Welbig's (Artais) Workshop

Welbig

On Polycount I use my last name as my forum name but on Steam it is Artais. I have created the "Hidden Talent" (formerly Grand Inquisitor) set for the Silencer that is now in Dota 2, the Fel-Iron Clinkz set, and now the Warden of the Depths Morphling set.

Warden of the Depths Workshop Page
Fel-Iron Clinkz Workshop Page
Silencer WIP Thread
Silencer Workshop Page


Just added my third set to the workshop. If this one makes it in I'd like to make this a full time gig.







Here is a quick few images of my past work for Dota 2:

Welbig

Finished up the concept by doing the bow. I should be modeling tomorrow. I'm going to start by working out the low poly meshes so I know I can do what I want within limits. I'll throw those into the game and see if they work with the animations as well. This set is more ambitious than my last one so I want to make sure it works before I get into sculpting.

Welbig

So I've gotten all the base models created, rigged, and tested in Dota to make sure the whole set works together. I've got the quiver sculpted and baked at this point with a basic color on it. I've learned so much about Zbrush doing this. I'm forcing myself to use it as the primary high-poly modeling tool for this set and it has been a challenge. Now that I have the Zbrush portion of my workflow figured out the remaining four items should go more quickly and then on to real texture work. I'm also glad that I've gotten the rigging done so early in the process because I know already that the meshes work together very well without any major clipping.

Welbig

As a side note, when I get to coloring the set I'm planning on taking the dark steely color and making it more purple. I like the color scheme as is but I really want to make sure that people can buy the shoulders only and still look great with the default gloves for example. I want the surfaces to be unpainted so that it's largely bare metal for this set. That will prove challenging to make the metal appear purple without being able to make a spec color independent of the diffuse map.

Soldeus

I'd say it looks like RS_MetalDust, but maybe I'm wrong. : D

Snowstorm

That quiver is beautiful! Great concept too, would love to see how the style works on the other cosmetics

Welbig

@MdK & Soldeus: It's md_antique_bronze_2 from the zbrush download site.

@Snowstorm: If this set takes off and gets into game I'm hoping to make a similar set for Abaddon and maybe others. It's definitely a fun style.

Welbig

Work on the gloves went much faster than the quiver. The hands held me up some because the concept I had in mind didn't work out with my base geometry I'd already tested in Dota. I have a few concerns about the amount of detail I've put in because Valve doesn't want much of it. It should be easier to read once I put the actual coloring to it. Next up is the helm.

Welbig

Finished up the helm. Looking at it in game I'll have to go back and remove some of the noise from the horns. I'll also need to bring the tips of the horns down a bit so they look better in the portrait view. I'm not happy with the resolution of the horns in the portrait so I'll need to look into that as well. A reduction in that noise should help with the resolution.

Welbig

Here they are. Again this is only the bake information with a color added to make it look more like copper. I was hoping to do more mirroring in the helm but I got errors in the way the normal map was displayed so I had to rework the UV's and rebake. I was surprised how little mirroring I got away with in general, especially with the quiver.

Welbig

The shoulders are now baked and in game. The process was very smooth but job hunting and interviews took precedence in the last few weeks. The shoulders look really great in game and I managed to really make the UV space work for me. I also fixed the texture issues with the horns in game as well. I reduced the white in the hammered metal, increased the black where the metal plates meet, and desaturated all of it a bit to help with the display in the portrait view.

Noblebatterfly

steampunk clinkz? lolwut

Welbig

Progress has really slowed now that I've started a new job but at this point it's just texturing with the base I've already created. The bow went very smoothly after all I had learned on the other objects. I'm pleased with how it turned out. I probably wont post until I have the textures completed but hopefully that wont be too long. Now that I don't have to job for a while I should be able to focus more of my non-job time on this.

Vayne4800

I know it isn't finished, but currently, he is almost camouflaged with the current paint. Otherwise, unique idea and interesting design.

belkun

The models, sculpts and overall bakes all look really great! The textures however, are super boring. I hope you add some more color variation, because the way everything is brown is really lame. Also some sort of directed light would be great (a point-light map or something similar), so it looks even better in-game.

Welbig

Thanks a lot for the input guys. Like MpK said I haven't really started to texture yet. I just wanted to see how it all looked with a very basic metal look. I'm going to start work on coloring it soon. It will look a lot like the concept but I think I'll shift the maroon coloring to more of a dark purple to match his original color scheme. All that has been done so far is the bakes.

Welbig

Well since starting a new job in November and the holidays and such it has been hard to find time to work on this skin but I'm nearly done. It's hard to show updates during the texturing phase because it's a long process where you can't see how it is going to come together until the end. The set is now complete. I just have to do the marketing images and then I can submit the set to the workshop.

Vayne4800

I am very impressed. It reads very well in loadout.

Welbig

Thanks a lot Vayne. I struggled a lot on the mask work for this one.

danjohncox

What were some of those mask struggles? It looks great in the end. was it trying to see how far the mask should go? or just general placement or intensity?

Welbig

Mostly just dealing with metals. I wanted the purple areas to be more of a purple metal but couldn't make that work so I defaulted to purple enamel on metal. Also it was a bit hard to make warn/dirty/burnt metal. It generally just looked a bit too clean and shiny. It all worked out though

Welbig

This is my second submission to the Steam Workshop for Dota 2. The first one was wildly successful and this one has been a long time coming. I really went out of my box by using Zbrush to do all of the sculpts for it. I learned so much working on it and all the time spent was totally worth it. As before I started with a concept I created and worked from there. I created the low meshes in Maya so that I was sure my design would work with the limited polycount available. At this time I also rigged up the items and loaded them into the game. This gave me a chance to see that they all worked together in the character's animations. It helped me to troubleshoot any clipping issues early in the pipeline. From there I took each item into zbrush and created the high meshes and baked it onto the low meshes I had already created. The texture work was pretty simple with the bakes I had made. After that I created a few background items for the Marmoset screen shots for the marketing images. My goal with this set was to make a very evil looking steam punk armor. The character himself is always on far so I thought it would be interesting to make the set look as though it is harnessing that power. I learned a lot about creating hard surfaces in Zbrush and using that in my pipeline. All in all, it was a great experience.

Fel-Iron Clinkz Workshop Page

Welbig

This is the start of my third set for the workshop. The concept was a long time coming with many many revisions. Changes to the back, helm, and many changes to the shoulders along the way. I've already started modeling and really looking forward to this one.

Pastat7

Woow, this concept seems quite nice atm! Looking forward

GhostDetector

Interesting concept,
Remember that morphling has some water particles so it shouldn't be too detailed. I also think the head piece is kind of small, I think it can get a little bigger.

scottcoates

That clinkz set its really nice but I think the blade on the helmet is a bit unnecessary design wise.

Welbig

Thank you! I just have to keep making time for this.

Welbig

Thanks Ghost, the next step in my workflow is making all the LODs as close to the way the'll be in the final as I can. Then rig them up and test them in game with a solid color. That lets me make sure the concept fits the budget before sculpting. In this case it will also allow me to see if the particles show through in weird ways. I can adjust size at that point.

In any case I'm shooting for the stone to look as though it is floating on the water. The cracks and breaks will help sell the particles coming through to an extent. Rigging tricks will help to sell the floating aspect.

Welbig

Just added this baby to the workshop. I'll get more WIP images added soon but right now I'm just working on getting the final art some visibility.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=449782034