I like the gold.
Heya all - hijacking Bounch's thread for a sec to share some of the process we are using behind the scenes.
First, a rough texture visualisation pass done in polypaint on the blockouts. This was made in order to solidify everything so that there is no guesswork left to do when it is time for the actual texturing stage. It is also pretty useful for making sure that the top view reads properly, since the 3d blockouts allow for inspection from all angles. Also showing the glow patterns for Rabid :
And then, layout thumbnails put together using the default hero and bear models - later to be replaced by the custom models of the set :
Just thought that this would be interesting to share !
Getting there ...
I've been feeling pretty shitty the last two days, headaches and stomach problems, but still managed to make a little progress. I hope I feel a lot better tomorrow because there is a heeeeeeeell of a lot of work left to do, and I would feel horrible if I dropped the ball this late in the game. Something always seems to come up! haha.
ANYWAY
today we submitted our Blitz storm spirit set to the workshop, take a look if you'd like!
Pior got the summon beargoat into the game as well to test it out, and it looks freaking adorable running around. I'm glad it seems to be working out. Lone Druid himself apparently has tons of freaking issue with getting him into the game and working properly... it's almost as if they don't want people doing cosmetics for him, aha. Seriously, he's a mess , you can't even import the True Form properly, nor do the animations work, etc. It's been quite an experience... I think we can still make the deadline though, assuming nothing nuclear comes up. Volvo pls accept set & give druid a big buff
tomorrow is texture day fun day, as long as I'm not f%$8king bedridden. time to sleep and recover ahhhhhh I hope it works !
Got all the rigging done. Check out how awesome the true form looks when you import it
no, the importer doesnt work. makes things very difficult to test since we have no way of seeing it with animations in game. If you import true form, it goes on the human skeleton. If you use the compiled files and overwrite the true form in the game, it will import but only as a static mesh + jiggle bones for his facial hair. No movement.
3 - extract all without "root" in dota 2 test > dir dota
4 - remove cloth files from the lone druid hero model directory (can create errors with the new models, do this only for true form)
5 - change models and textures with your new ones
6 - delete all pack 1-71 inclouding pack 01
7 - dota 2 test bin > hlmv
make the hlmv path:
"C:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\dota 2 test\bin\hlmv.exe" -game .\..\dota
It's fking complicated but it works.. me and some guys wanted to do a LD set for halloween.. because of the problems with the importing we could not finish it in time..
Hope it helps.. if any1 knows a better way.. they should explain.. (but people who know don't explain).. we could not find a better way..
Oh it doesn't move because the rigging is not correctly applied to the true form.. redo it.. and try to make sure it's correct.. we had the same problem at the start.. then the 3d guy attached the bones again and it worked, it moves in game, and does everything corectly, even the glows can be changed/activated, everything.
Hey KungFuPanda, I really appreciate your help. I tried following all the steps but unfortunately the hlmv won't load any of the models. It gives me the error "Error post-loading model"
Hey guys, so it was a close call, and of course there was more I was hoping to do (that's deadlines, for ya!), but I'm still very satisfied with the end results. Allow me to present my final new bloom entires.
The first is with the talented fudgiewudgie. Fudgie had approached me and was all like 'YO MOTHAFUCKA LETS KICK SOME HINEY', so I jumped out of my seat and did a backflip 360 high five in the air, though seeing as she is several hundred miles away, there was no one to receive said high five, so I just pretended. She does excellent work, so I was excited to work with her. Tidehunter stood out as a hero that needed some love, and is a really cool character so we went with that:
The second set is a collaboration between me and some french man I met outside a strip mall whom apparently knew how to draw pretty well. His name was Pior, and that night he told me my fortune, he said: "You have a lot of work to do. You better get started making some baller ass goats because you're gonna run out of time sooner than you think". I threw quarters at him and hastily ran back to my vehicle, but due to an unfortunate stroke of luck my car battery was dead, I then woke up and remembered I had to finish the set asap because the deadline was looming over me. Also, pizza.
This one was tough, considering the importer issues the game has with LD. We had no real way to rest the Ultimate reliably in game, let alone with his shoulderpad on. I was able to rig and test in maya however with his animations to make sure it moved well, and I was able to overwrite the default ultimate so I could at least see the texture/masks. I give lone druid's importer two thumbs down, but I like the character, and I'm happy with our result. Thank you for BEARing (ramming?) with me through my jibber jabber. Oh yeah, here's the set!
Hope you guys like it! I had a blast outside of the time limit and some health issues. Next year I'll probably do a 3 item hero set and spend the rest of my time playing skeeball and reading through War and Peace.
