Pior's workshop
grand marshal polycounter
Items available for purchase in the Dota2 store :
Spirit Of The Howling Wolf - a Sniper set with Bright and Dark color variants.
Each item can be set to "Bright" or "Dark" individually from the Armory screen - that means 25 possible combinations !
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20321
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Strength of the Demon Stone - an Earth Spirit set created in collaboration with the Red Moon artist BounchFX for the "New Bloom" Chinese New Year event. It is part of the "Three Virtues" bundle, which includes 2 other sets for Storm and Ember Spirit and a custom HUD.
The Three Virtues bundle :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20379?appid=570&r=1f4
The Earth Spirit set can also be purchased individually :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20368?r=cb
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Treasure of the Deep - a Naga Siren set created in collaboration with Andrea 'Motenai' Orioli, in association with Team Evil Geniuses and pro player Arteezy. The set comes with two color variants for each item - Battle and Ceremonial.
It is released as part of the Treasure of the Elemental Trophy chest. Each time one gets the chest, there is a guaranteed chance to get one of the sets it contains with no duplicates on multiple purchases.
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10740?r=cd
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Treasure of The Defender's Vision, a DotaCinema chest for which I contributed a Venomancer design, Acid Hydra. It comes with color variants and custom mouse cursors !
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10930?r=cd
The Venomancer set can also be purchased individually :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20660?r=c9
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Hello all !
Since I have some time on my hands I started to play with the idea of working on some DOTA items.
I am currently getting my feet wet with a set for Sniper, revolving around the theme of Inuit gear. I think I might have to trim down the volume of some elements in order to not break the silhouette of the character too much tho. Will see ...
Concept sheet :
Rifle sculpt finished (turned the crossbow into a regular musket gun in order to avoid possible problems at the time of submission):
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/pior_ubb/media/pior_sniper_wolf_wip_001_zps1b52be0b.png.html
Blockout for the whole gear set, ready for sculpting :
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/pior_ubb/media/pior_sniper_wolf_wip_002_zps0abd1ee7.png.html
Once this one is complete and submitted I want to work on a courrier or two, and then probably some one-shot items (helmets, weapons ...) in order to keep things fast and fresh. I am also considering doing purely 2d concepts for collaborations with modelers.
I am really enjoying it so far, and browsing the workshop threads here is a pleasure !
Spirit Of The Howling Wolf - a Sniper set with Bright and Dark color variants.
Each item can be set to "Bright" or "Dark" individually from the Armory screen - that means 25 possible combinations !
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20321
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Strength of the Demon Stone - an Earth Spirit set created in collaboration with the Red Moon artist BounchFX for the "New Bloom" Chinese New Year event. It is part of the "Three Virtues" bundle, which includes 2 other sets for Storm and Ember Spirit and a custom HUD.
The Three Virtues bundle :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20379?appid=570&r=1f4
The Earth Spirit set can also be purchased individually :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20368?r=cb
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Treasure of the Deep - a Naga Siren set created in collaboration with Andrea 'Motenai' Orioli, in association with Team Evil Geniuses and pro player Arteezy. The set comes with two color variants for each item - Battle and Ceremonial.
It is released as part of the Treasure of the Elemental Trophy chest. Each time one gets the chest, there is a guaranteed chance to get one of the sets it contains with no duplicates on multiple purchases.
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10740?r=cd
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Treasure of The Defender's Vision, a DotaCinema chest for which I contributed a Venomancer design, Acid Hydra. It comes with color variants and custom mouse cursors !
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10930?r=cd
The Venomancer set can also be purchased individually :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20660?r=c9
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Hello all !
Since I have some time on my hands I started to play with the idea of working on some DOTA items.
I am currently getting my feet wet with a set for Sniper, revolving around the theme of Inuit gear. I think I might have to trim down the volume of some elements in order to not break the silhouette of the character too much tho. Will see ...
Concept sheet :
Rifle sculpt finished (turned the crossbow into a regular musket gun in order to avoid possible problems at the time of submission):
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/pior_ubb/media/pior_sniper_wolf_wip_001_zps1b52be0b.png.html
Blockout for the whole gear set, ready for sculpting :
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/pior_ubb/media/pior_sniper_wolf_wip_002_zps0abd1ee7.png.html
Once this one is complete and submitted I want to work on a courrier or two, and then probably some one-shot items (helmets, weapons ...) in order to keep things fast and fresh. I am also considering doing purely 2d concepts for collaborations with modelers.
I am really enjoying it so far, and browsing the workshop threads here is a pleasure !
