Gonna call this done! Shall do the promo material over the next few days.
If there's any critique you'd like to give me now would be a good time, before the workshop gets their hands on this!
i dunno if it's just that one screenshot but the camera for the portrait doesn't look very intimidating. doesn't really suggest the scale of the golem or look very imposing
Alright, despite Onilolz intimidation (jking!), I continued to finalize my Disruptor mount. I think I am done with sculpting and will move on.
Please crit if there is any major issues or worthwhile feedback.
P.S. To the pros around here, please less surprises on your work. It is becoming more of a showcase forums instead of a learning/WIP one. So many just post/make threads to show the finished state of their work which doesn't help, IMO, a lot of us who want to learn. (To be clear, this is not directed at Onilolz as he always shows WIPs. Though recently a lot of complete sets that show up out of the blue). /rant over
Heres some progress on the bm boar, Vextrakt did an awesome job with the model, and those bakes came out really well, made it way easier for me to texture.
Couple of ingame wip shots, and from the texture.
Plus a concept for the bird
Edit: Gah.. thanks for the notice, reuploaded on photobucket but it shits up the quality a bit
Heres some progress on the bm boar, Vextrakt did an awesome job with the model, and those bakes came out really well, made it way easier for me to texture.
Couple of ingame wip shots, and from the texture.
Plus a concept for the bird
Edit: Gah.. thanks for the notice, reuploaded on photobucket but it shits up the quality a bit
You (and others!) have been busy! I really like the colour palette on the bird, interested to see how it translates to UV's!
Also, that is some very tidy UV mapping for the boar, looking forward to seeing these all animated!
That BM stuff is looking great. Nice texture work.
I did a little more sculpting today. I'm going to start into the low poly unwrap now. 1500 triangles is pretty good - but 256x512 for the texture map - ouch!
@quockhanhlk - I thought long and hard about this one. At first I wanted to keep it plain, since I believe there is value in having different amounts of detail in different places. In the end though I came up with an idea for a cute little rune and put it there. This also helped with a comment that a friend of mine made that it looked more mechanical than magical.
Unfortunately the texture res on the lock was never meant to have such small detail, so unlike the rest of the golem it's a little fuzzy, but ah well.
@branch - That was the original intention and how it was designed, so that the head would fit into the normal golem silhouette. Now that it's complete I realise I needn't have made it so hard to spot, but ah well. It works for me as it is.
@ike - you were right about the portrait. I've redone it.
All the newest changes, promo images and video are available in the workshop link. I'll probably compile all the wip images in my thread after the dust settles.
It looks good snowstorm! I really want to see how the particle effect would look in the torch basin, I think it'd really change the overall look since my eye is drawn to the coals first and foremost. I think it's a little late for this critique but I'll say it anyway, I think the lock motif looks a little bit too modern looking. I'd stick to old fashioned looking locks since they have such a strong visual appeal, add some readable details, and in my opinion look more like a war lock than a peace lock. Sorry I went for the pun, I had to. I think if you changed that, it'd improve the overall quality of the set, but the question you'll have to ask yourself remains "after I did all this work, is it worth it to change this this and this or move on to my next item?". And that answer is purely up to you. Best of luck! http://bit.ly/18o5HbQ <
link to google search of old looking locks
Got stumped the whole evening by a compiler error that gave no error message. Managed to fixed it because of a post a month ago from Spudnik, and the insight of Prophet9 on the hangout! So damned thankful haha.
Anyway, I've not seen any information on warlock golem rigging from valve, so I'll write something short up here if anyone else is doing and rigging a warlock golem. I decompiled the animations straight from the in-game files as smds and plugged them into the compiler.
However they gave me a sort of descriptionless error, and to get them working i had to reduce the number of bones in the animations to less than 52 as well as make sure both the skeleton in my LOD files and the skeletons in the animation smds were identical. Not sure if it was anything else I did along the way, but that seemed to work.
