Crystal Maiden possible idea

mermelade

Hey guys, I'm really new in this modeling and texture thing but I'm trying to learn the best I can and I wanted to tell you guys that while I was trying to make some items for the Dota 2 Workshop I got into an idea of making an special item for the Crystal Maiden that I think it might be a little hard to make...
It's about making her to stand on a piece of ice and insted of walking she slides around with that floating ice, maybe add some particle effects to it so it looks better, I don't know, but it seems that changing those animations might be hard thing to do. Anyways, I'm just giving the idea, if someone wants to do it, then go ahead!




By the way, Since I'm new to this thing I was wondering if someone could give me a hand on this because I already got a model for an item but I can't figure out how to make an UV map for texturizing it. I have illustration skills, so that won't be a problem, but I don't know how to paint it (I'm using blender for now..) any help on this?

I-ninja

Show us you have what you have first

mermelade

Well it is the first thing I make in my life, It is intended to be the pipe of insight for pudge or maybe to change the little pipe that the tinker has for this one. What do you guys think? and for the Crystal Maiden I dont have anything yet..I don't have any idea on how to make it but i could make a concept.



As I said I'm having trouble making the texture on it, or at least the UV map

bewsii

Without going to far into detail, since that will require a lot of research/practice on your part, you will want to create an ambient occlusion map to give yourself a nice base layer to paint on top of.

But you will in fact need to learn how to UV before jumping right in to painting. There are programs that will allow you to paint on top of a model and ignore UV's, such as Mudbox and zBrush.. but this will not help you with getting an item in to Dota 2 since their engine relies on maps to create what the engine itself can't.

There are a lot of good tutorials out there for creating an item (start to finish) for Dota 2, but I highly recommend not following those if you're new to 3d all together. You want to learn fundamentals before something as specific as making an item for a game. Digital-Tutors is probably the best site online for this, but it's about $40 usd / mo for a subscription. You could also get them free on youtube, but again you will be following really short tutorials that only touch certain aspects.