Is that supposed to be a magic crystal in the middle? It looks so small even close up I think you could stand to beef it up a bit . I think it would just turn to a little red line in-game almost like some sort of graphic issue
So, heres some pointers about the animation, I know you aren't an animator, but maybe this will help you in the future.
So in forming a strong idle, or any animation for that matter, you want to keep in mind 3 things.
-Silhouette
-Weight
-Timing
Now when talking about silhouette, its not really about the silhouette of the character, but how you warp the silhouette you have to represent something else or invoke some kind of emotion. Right now the pose is very static. Start by having her accurately hold the weapon, move the legs in, spin the toso a bit. With your initial pose, Think about it as an action figure. Play with it until something really strikes you as "wow".
Once you have a base pose, you are going to want to give it accurate weight. This usually comes from shifting some objects either up or down, usually the waist/pelvis, clavicles/wrists. You really want the viewer to understand that "woah this is heavy". The axe at the moment, doesn't seem to be holding the weight it should be. Tilt one of the edges up or down, to really give it a weight, then adjust the alternate hand to counterbalance the feeling. Slight toso tweaks always help here, showing strain and strength in the character.
Finally timing. So once you have 2 or 3 really strongly silhouetted,and weighted poses you are going to want to get some kind of timing to reflect the character. Right now your timing isn't too bad, but it seems very cyclical which is where you want to be once you have some kind of driving motion. At the moment its kind of a "perpetual motion machine" deal, where there's no indication of whats is making her move, I can assume its breathing, but I want you to really really illustrate that "she is breathing" Exaggeration is a major pillar of animations, keep pushing it till you break it then just bring it back a little. This driving motion will help reinforce your cyclical movements and to achieve this, you are just going to want to work on your poses.
It's not a bad start, and I can tell that once you work on your poses you will definitely be able to pull off some cool stuff. Good luck man!
@Sukotto: The gem will have a glow particle that should make it more noticable.
Particles or not, it's not really worth having visible geometry there when it is that small. I think you should make it larger regardless of whether or not there are particles. Otherwise you are just wasting polys. If you have polys to waste then I would suggest taking the poly limit into account more when designing items. I would also center it more in the opening.
Aside from that, I like the overall design of this weapon.
Alrighty! Been a strange ride working on this item. Not only was it daring in terms of sillhoutte, but we added a floaty gem in the middle of it, the watcher's eye. Added a custom load out animation. Nothing too fancy but we believe it is better than the default one. Tweaked some of the animations that were clipping the weapon or had the weapon clipping the floor a bit. Finally, attempted to add a particle effect but found out that it requires a bit too much effort since LC doesn't have particles enabled by default as her default weapon doesn't even have it. So decided to show how it will look with a simple particle and if people like it, hopefully Valve can easily add it.
Continuing work on my first set that was planned for Spring 2014 event. Managed to finish off Lod0 for all parts, UVW and some early diffuse and bakes. No masks yet. Rigging and lod1 still need work. Some more work on lod0 too to eliminate gaps.
Some progress on Abaddon set which was concepted by Foxclover. Getting almost done basically. Any crits are welcome. (excuse the scarce amount of screens, one, since I am tired atm).
Things to do:
- Clean up skinning.
- Some minor, and unnoticable, uv tweaks.
- Another pass on textures.
- Small tweaks to masks, especially blade and shoulders.
- Some value and color tweaks.
Let me know if you have any suggestions or feel free to tell me what you think.
The semi muted colors really work tremendously with the neon horse emissive!
I think if I was to critique, I would suggest pushing the material difference between the gold and the blue a bit more, just so it Pops! But really thats's all I got. Great work!
Nice, really nice! The armor is lacking a bit of the blue/cyan hue of the original which leaves you with two ways - go with more of a look of the original or purposefully go the other direction and go with a more purple hue. Personally, I think I'd like both quite a bit. Either way, a few more painted in highlights and hue shifts on the armor will do wonders.
Here is the ward which was concepted by Shock and modeled by Andumy. I did the rigging and animations. A lot of thanks goes to Prophet9 for his guidance in animation.