Note also that the skeleton in the fbx files from the workshop requirements page is not identical to the one in the game - there are extra bones on either the feet or the hands (can't remember) as well as the attachments. The fbx skeleton is over 52 bones as well, so if you do use it you'll have to cut some of the bones away.
its great that you pointed that out
some of the files on the site are OUTDATED, so the best thing is what you made, update dota and decompile the model
So I finally got my model into the game with correct animations (disregard him being in the middle of the floor), the problem for me was that my version of 3ds max var the newest, and I don't think dota 2 supports those yet, so I got Prophet to export them for me and they worked like a charm! I'll probably not finish in time for the competition, so I plan on giving this bad boy some custom animations!
i think the model looks awesome! it has got some great anatomy and an unique and stable look, while still not sticking out of the box compared to the original model.
cant wait to see it with some textures
Vertical - I'm considering doing that too - I'd love to hear about any insights or problems you've had (or are having)
Chat, hangout or another thread perhaps, when you have time?
just a quickie update to say I am still alive, just back home (and away from my rig) for birthday weekend! Gonna get back to Nott's tonight and turn the dial up to 11 so I can get my uni work and my DOTA submission up to a presentable level!
For now, I'll content myself with carving a Lifestealer pumpkin.[pics incoming] because it's Hallowe'en, CYKA!
Also, I'm testing out Maya as an alternative to Max,and doing all the painty stuff in PS/Mudbox
This will be my third object for dota2 and first submission on polycount, so please don't be too harsh on the critic . I don't expect it to hold up to the amazing stuff i've seen in the thread so far, but there.
Disruptor is one of my favorite heroes, and i'm really impressed by the mount onilolz made.
So, how did I make it you ask ?
I'm not great at concept art, so i went on from a very rough basis
Just getting an idea of the basic composition and colors of the original. I then loaded the base model into blender, made simplifications to the original mount mesh and went on with sculpting. I mostly used dynamic topology to work the mesh.
The low poly is then generated from the full sculpt and uv unwrapped.
Animation was mostly fixing the original weight distribution to fit the new model, so we'll go on to texturing. XNormal helped a lot here, and I won't go into detail for the masks. But one thing that helped me a great deal was a custom shader for blender i made beforehand.
The node setup can be found here and here.
Basically, I could get a good idea of the ingame look directly in blender, reducing the time needed for adjustments down the line.
Finally, these are some picture from the texturing workflow, the texture itself and some ingame shots.
Thanks by advance for any constructive criticism. You guys make amazing stuff, and i hope to get to that level one day.
Hmm guys i'm kinda stuck with the golem now
i can import him, but how do I test him in game? as it's the ulti if i'm not mistaken i would need a pretty highlevel Warlock just to spawn him. So how can i add him? My first ideo was to import him as a courier, but no dice, the polylimit of 3000 as opposed to 3500 prevents me from that
kahnibal: very nice mount, the texture feels a bit noisy tho
@vayne: thats the default 2 point light in max right? set up a proper lighting solution would be what i would test at first, because the 2 point never really reads well.
I like the metal detail too, <nitpicking> but I think its a bit over done and noisy. Maybe just tone the normal down a bit on the chestplate? Also with the chestplate being so beaten, the edges are pretty clean :P </nitpicking> looks great regardless!
@vayne: thats the default 2 point light in max right? set up a proper lighting solution would be what i would test at first, because the 2 point never really reads well.
I am still very weak when it comes to lighting in 3dsmax. Can you provide more detail on what you are suggesting or direct me to a reference which I can follow. Thanks.
Also, anyone has any suggestions on if it is possible to move disruptor left hand from the middle to the left a bit. As can be seen on this image:
I like the metal detail too, <nitpicking> but I think its a bit over done and noisy. Maybe just tone the normal down a bit on the chestplate? Also with the chestplate being so beaten, the edges are pretty clean :P </nitpicking> looks great regardless!
i think i have pushed it too far into the diffuse, i'll see if i can use the vertexnormals to mask the oilyness stuff on the metal and not the per pixel normal.
I think this is finished. Nothing spectacular but still I believe it can hold for what it is. The learning process has been great, despite how little I feel it is compared to what there is to learn.
I hope you like it and crit so I can improve for future projects.
My biggest problem with you golem is that you have used none of the color palette from the original golem.
I agree, but why should he? He is big enough to be not mistaken by any other character. I don't think the purpose of the workshop should be to just redo what has been done, there have been plenty of great examples in the store that show how to break the rules and still stay within the universe.
I guess he is close enough. there is at least one other golem in the game, accepted by Valve that breaks the colorscheme entirely. The one made of rock, has no yellowish skin and no metal whatsoever
and looking at this screenshot, we're not too far off
here he is ingame on top as is on bottom with particle previs
Thanks for the help with the console, saldy the command does not work but
dota_hero_level 10
does.
