Billy the courier

chrisjuuuh

Hey Polycounters,

IN workshop!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=190871184





So i decided i wanted to have a go with the workshop and decided that i wanted to make a courier. Over the alst couple of days I have been designing, modeling and i just finished unwrapping Billy. I was wondering if anyone wanted to give me any feedback so far before i start texturing.



thanks a ton!

chrisjuuuh

worked on the normal map, light map and AO today along with the base colour. about ready to start painting.

Noth

I tried guessing what he would be when I read the title, and thought Goat! Billy Goat. Think this could work too though It doesn't really seem to fit in the current line of dota couriers though. Might just be me though. I think his antenna should be longer.

chrisjuuuh

tbh, i got a bit tired of all the animal couriers and decided i wanted to submit something different. Might get shot down, might get put in....no one knows

chrisjuuuh

On to rigging tomorrow!



rendered in UDK because maya was giving me issues with transparancy

chrisjuuuh

Slight necro of my own post but i figured it was better than making a new thread.

Im having trouble importing Billy into Dota. For some reason the compiler insists that one or more of my vertices has zero skin weights. I have checked both my ground and flying model and i cant find any vertices with zero skin weights...

has anyone run into this problem before? help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Neox

are you using fbx? try smd or viseversa

chrisjuuuh

Yes, I'm using FBX. I'm having trouble exporting with SMD. Do i need the MESA plugin? havng difficulty getting it to work..

EDIT: Looks like Ill just have to install Max and use that exporter.

chrisjuuuh

So, after finally getting an SMD exporter to work in maya I am now having trouble importing the model into dota. I have two main issues:

- Model lying on the floor:

Im guessing this has to do with the fact that i moddeled Billy in maya with +y as the up direction in stead of +z which steam uses. However, after rotating the rig and re-exporting the problem has not been solved.

- arms and legs all over the place:

I have no idea what is causing this. The animations are working fine in maya but in dota everything is flailing around. I can however see small resemblences to the animations i made so maybe all the joints are just getting moved around?

If anyone can help me with this i would really appreciate it. I've put quite a lot of effort into Billy and would hate to see it go to waste.

Spudnik

For the first one, instead of going to File->export, export using the command line in Maya. Then you can add the flag "-up z" which will export your model as if you were using Z as the up axis. To get what you need to put into the command line, open the script editor and go to 'History' and turn on 'Echo all commands'. Leave the script editor open and export your SMD as normal through "File->..." and look at the script editor. There should now be a line that caused the SMD export to happen. Copy that, paste it into the command line and add the '-up z' flag with the other flags. My 32 bit Maya isnt working right now so I can't show you exactly unfortunately but this is what worked for me in the past.

chrisjuuuh

cool thanks, another quick question i have is wether it is possible to export the mesh as an smd? so far all ive been able to manage is to export the animations and ive have to export the mesh as fbx. I think it might help if everything is in the same format.

Spudnik

Doesnt really matter. I've been doing the FBX mesh + SMD animation and it's worked for me completely fine so far. Exporting SMD meshes from maya is a bit more difficult iirc, but there should be tutorials out there.

chrisjuuuh

So i tried exporting via the command line but i cannot get it to work. As far as i can tell this is the line which innitiates the export command:

file -force -options "fbx" -typ "FBX export" -pr -es "C:/Users/r3ality/Desktop/Dota2mods/Billy/Dota Files/Billy_Ground.fbx";

However, Wherever i place the "-up z" flag It just gives me an error. Am i using the wrong line?

I should also note that simply setting the FBX export setting to Z up exports a model with Y as the up axis. What?!

Spudnik

Oh, I should have made it clear that this is for the SMD exporter. My bad. For FBX, you can just go into the options (Export [Option Box] -> set FBX as file type -> hit "edit preset" and look for Advanced Options -. Axis conversion in the window that pops up.

chrisjuuuh

Ye i tried exporting it that way and the result is an exported file which still has y as its up axis. I have no idea why..

Would it maybe be possible to have a skype convo with you to see if we can figure it out?

Spudnik

My 32bit Maya isn't working unfortunately and I've been just trying to remember how I did it when it was working. Another alternative that has worked nicely for me before was to export from Maya as FBX, import into Max, re-export as FBX. For some reason that fixes some errors I had when straight up exporting from Maya.

chrisjuuuh

Im using 64 bit, could that be the reason its not working?

btw, this is what it looks like once i do actually manage to import something. sorry for the small image but dota doesnt let you zoom in to the preview.

chrisjuuuh

Billy is live!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=190871184

gordon13

How did you end up fixing the z up issue? We're having trouble with this.

chrisjuuuh

gordon13 wrote: »

How did you end up fixing the z up issue? We're having trouble with this.

I think I ended up Keying the joints in a pose. Then detaching the skin in that same pose. Rotating the joints and skin to have Z up in stead of Y up. and then reskinning them. This required some additional touch up in the animation but I think thats how i did it.

MagnoHusein

Hmmm well, to be fair the eyes and cap makes him look off dota's style, looks like he is a 90's robot.

The animations looks like he has no weight at all, or just has a roller under his feet. I guess those are some major points that I had to leave a critique~ it's always important to follow the game style.