Finished the Ember Spirit blades by Doubleleaf. Tomorrow promo thumbs will be done and submitted.
One note is that the particles system for Ember is bugged. Since it both forces a vertex based particle and the default weapons particle when importing. So I had to override that with an empty ember weapon particle which worked fine. Thanks to Yuri and T_Vidoto for their help on this matter.
And they are done. I decided to add a cold and hot crack versions of the blades since I got mixed opinions about them and I personally have a hard time deciding.
So I have been working on something completely new for sometime. Based on a concept from a new artist, I finished putting in the main features of this Sven set. Next step is refining, detailing and working on the weapon. I would like to point out that the armor is of a stone type and not metal.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 2400x870.
I believe this is my best work yet and would like to know how you guys feel about it.
Finally it is finished. My first set ever (and Foxclover's first too!). Special thanks to Stefco for assisting in the final stages. Also special thanks to Motenai for his Marmoset walkthrough. Most of all, thanks for this awesome community who helped me reach this far!
This set looks really great! Really like a lot of different colors, like this gold parts. Pretty good fits to this hero! I'm 100% sure this set will be in the game! Good luck!
Alright, I think the sculpt is finished for this Sven set. Will start boring stuff soon (retopo, UVW,...etc), so any criticism before I commence would be appreciated.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 3200x880.
I think that the sword (middle part) is just too simple for the rest of the blade. Its basically one squiggly line going from top to bottom. As for the belt, I don't really understand why there are rocks on the sides. having that would cause sven's innards get poked all the time plus .
The horns looks a little big maybe make it smaller just a bit.
The last thing would be the cyclops eye. Its not that its a bad idea, but sven wears a helmet. Meaning that you need little eye holes where the eyes are suppose to be.
I think that the sword (middle part) is just too simple for the rest of the blade. Its basically one squiggly line going from top to bottom. As for the belt, I don't really understand why there are rocks on the sides. having that would cause sven's innards get poked all the time plus .
The horns looks a little big maybe make it smaller just a bit.
The last thing would be the cyclops eye. Its not that its a bad idea, but sven wears a helmet. Meaning that you need little eye holes where the eyes are suppose to be.
I agree with the horns being a tad too big, not a big fan of how it 'flows'. I don't think the cyclops eye critique is valid though, specially when we have this helm ingame. There are no 'requirements' for Sven head slot items to function like a helm.
Anyway, the sculpt looks good! I think that the sword details could be a bit sharper though.
My latest approach to baking better and cleaner maps (especially normal maps). Credits go to both Prophet9 and Nannou for sharing their knowledge with me.
Note: This is based on 3DS Max. Sorry maya/Blender/Modo users. Though I guess someone can pick up something useful from this.
Previously, I used to make cages from base low poly model by making them bigger through push modifier. Later it proved finiky for some projects with acute angles. It was a lot of pain as well to set up. Now that is when I compared it to using Ray Distance. It basically eliminates the need to use a cage. The time to getting a bake ready is pretty fast with this method. Now the issue with it is ofc that the ray distances are uniform everywhere. Meaning you cant capture both tight and wide areas at the same time.
I don't want to get too technical now as I myself haven't fully understood normal maps despite lots of reading and watching videos about it.
This method uses theoretically both a cage, or a virtual cage, and ray distance techniques in one go. Giving me an easy yet clean bakes compared to other methods I tried.
2: Have both your high poly and low poly models in 3DS Max.
3: Make a copy of your low poly. If it isn't a mesh, then add a "Edit Mesh" modifier.
4: To the same low poly copy, add a "Projection" modifier. In it, go to Cage tab and Tick "Shaded" and then in Push, increase Amount until you see the cage covers both the high and low poly models. You can tweak the projection mesh by clicking the plus sign next to Projection modifier and clicking cage, then going into vertice control (the three red dots under Selection tab in the same modifier). Though the movement of the vertices is pretty much free and not constraint to the normals. Still never had an noticeable issue doing so. Feel free to feedback otherwise.
5: When you are happy with the projection model. Go to Export and choose SBM as export format. The following window with a lot of ticks to choose from. Don't worry about them. Just click Export High Definition Mesh and Low Definition Mesh, respectively. So you will have two SBMs; The high poly one and the Projection Low Poly (Do not export the original Low Poly!!!).