@vayne: i think he could use a few more dark tones, compared to the rider he seems to lack a bit of contrast, but other than that i like him
@Neox - I think the colour looks pretty good personally. I like that it fits warlocks own colour scheme, unlike my own (and the other) golem(s). Also, how did you get that particle effect up there? Is that just photoshop or is there a setting i can play with?
@Vayne - Looks like a solid piece of work to me! Raising the spec exponent on the tail area to reduce the size of the spec highlight there might look a little better though i think.
Vayne: yeah i think it is better now. something is borked up with his normals though i think, the backplate looks strange at the center plate, whats going on there?
@snowstorm: nope sorry just photoshop, wish i could move that emitter.
Just a hunch (that i can't test atm), but maybe try importing the smd animation using mesa and then importing your fbx file? When I import objects with Maya they never replace existing objects with identical names, so maybe the fbx will import and use the animation bones instead?
Neox - your design is wicked awesome - no need to defend yourself on that one.
Well, I'm still stuck in sculpt mode.
I think the problem with this one is it looks kinda malnourished because it's supposed to be a mount but its legs are thinner than mirana's, also its bones stick out of its skin which also make it look frail. I saw someone else made their mirana mount by starting with the original mount and working it into theirs so they could keep it the right sort of size and strength. The second one looks much better though size-wise!
Think I'm almost done with the textures now. Just need to do the masks now, hopefully I will be able to get them ready before deadline. I went for this fiery color scheme, the idea was to have a "prehistoric" feel to it. Hope it works. Learned a lot with skinning this time and next time maybe even feel confident enough to try painting some weights.
Replies
@mdk: came out really nice and clear.!
i dunno if it's just that one screenshot but the camera for the portrait doesn't look very intimidating. doesn't really suggest the scale of the golem or look very imposing
already nice enough
Please crit if there is any major issues or worthwhile feedback.
P.S. To the pros around here, please less surprises on your work. It is becoming more of a showcase forums instead of a learning/WIP one. So many just post/make threads to show the finished state of their work which doesn't help, IMO, a lot of us who want to learn. (To be clear, this is not directed at Onilolz as he always shows WIPs. Though recently a lot of complete sets that show up out of the blue). /rant over
Heres some progress on the bm boar, Vextrakt did an awesome job with the model, and those bakes came out really well, made it way easier for me to texture.
Couple of ingame wip shots, and from the texture.
Plus a concept for the bird
Edit: Gah.. thanks for the notice, reuploaded on photobucket but it shits up the quality a bit
You (and others!) have been busy! I really like the colour palette on the bird, interested to see how it translates to UV's!
Also, that is some very tidy UV mapping for the boar, looking forward to seeing these all animated!
I did a little more sculpting today. I'm going to start into the low poly unwrap now. 1500 triangles is pretty good - but 256x512 for the texture map - ouch!
More progress on my Disruptor mount. Still need a lot of polish
blockout~ any suggestion?
@quockhanhlk - I thought long and hard about this one. At first I wanted to keep it plain, since I believe there is value in having different amounts of detail in different places. In the end though I came up with an idea for a cute little rune and put it there. This also helped with a comment that a friend of mine made that it looked more mechanical than magical.
Unfortunately the texture res on the lock was never meant to have such small detail, so unlike the rest of the golem it's a little fuzzy, but ah well.
@branch - That was the original intention and how it was designed, so that the head would fit into the normal golem silhouette. Now that it's complete I realise I needn't have made it so hard to spot, but ah well. It works for me as it is.
@ike - you were right about the portrait. I've redone it.
All the newest changes, promo images and video are available in the workshop link. I'll probably compile all the wip images in my thread after the dust settles.
The Torchbearer by Snowstorm
link to google search of old looking locks
its great that you pointed that out
some of the files on the site are OUTDATED, so the best thing is what you made, update dota and decompile the model
im going to warn valve about the golem file
Ty for pointing that out
yep guys, its mandatory to post the wip, that is one of various ways we can help the new guys
hahah, its nice on your models that i dont need to see the name to know who made it, you have a well defined style my friend, congrats =]
try to focus more on the anatomy before adding details
for the first blocks could work if you get some anatomy image of the animal from the side and start from there
the parts im missing more that are on the neck and head, they look a little out of proportion
and nice fur you are doing there, fur is something that i think its impossible to do on zbrush, im still trying to learn that magic =]
cant wait to see it with some textures
Chat, hangout or another thread perhaps, when you have time?