Been keeping busy/sick/busy over the past little, and I wanted to share some stuff!
First is a collab I did with CiDDi. An Elder Titan set for the Polycount Community Chest Event thing stuff dude person!
I'm really happy with how this came out, CiDDi absolutely rocked the concept then killed it with the excellent Loading Screen.
next up is an LC set I've been working on by myself. It's been a real challenge as I don't have much experience with design or concept work. I enjoy doing it, I just need to learn to be more patient mostly, haha! It's great practice.
The idea is a more light-armored take on LC. More leather, thinner metal, with an asymmetrical back piece and slightly different style of weapon (I love halbreds).
I was just going to post the sculpt and current concept but I figure eh why not show some process too. I'm not great at this so bear with me.
I started with some really shitty sketches that I won't show here, but then decided to do some sketches based on those initial ideas:
then wanted to expand on the helms a bit:
I decided I some aspects of #1 so I decided to see where I could take that:
Of these, I had a few things I liked but chose F. In this one I also tried some shoulder/under shoulder variants but decided that I liked a lot of my original direction and kept closer to that. Here are some others:
In addition to these, I was exploring weapon shapes:
I picked a couple that felt good to me, and continued:
eventually settling on G:
some other small stuff in between, but for the most part that brings us to the current concept:
and as a side thing, a quick sketch of the 'direction' I wanted to go with the back. This is super rough and the flag will not resemble this:
and here's a shot of the sculpt currently:
The weapon is pretty much done so far too minus small updates, all that's left for the sculpt is the back pole+flag and some wear and general polish.
Also holy cow, sorry for the huge dump of text/images. Keep being awesome, everyone! And thanks so much for taking a look.
wooow, so many kind words! It was a great experience to work with such professional and very polite artist as Brent. For now, this is the best looking set which I ever take part in.
So big thanks for Bouch
About LC, I think that you're going very nice, for head slot you chose my favorite design from all. Overall design makes me think about amazon women, and i like it. But the main thing is that you're enjoying the process
lookin great, that LC concept is turning out really nice. You picked E and F to block out from your concept sheet, which were my favorites before i scrolled down to see the blockout. You could maybe push the fur coming out from under the armor on her left side a little more, make it a little larger/bulkier. You were saying you wanted it to be a light armor version of LC though. Keep it up man!
@CiDDi - thanks so much man! @TrevorJ - thank you sir! I'm glad you like it. I think i'm going to still play with the cloth/fur shoulder part and bulk up the fur a bit for sure. it feels a bit too thin to me right now and I want to find a balance between the red and the white of the fur. Thanks again! I love amazon women!
- - - -
another small update. Here's the polypaint and a banner idea. The low poly model is also 90% done and surprisingly in budget for the most part! I'm pretty stoked about that, haha! I can't wait to start texturing.
Looking great!
Maybe add some cloth to the end of one blade to balance the sides out a bit more?
Asymmetry is a really cool idea but it just feels a bit too side heavy right now IMO.
And maybe make the Banners end with a 45 degree edge.
@Vovosunt - I would love to add more but it's a mix of budget constraints + the fact that these are based on in-game items (I want them to be recognized as such) that I haven't altered it more. I actually had a similar suggestion from another one of my friends too! As for the banners edge - I tried both diagonal styles, one sloping downward and the other upward. Strangely enough the upward one balanced out and made it look flat from above! and the other one looked far too much of an angle, but from in-game view the 'flat' one actually read as an angle that felt nice so I went with that. I did try the variations though, thank you!
small update: got the models made and baked:
I have been requested to try something a little more ornate/epic for the weapon so I'm going to do a few more rounds of concept on it to see how I could fancy it up a little, without losing the feeling I have now I hope. I'll use the current one as a style instead and the updated one as the main. Hope to have some stuff to show soon regarding that, then once I find something I like I'll push forward with the texturing. Either way I will test the armor in game soon to see if the rigging works out.
I'm also going to be trying Simplygon for LOD creation to see if it saves some time. I've heard quite nice things about it.
I like B the most, has a really nice flow and the orb adds some extra color, throw some self illumination and a subtle glow on it and it'll be ace. :thumbup:
@AndrewHelenek - Thank you sir! I definitely plan to make that baby glow from the inside out, oh yes.
- - - -
update on the textures. I still need to tweak some stuff, most notably the overall color balance and top down gradient as neither has had a pass yet. I also have yet to touch the flagpole itself, which I'm not even sure will stay that same color, but I plan to add a spike or some shape at the tip of it, and wraps where the flag parts meet the pole. I also still need to do the masks and LOD1s! Hopefully won't be too much trouble, though I will say I'm really excited to see this with some metalness and material definition in general.