6: Start up Xnormal and load both high and low poly SBMs as your high and low models for the bake. Make sure you choose Tangent Space in the Normal Map settings and have the Y-Channel at +Y (as Handplane plugin apprently bakes it inverted with -Y despite the setting in XNormal is being set at +Y).
7: Go to "Tools" in Xnormal and choose the Ray Distance Calculator. Choose your SBM and hit "Go". Notice it will calculate the Ray Distance (Duh!) based on the low poly cage. Stop it when the numbers are reasonable or basically give good results. You might need to re-iterate here for a bit. Generally though, don't let it calculate for too long (5-15 seconds are usually good) or you will get wierd results. Press "Copy Results" and then "Close"
8: I take it you would be familiar with Xnormal, so you would have your output folder and map size already set up. At this point, you can bake away!
9: You might need to repeat steps 4 and 7 to achieve better results. Though, through my experience, this method had me do the least amount of trials to get a good bake vs a hand made cage or purely using ray distance.
Please, if you find any errors in what I wrote or would like to add more information to this, then feel free to reply.
Replies
Can you give me a link.
here:
http://www.andrea-orioli.com/UtilitiesDL.rar
Can you show me how to use and insert it to ps.
So in forming a strong idle, or any animation for that matter, you want to keep in mind 3 things.
-Weight
-Timing
Now when talking about silhouette, its not really about the silhouette of the character, but how you warp the silhouette you have to represent something else or invoke some kind of emotion. Right now the pose is very static. Start by having her accurately hold the weapon, move the legs in, spin the toso a bit. With your initial pose, Think about it as an action figure. Play with it until something really strikes you as "wow".
Once you have a base pose, you are going to want to give it accurate weight. This usually comes from shifting some objects either up or down, usually the waist/pelvis, clavicles/wrists. You really want the viewer to understand that "woah this is heavy". The axe at the moment, doesn't seem to be holding the weight it should be. Tilt one of the edges up or down, to really give it a weight, then adjust the alternate hand to counterbalance the feeling. Slight toso tweaks always help here, showing strain and strength in the character.
Finally timing. So once you have 2 or 3 really strongly silhouetted,and weighted poses you are going to want to get some kind of timing to reflect the character. Right now your timing isn't too bad, but it seems very cyclical which is where you want to be once you have some kind of driving motion. At the moment its kind of a "perpetual motion machine" deal, where there's no indication of whats is making her move, I can assume its breathing, but I want you to really really illustrate that "she is breathing" Exaggeration is a major pillar of animations, keep pushing it till you break it then just bring it back a little. This driving motion will help reinforce your cyclical movements and to achieve this, you are just going to want to work on your poses.
It's not a bad start, and I can tell that once you work on your poses you will definitely be able to pull off some cool stuff. Good luck man!
@heboltz3: Great feedback! Will work on that!
Particles or not, it's not really worth having visible geometry there when it is that small. I think you should make it larger regardless of whether or not there are particles. Otherwise you are just wasting polys. If you have polys to waste then I would suggest taking the poly limit into account more when designing items. I would also center it more in the opening.
Aside from that, I like the overall design of this weapon.
Without further adieu...
The Watcher by Vayne and Stefco
(Link on Thumb Image)
Would love to hear opinions.
Things to do:
- Clean up skinning.
- Some minor, and unnoticable, uv tweaks.
- Another pass on textures.
- Small tweaks to masks, especially blade and shoulders.
- Some value and color tweaks.
Let me know if you have any suggestions or feel free to tell me what you think.
The semi muted colors really work tremendously with the neon horse emissive!
I think if I was to critique, I would suggest pushing the material difference between the gold and the blue a bit more, just so it Pops! But really thats's all I got. Great work!
@heboltz3 and Spudnik: I am definitely looking into the areas that you highlights. Thanks for the highlight.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=258023948
[ame="
Note that that sculpt snapshot uses the dotamat. So some detail aren't showing up due to the bloom/light intensity.
