Dota 2 - Technical Thread
polycounter lvl 12
Here I propose to discuss matters connected with all kind of problems encountered during process of creation DOTA 2 items.
Ad for starters:
Its probably because some data in FBX file that is ignored by DOTA2 importer, however 3DS_MAX read theme and distort the model, so this data is than passed to exported items. Probably its related to scale.
Most of the time I use SMD files for importing reference stuff with bones.
Try use this plugin to load files:
http://www.wunderboy.org/3dapps.php#max_smd
You can also export directly to SMD using plugin found on that page.
Hope it will be some help to you
Ad for starters:
Can anyone help?
#4727
Its probably because some data in FBX file that is ignored by DOTA2 importer, however 3DS_MAX read theme and distort the model, so this data is than passed to exported items. Probably its related to scale.
Most of the time I use SMD files for importing reference stuff with bones.
Try use this plugin to load files:
http://www.wunderboy.org/3dapps.php#max_smd
You can also export directly to SMD using plugin found on that page.
Hope it will be some help to you
Replies
I still can't get this spear to work, would you be willing to join a google hangout and walking me through it?
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=123397498#
There is very detailed process of item creation from start to previewing it in game.
Give it a try.
btw my memory fails me and there was an technical thread already, but it was never sticked
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=117899
So if any moderator could stick one of those thread that would be most helpful
since I am kinda stuck at texturing, more or less, I am redoing the same object over and over again, trying to improve and all that, I was wondering how you guys texture!
Do you bake pointlights? and how does a good pointlight map look like, and why is a considered good a certain way and bad another. How do you paint certain materials color wise, how do you work in photoshop or else to get the look you want. Feel free to share details and examples.
Couple o days ago someone posted a normal, ao and color map from one of his projects which helped me understand some new things I didnt consider before.
PS: I read Dota2 Textureguide more than once, yes
http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=74779
Try to open new scene. Import smd weapon file. Export that original weapon imported from smd and their bones. If that works you can attach your weapon to original one and delete geometry that you don't need (default geometry). And that should work
It seems to me that if you model anything from the fbx files they provide you are shit out of luck. I'm going to spend the next few days remaking my whole set, but I did come up with a better spear concept so thats nice.
Good to see that your issue was solved, hopefully thing will go smoother for you the next time
Import settings, units -> centimeters.
On the latest Darksiders Contest here on Polycount BoBo introduced great method for creating base for your textures. Here you can look from 02:10:00
http://www.livestream.com/vigilnights/video?clipId=pla_69d386b0-0c57-444a-a1e5-4c820a55e9d2&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
Still you could want to bake one more additional map with point light from single omni light and put it on top of that map. Later you can paint on top of that.
Also I don't follow but I am pretty sure that Anuxi made some livestream with texturing process of her items
Thanks MechBgum for pointing that out. I didn't suppose there was so simple fix to fbx. I was to worried that they were exported with scale parameter somehow. Thanks!
I wonder if that will also help Maya users somehow? Still I trust SMD most
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=123397498#19243
This guide is quite useful. ptrP and ptrN maps are very nice for everything.
Sometimes radiosity normal map is cool, but it take ages to bake so I personaly usually don't bake it.
I don't bake any point light maps. I bake everything in xNormal.
I really don't do anything facy. I take base color from original textures and just well, paint.
if it helps I build off the SMD and export as a FBX.
...well we all know what a headless rubick looks like
I think you can bind most cosmetics to almost whatever bone you want to. watch the uncertainty in this sentence ^^
I did this with a tidehunter back i am working on. It stretches over the whole back and looks weird if only bound to one bone. so I marked couple of vertices to spine 1, another couple to spine 2 and the rest to spine3, no the back moves along the spine when moving.
Try to bind the left hand bracer to a bone in the left hand like the left wrist or so. your model will move in respect to that bone then.
I knew that guide before but now gave it a closer look especialy with the texturing part, and finally my xnormal bakes work correct now, but what about that part with the nDo2 converting of normal into cavity map, seems important for later texturing cause mine isnt yet working out correctly with the highlights. How do I do that without nDo2 ? and what is done in the process ?
I have skined to Head_0 and exported the mask with Head_0 but get nothing.
the normals are all fine, no overlapping uv's, etc. not sure what's causing this, but I get REALLY shitty AO bakes too. Could it be my video card?
Found a tutorial which explains how to do that with xnormal aswell.
http://www.donaldphan.com/tutorials/xnormal/xnormal_occ.html
a bit scrolling and your there. nice for highlights it seems.