Other notes would be that I'm also going to see what the shoulderpad looks like scaled up ~50%, as right now it's far smaller than her default shoulders (which is kind of what I was going for - a more light armored approach), but the size difference might be a tad much atm... we'll see! Lastly I also plan on touching up the interior imagery on the flags, as while I do like the border shapes I have, the interiors are rough and placeholder-y. Not sure how much I want to change them though outside of polish! hehe. Apologies for the wall of text, just wanted to share some insight
Looks amazing so far, but are you sure, you don't want to make this flagpole into a javelin ? Or it would be a bit too much like Motenai's set? It's just it would fit this set so well. And the metal part of it may be facing either way, I think
Jlem - I gave it a shot but unfortunately it didn't work out due to a mix of look and poly constraints. Plus the way it fit in behind her, it has to curve to 'work'. Great idea though, thanks for the suggestion! Luckily I managed to find something I was happy with and moved on.
quockhanhlk - thanks man!
- - -
so I just realized I forgot to post the pretty much done version. doh. I don't have images immediately ready but you can see it in marmoset HERE
the spec/masks aren't really showing properly in the viewer so I recommend turning it to albedo only mode, but you get the idea. I will probably do another small pass on the diffuse before submit, but I'm pretty happy with how it looks in game.
that being said, I've been working on the loading screen and it is also at a point where I am about ready to call it done. It's been quite an adventure for me since it's my first loading screen and I had to learn a lot along the way.
I did a couple of poses/angles, but I always had a clear idea in mind of what I wanted to go for. Here's the one I chose:
>>fast forward>>
after painting a little, I wanted to do a value study to try to achieve a similar level of contrast as some of the valve illustrations, so I made myself a little scene to adjust in. This is an older iteration of the load screen but it demonstrates what I mean:
lastly, here is a gif timelapse of the progress I made, starting with the first idea sketch to where I am now. I'll post the final one sometime soonish I hope, I might make a couple small touch ups on it but I don't plan to make any drastic changes.
great jorb mang! Cool to see the gif progress, I did the same thing for value reference with the tarot card i was working on, those Valve images are so freakin good when you start to break them down.
figured I should post at least a small update. I did another little pass on the textures and some unification, as well as did the skill icons. They might get slight more touching up once I remember what I wanted to do with them. Hoping to submit sometime soonish. Been too busy on the side. Plus mothers day! uh oh! Am I right? ... hehe
Replies
Oh and obviously rig the model to the proper fish bones
I havent decompiled stuff in a while, gonna reinstall GCFScape and I think there was a program called crowbar or studiocompiler for compiling? will try to figure this all out tonight. Thanks a bunch!
If this can be done with the vpk override you might be able to use the compile from the importer, just rename all these to the fish name, and just use the cloth file from the decompile with that Vovosunt mentioned
I'd love to know how to get the animations into maya!!
@toasty: I suppose you could use MESA plugin and import the mdl? No idea really. MESA barely works to import reference mdl for me, so I pretty much use it only in the worst case scenario.
And as for LD progress... let's just say I'm not sleeping until the 19th...
Thanks for looking, time to zzzzz for a few minutes !
booooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunch
For the tide, maybe change the colors to silver instead of gold.
thanks Potm!
Question, since the green area's will basically be glowing, do you guys paint the green on the texture or just let the Mask1 Alpha do all the work with the bloom?
for the glowing areas, it's a mix of both. There's definitely green in the texture itself too that way the ball isnt just a flat color, then it's 'boosted' by the alpha channel to glow
First, a rough texture visualisation pass done in polypaint on the blockouts. This was made in order to solidify everything so that there is no guesswork left to do when it is time for the actual texturing stage. It is also pretty useful for making sure that the top view reads properly, since the 3d blockouts allow for inspection from all angles. Also showing the glow patterns for Rabid :
And then, layout thumbnails put together using the default hero and bear models - later to be replaced by the custom models of the set :
Just thought that this would be interesting to share !
Getting there ...
about composition - i like penultimate from right column
I've been feeling pretty shitty the last two days, headaches and stomach problems, but still managed to make a little progress. I hope I feel a lot better tomorrow because there is a heeeeeeeell of a lot of work left to do, and I would feel horrible if I dropped the ball this late in the game. Something always seems to come up! haha.
ANYWAY
today we submitted our Blitz storm spirit set to the workshop, take a look if you'd like!