One note is that the particles system for Ember is bugged. Since it both forces a vertex based particle and the default weapons particle when importing. So I had to override that with an empty ember weapon particle which worked fine. Thanks to Yuri and T_Vidoto for their help on this matter.
Igneous Crystal & Shard by Vayne and DoubleLeaf
We hope you like it.
So I have been working on something completely new for sometime. Based on a concept from a new artist, I finished putting in the main features of this Sven set. Next step is refining, detailing and working on the weapon. I would like to point out that the armor is of a stone type and not metal.
I believe this is my best work yet and would like to know how you guys feel about it.
So Thank you and kindly vote!
[ame="
Yes yes yes!!! Great work man, really stunning execution!
[ame="
The horns looks a little big maybe make it smaller just a bit.
The last thing would be the cyclops eye. Its not that its a bad idea, but sven wears a helmet. Meaning that you need little eye holes where the eyes are suppose to be.
I agree with the horns being a tad too big, not a big fan of how it 'flows'. I don't think the cyclops eye critique is valid though, specially when we have this helm ingame. There are no 'requirements' for Sven head slot items to function like a helm.
Anyway, the sculpt looks good! I think that the sword details could be a bit sharper though.
Finished baking! Thanks to Chris and Nannou for their insights on Normal map baking magic.
Note: This is based on 3DS Max. Sorry maya/Blender/Modo users. Though I guess someone can pick up something useful from this.
Previously, I used to make cages from base low poly model by making them bigger through push modifier. Later it proved finiky for some projects with acute angles. It was a lot of pain as well to set up. Now that is when I compared it to using Ray Distance. It basically eliminates the need to use a cage. The time to getting a bake ready is pretty fast with this method. Now the issue with it is ofc that the ray distances are uniform everywhere. Meaning you cant capture both tight and wide areas at the same time.
I don't want to get too technical now as I myself haven't fully understood normal maps despite lots of reading and watching videos about it.
This method uses theoretically both a cage, or a virtual cage, and ray distance techniques in one go. Giving me an easy yet clean bakes compared to other methods I tried.
Ok lets get to it!
1: Setup XNormal to use Handplane: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=133144
2: Have both your high poly and low poly models in 3DS Max.
3: Make a copy of your low poly. If it isn't a mesh, then add a "Edit Mesh" modifier.
4: To the same low poly copy, add a "Projection" modifier. In it, go to Cage tab and Tick "Shaded" and then in Push, increase Amount until you see the cage covers both the high and low poly models. You can tweak the projection mesh by clicking the plus sign next to Projection modifier and clicking cage, then going into vertice control (the three red dots under Selection tab in the same modifier). Though the movement of the vertices is pretty much free and not constraint to the normals. Still never had an noticeable issue doing so. Feel free to feedback otherwise.
5: When you are happy with the projection model. Go to Export and choose SBM as export format. The following window with a lot of ticks to choose from. Don't worry about them. Just click Export High Definition Mesh and Low Definition Mesh, respectively. So you will have two SBMs; The high poly one and the Projection Low Poly (Do not export the original Low Poly!!!).
6: Start up Xnormal and load both high and low poly SBMs as your high and low models for the bake. Make sure you choose Tangent Space in the Normal Map settings and have the Y-Channel at +Y (as Handplane plugin apprently bakes it inverted with -Y despite the setting in XNormal is being set at +Y).
7: Go to "Tools" in Xnormal and choose the Ray Distance Calculator. Choose your SBM and hit "Go". Notice it will calculate the Ray Distance (Duh!) based on the low poly cage. Stop it when the numbers are reasonable or basically give good results. You might need to re-iterate here for a bit. Generally though, don't let it calculate for too long (5-15 seconds are usually good) or you will get wierd results. Press "Copy Results" and then "Close"
8: I take it you would be familiar with Xnormal, so you would have your output folder and map size already set up. At this point, you can bake away!
9: You might need to repeat steps 4 and 7 to achieve better results. Though, through my experience, this method had me do the least amount of trials to get a good bake vs a hand made cage or purely using ray distance.
Please, if you find any errors in what I wrote or would like to add more information to this, then feel free to reply.