I'm having trouble with an item.
I followed the tutorial created by Lennyagony. apparently everything was ok, but when I export to Dota this happens:
The texture was strange in some positions and transparent.
Does anyone have any idea what this could be?
That's weird, because those shells seem to display incorrect shading on 1/2 of their width.
You said that normals are ok and there are no overlaps.
I don't know maybe check those thongs:
- turn backface culling on object properties and see if whole mesh is displaying correctly.
- in UV window select faces and from top drop down menu select inverted faces. Maybe there is no overlap, however some uv chunks can be inverted.
- check if your model don't have minus scale on any axis
- reset xform
- attach it to newly selected item and than render and see if problem will occur then
That's all I can come up with
Wow, what the hell? What are the 23 extra bones for? They're not bound to anything as far as I can tell.
I'd bind the mask to Head_1 but it's weird that there's no default head cosmetic for Rubik? Wasn't the head slot meant to replace the head? I think Anuxi mentioned something like that. But the base model doesn't actually have a separate head. Something's amiss here
Btw. just tested that out, the correct bone is indeed Head_1 and it does replace the full head as is apparently intended
thanks dude, will give these a shot tonight. I had a few more things I wanted to try as well since I didn't really dig deep into this yet, but hopefully it's a straightforward solution.. it's killin' my bakes!
Probably files on the technical requirement page for Rubik are out of date.
The best guess in my opinion would be to decompile his up to date files from game to SMD format using this tutorial:
http://wyksblog.com/getting-started-dota-2-cosmetics/
I already did and they're basically the same ones as the ones on the requirements page. But the reason for that is probably that the decompiler doesn't support all the newer features of *.mdl files. It doesn't extract *.dmx files and also can't deal with vertex animations on the dota2 models.
The original one I wrote uses forfiles, but apparently that doesn't work in XP, so there's another one with the 'for' command as well. I don't think it makes a difference which you use. Make sure you double check the hardcoded short-path for vtf2tga.exe - atm it's looking at the alien swarm directory in Program Files (x86). If you're on win32 you need to change it to say Progra~1; if you installed Steam somewhere else you need to figure that out, etc.
and the one for XP (and 32 bit... just 'cause!)
... basically you save that as vtf_convert.bat or whatever and drag a folder onto the file, profit.
for BLENDER USERS when baking normal maps, the Green channel is inverted for some reason, so be sure to go into Photoshop and fix it
the best way is to go to your channels
click on Green and press ctrl + I
That's weird, which version are you using and what settings for baking? Because to me it looks like the normal map is fine without inverting y
Could any of that find any application for Dota 2 ?
I tried just skinning it to the same bones as one of the default cloths and just left the bones in the same position, that didnt really work i guess because the bones werent anywhere near the geometry?
I tried moving the bones themselves down to the same position as my cloth, the cloth physics work great except my bit of cloth just flew up to where the default one is.
Are we not allowed to move the bones around, or does the ingame importer just use the default bone locations and only imports geometry?
Some screenshots below might help show what i mean.
You are correct in assuming that the engine only uses the bones from their default position. This is because you are only adding a new weapon .smd and not updating the warlock.smd (this actually contains the overall skeletal rig). You'd have to modify warlock.smd and place the bones in a new location, thus creating an entirely new rig.
For this reason, cloth tends to go unutilized on custom content, since it requires a ton of extra back end work.
TL/DR: If you're going to use cloth, use what's already there, don't add your own.
Haha I know, but the problem is I do know how to put texture on things usually, and that techniques works most times, but for some reason it doesn't work at all with the dota 2 models. For me anyways, it could be something with my computer, but I just thought it had something to do with the dota 2 models and only them. This is why I posted it here.
Not sure why you would change the middle line from the sphere, that keeps the same amount of tri's and it's making it more flat. I wouldn't remove the horns from the model, that wouldn't save so much tri's, just collapse the other ends of it like ReverendKsaid.
Also you can collapse one edge from the horns because they are pretty small and you won't even notice it!
I would go for something like this. Symmetry mapping is very important in DOTA2 because of low texture resolution. Having mirrored geometry allows you to have more pixel density on your model. I made some loops yellow, that can be removed after you generate normalmap so the low poly mesh will not intersect to much with hipoly while baking. Also I made blue element that can be disconnected from main model to save some tris that you would spend on connecting vertices. Hope it will help you in some way