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=375242803
and some progress on LD:
Pior got the summon beargoat into the game as well to test it out, and it looks freaking adorable running around. I'm glad it seems to be working out. Lone Druid himself apparently has tons of freaking issue with getting him into the game and working properly... it's almost as if they don't want people doing cosmetics for him, aha. Seriously, he's a mess
tomorrow is texture day fun day, as long as I'm not f%$8king bedridden. time to sleep and recover ahhhhhh I hope it works !
thanks for looking!!
Polycount pornification. :poly136:
Just wait until it's year of the pig.
Got all the rigging done. Check out how awesome the true form looks when you import it
1 - open gtfscape > open
2 - find pack01_dir.vpk in dota dir
3 - extract all without "root" in dota 2 test > dir dota
4 - remove cloth files from the lone druid hero model directory (can create errors with the new models, do this only for true form)
5 - change models and textures with your new ones
6 - delete all pack 1-71 inclouding pack 01
7 - dota 2 test bin > hlmv
make the hlmv path:
"C:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\dota 2 test\bin\hlmv.exe" -game .\..\dota
It's fking complicated but it works.. me and some guys wanted to do a LD set for halloween.. because of the problems with the importing we could not finish it in time..
Hope it helps.. if any1 knows a better way.. they should explain.. (but people who know don't explain).. we could not find a better way..
Oh it doesn't move because the rigging is not correctly applied to the true form.. redo it.. and try to make sure it's correct.. we had the same problem at the start.. then the 3d guy attached the bones again and it worked, it moves in game, and does everything corectly, even the glows can be changed/activated, everything.
also, i'm pretty sure I'm dead inside right now
The first is with the talented fudgiewudgie. Fudgie had approached me and was all like 'YO MOTHAFUCKA LETS KICK SOME HINEY', so I jumped out of my seat and did a backflip 360 high five in the air, though seeing as she is several hundred miles away, there was no one to receive said high five, so I just pretended. She does excellent work, so I was excited to work with her. Tidehunter stood out as a hero that needed some love, and is a really cool character so we went with that:
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=377796655
The second set is a collaboration between me and some french man I met outside a strip mall whom apparently knew how to draw pretty well. His name was Pior, and that night he told me my fortune, he said: "You have a lot of work to do. You better get started making some baller ass goats because you're gonna run out of time sooner than you think". I threw quarters at him and hastily ran back to my vehicle, but due to an unfortunate stroke of luck my car battery was dead, I then woke up and remembered I had to finish the set asap because the deadline was looming over me. Also, pizza.
This one was tough, considering the importer issues the game has with LD. We had no real way to rest the Ultimate reliably in game, let alone with his shoulderpad on. I was able to rig and test in maya however with his animations to make sure it moved well, and I was able to overwrite the default ultimate so I could at least see the texture/masks. I give lone druid's importer two thumbs down, but I like the character, and I'm happy with our result. Thank you for BEARing (ramming?) with me through my jibber jabber. Oh yeah, here's the set!
Hope you guys like it! I had a blast outside of the time limit and some health issues. Next year I'll probably do a 3 item hero set and spend the rest of my time playing skeeball and reading through War and Peace.
Both of you should make more sets together I'M SERIOUS
srsly though, great works, love how the rambear turn out !
- - -
Been keeping busy/sick/busy over the past little, and I wanted to share some stuff!
First is a collab I did with CiDDi. An Elder Titan set for the Polycount Community Chest Event thing stuff dude person!
I'm really happy with how this came out, CiDDi absolutely rocked the concept then killed it with the excellent Loading Screen.
Elder Titan - Legacy of the Forefather
if you like it, please consider voting on the workshop here: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=410179929
- -
next up is an LC set I've been working on by myself. It's been a real challenge as I don't have much experience with design or concept work. I enjoy doing it, I just need to learn to be more patient mostly, haha! It's great practice.
The idea is a more light-armored take on LC. More leather, thinner metal, with an asymmetrical back piece and slightly different style of weapon (I love halbreds).
I was just going to post the sculpt and current concept but I figure eh why not show some process too. I'm not great at this so bear with me.
I started with some really shitty sketches that I won't show here, but then decided to do some sketches based on those initial ideas:
then wanted to expand on the helms a bit:
I decided I some aspects of #1 so I decided to see where I could take that:
Of these, I had a few things I liked but chose F. In this one I also tried some shoulder/under shoulder variants but decided that I liked a lot of my original direction and kept closer to that. Here are some others:
In addition to these, I was exploring weapon shapes:
I picked a couple that felt good to me, and continued:
eventually settling on G:
some other small stuff in between, but for the most part that brings us to the current concept:
and as a side thing, a quick sketch of the 'direction' I wanted to go with the back. This is super rough and the flag will not resemble this:
and here's a shot of the sculpt currently:
The weapon is pretty much done so far too minus small updates, all that's left for the sculpt is the back pole+flag and some wear and general polish.