Cheers.
For now, I'll content myself with carving a Lifestealer pumpkin.[pics incoming] because it's Hallowe'en, CYKA!
Also, I'm testing out Maya as an alternative to Max,and doing all the painty stuff in PS/Mudbox
[edit, pics as promised]
lowpoly is also ready, baking now
... aaaand baked
i guess is much harder to stay low frequency with details and still be good to go.
Here is my disruptor mount diffuse. Crits are very welcome.
This will be my third object for dota2 and first submission on polycount, so please don't be too harsh on the critic
Fulmen of the Storm by kahnibal
Disruptor is one of my favorite heroes, and i'm really impressed by the mount onilolz made.
So, how did I make it you ask ?
I'm not great at concept art, so i went on from a very rough basis
Just getting an idea of the basic composition and colors of the original. I then loaded the base model into blender, made simplifications to the original mount mesh and went on with sculpting. I mostly used dynamic topology to work the mesh.
The low poly is then generated from the full sculpt and uv unwrapped.
Animation was mostly fixing the original weight distribution to fit the new model, so we'll go on to texturing. XNormal helped a lot here, and I won't go into detail for the masks. But one thing that helped me a great deal was a custom shader for blender i made beforehand.
The node setup can be found here and here.
Basically, I could get a good idea of the ingame look directly in blender, reducing the time needed for adjustments down the line.
Finally, these are some picture from the texturing workflow, the texture itself and some ingame shots.
Thanks by advance for any constructive criticism. You guys make amazing stuff, and i hope to get to that level one day.
i can import him, but how do I test him in game? as it's the ulti if i'm not mistaken i would need a pretty highlevel Warlock just to spawn him. So how can i add him? My first ideo was to import him as a courier, but no dice, the polylimit of 3000 as opposed to 3500 prevents me from that
kahnibal: very nice mount, the texture feels a bit noisy tho
@vayne: thats the default 2 point light in max right? set up a proper lighting solution would be what i would test at first, because the 2 point never really reads well.
I like the metal detail too, <nitpicking> but I think its a bit over done and noisy. Maybe just tone the normal down a bit on the chestplate? Also with the chestplate being so beaten, the edges are pretty clean :P </nitpicking> looks great regardless!
I am still very weak when it comes to lighting in 3dsmax. Can you provide more detail on what you are suggesting or direct me to a reference which I can follow. Thanks.
Also, anyone has any suggestions on if it is possible to move disruptor left hand from the middle to the left a bit. As can be seen on this image:
i think i have pushed it too far into the diffuse, i'll see if i can use the vertexnormals to mask the oilyness stuff on the metal and not the per pixel normal.
highpoly finished.
I hope you like it and crit so I can improve for future projects.
Chrono-Stalker by Vayne
As for the hand placement, I think I will leave it to Valve to correct, if they by any chance decide to take this mount!
EDIT: Updated images with new changes, mainly contrast issues.
I agree, but why should he? He is big enough to be not mistaken by any other character. I don't think the purpose of the workshop should be to just redo what has been done, there have been plenty of great examples in the store that show how to break the rules and still stay within the universe.
I guess he is close enough. there is at least one other golem in the game, accepted by Valve that breaks the colorscheme entirely. The one made of rock, has no yellowish skin and no metal whatsoever
and looking at this screenshot, we're not too far off
here he is ingame on top as is on bottom with particle previs
Thanks for the help with the console, saldy the command does not work but
dota_hero_level 10
does.
@vayne: i think he could use a few more dark tones, compared to the rider he seems to lack a bit of contrast, but other than that i like him
@Vayne - Looks like a solid piece of work to me! Raising the spec exponent on the tail area to reduce the size of the spec highlight there might look a little better though i think.
@snowstorm: nope sorry just photoshop, wish i could move that emitter.
However, just tried decompiling the golems anim, no luck so far
ah now i had luck, forgot to rename the vtx file
sweet, lets export some anims
Well, I'm still stuck in sculpt mode.
And a more manly cat...
I just need to finish something.
I think the problem with this one is it looks kinda malnourished because it's supposed to be a mount but its legs are thinner than mirana's, also its bones stick out of its skin which also make it look frail. I saw someone else made their mirana mount by starting with the original mount and working it into theirs so they could keep it the right sort of size and strength. The second one looks much better though size-wise!
I didn't had much time to join this month, so I only helped Onilolz with the coloring ^^