Also holy cow, sorry for the huge dump of text/images. Keep being awesome, everyone! And thanks so much for taking a look.
So big thanks for Bouch
About LC, I think that you're going very nice, for head slot you chose my favorite design from all. Overall design makes me think about amazon women, and i like it. But the main thing is that you're enjoying the process
@TrevorJ - thank you sir! I'm glad you like it. I think i'm going to still play with the cloth/fur shoulder part and bulk up the fur a bit for sure. it feels a bit too thin to me right now and I want to find a balance between the red and the white of the fur. Thanks again! I love amazon women!
- - - -
another small update. Here's the polypaint and a banner idea. The low poly model is also 90% done and surprisingly in budget for the most part! I'm pretty stoked about that, haha! I can't wait to start texturing.
Thanks so much for looking!
Maybe add some cloth to the end of one blade to balance the sides out a bit more?
Asymmetry is a really cool idea but it just feels a bit too side heavy right now IMO.
And maybe make the Banners end with a 45 degree edge.
@Vovosunt - I would love to add more but it's a mix of budget constraints + the fact that these are based on in-game items (I want them to be recognized as such) that I haven't altered it more. I actually had a similar suggestion from another one of my friends too! As for the banners edge - I tried both diagonal styles, one sloping downward and the other upward. Strangely enough the upward one balanced out and made it look flat from above! and the other one looked far too much of an angle, but from in-game view the 'flat' one actually read as an angle that felt nice so I went with that. I did try the variations though, thank you!
small update: got the models made and baked:
I have been requested to try something a little more ornate/epic for the weapon so I'm going to do a few more rounds of concept on it to see how I could fancy it up a little, without losing the feeling I have now I hope. I'll use the current one as a style instead and the updated one as the main. Hope to have some stuff to show soon regarding that, then once I find something I like I'll push forward with the texturing. Either way I will test the armor in game soon to see if the rigging works out.
I'm also going to be trying Simplygon for LOD creation to see if it saves some time. I've heard quite nice things about it.
- - - -
update on the textures. I still need to tweak some stuff, most notably the overall color balance and top down gradient as neither has had a pass yet. I also have yet to touch the flagpole itself, which I'm not even sure will stay that same color, but I plan to add a spike or some shape at the tip of it, and wraps where the flag parts meet the pole. I also still need to do the masks and LOD1s! Hopefully won't be too much trouble, though I will say I'm really excited to see this with some metalness and material definition in general.
Other notes would be that I'm also going to see what the shoulderpad looks like scaled up ~50%, as right now it's far smaller than her default shoulders (which is kind of what I was going for - a more light armored approach), but the size difference might be a tad much atm... we'll see! Lastly I also plan on touching up the interior imagery on the flags, as while I do like the border shapes I have, the interiors are rough and placeholder-y. Not sure how much I want to change them though outside of polish! hehe. Apologies for the wall of text, just wanted to share some insight
Thanks for looking!!
quockhanhlk - thanks man!
- - -
so I just realized I forgot to post the pretty much done version. doh. I don't have images immediately ready but you can see it in marmoset HERE
the spec/masks aren't really showing properly in the viewer so I recommend turning it to albedo only mode, but you get the idea. I will probably do another small pass on the diffuse before submit, but I'm pretty happy with how it looks in game.
that being said, I've been working on the loading screen and it is also at a point where I am about ready to call it done. It's been quite an adventure for me since it's my first loading screen and I had to learn a lot along the way.
I did a couple of poses/angles, but I always had a clear idea in mind of what I wanted to go for. Here's the one I chose:
>>fast forward>>
after painting a little, I wanted to do a value study to try to achieve a similar level of contrast as some of the valve illustrations, so I made myself a little scene to adjust in. This is an older iteration of the load screen but it demonstrates what I mean:
lastly, here is a gif timelapse of the progress I made, starting with the first idea sketch to where I am now. I'll post the final one sometime soonish I hope, I might make a couple small touch ups on it but I don't plan to make any drastic changes.
thanks so much for stopping by!!
figured I should post at least a small update. I did another little pass on the textures and some unification, as well as did the skill icons. They might get slight more touching up once I remember what I wanted to do with them. Hoping to submit sometime soonish. Been too busy on the side. Plus mothers day! uh oh! Am I right? ... hehe