Replies
The concept looks awesome and so far the gun looks awesome as well. I do have to say I miss the little crosshair add-on that's being shown on the concept. I think adding this to the side of the gun would add a nice extra detail to the gun that pulls it away from the original design.
Mein : I actually had it all modeled as a crossbow earlier today but couldn't quite shake the feeling that it would run the risk of being refused for being too different from the original set. So for now I am going for a rifle ... but I will very likely do the crossbow variant later as a standalone item later, to see how much freedom is allowed.
As for the crosshair : you are totally right !! And I can very easily put it in now that the simple rifle design accommodates nicely for it, since there are no bow strings getting in the way. Thank you for your suggestion - I will add that first thing tomorrow
the picture of the skills and the attack animation itself.
u would have to chance this all and create the crossbow as arcana item
One thing to keep in mind with the weapon is in Sniper's assassinate animation he puts his eye right up to the scope. So if your scope model extends further back than the default, you will have clipping. I got pinged on that by Valve for my Sniper Rifle and had to redesign.
Although, for you, they will likely do custom animations
Game over guys.
In regards to breaking silhouette, Poir, don't forget that a characters pose in DOTA is just as defining. Seeing a hunched over cape holding a gun screams sniper to me no matter what colour or silhouettes I see. So I would say feel free to push it as long as you keep the larger elements. (cape, gun, scrunched up face)
I do think it'd be nice to find a way to work some red onto his back for the ingame view to instantly read as sniper. It might be unnecessary with his silhouette and animations though...
Looking forward to seeing more progress.
Would be awesome to work with you on something if you go that route down the line!
Bronto, this should answer your question about the slots - I am using a piece of leather at the back of the wolf head in order to control the overlap with the cape.
It's too bad about the crossbow, that could of been really neat! The gun turned out well but the barrel might be a bit too short(initial impression). I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Checked out your webpage too, thanks for the Mudbox settings
Looking forward to seeing your stuff in the workshop!
Cheers.
The detailing is probably a bit too busy at the moment - might have to smooth out some bits later ...
Really cool concept. Keep in mind how it will look from above and behind. If the wolf pelt covers his entire head/back and is grey and white with brown leather, that will stray from sniper's typical reds/yellows. You might want to skew the colors that warm direction or add some accents to aide readability. Same idea for the armor pieces.
Coming along great so far. I really look forward to seeing what else you come up with.
This set is mostly a test tho, so I don't mind it too much if it doesn't get accepted
Update on the sculpt :
Still the tiny knife to do ... and then from there on, retopo and texturing should go fairly quickly. Can't wait to start on the collaborations after that !!
Prophet9, about the Mudbox settings : I have some newer ones that I have been using for some time in Mud2012 now. I am not sure if the brush engine behavior changed after this release, but I'll post them later regardless in case it could be helpful to anyone...
The entirety of the set is now sculpted - I edited the rifle as suggested (longer and with the added crosshair), also did the small single-handed knife holster that might or might not fit within the lowpoly budget ...
Now time for retopo and bake ...
Just offering encouragement!
I am really interested to see what you do with the colour, maybe the wolf pelt may have some paint markings to help bring back some of the characters colour palette.
Great job as always Pior, very happy to see new art from you
I have a question regarding items attached to two limbs (like the forearm and shoulder items in Sniper). Is the polygon count given on the model page true for one element, or should both left and right items, combined, fit within this budget ?
For instance, shoulder is said to be LoD0 500 and LoD1 300. Does that mean that the two shoulder pads combined can add up to 1000 tris ? Or is it 500 total ?
I am a bit confused because I first assumed it was 500 total for both combined, but then the Valve model for the basic Sniper outfit has the two shoulderpads combined weighting in at 672 tris, which is over the 500 limit ...
I understand I could simply test it out with the importer and find out what gets rejected that way, but I thought that maybe someone here might have better information on this subject.
Thanks !
[edit]
Alright ! That was a tight fit but it all worked out. Knife included
Some clean up and geometry tweaks left to do, and then on to the fun part !
Yeah this is Xnormal - I bake Tangent Space normals, Object Space normals and AO in it.
For the base diffuse I have the AO as a main layer, and on top of that I add the green channel data from the OS bake at 50% opacity - this is effectively top-down lighting information. It comes for free with an OS bake, therefore I don't have to setup any complex point light bake at all.
I then knock down the whites a bit, by multiplying a very light grey on top of the main layers. I use #cbcbcb.
Then I add a very faint edge detection on top (the kind that Crazybump can generate - there are also scripts to do that straight in Photoshop too, and I think that Xnormal can generate that aswell. Very faint white on convex edges, very faint black on concave edges.)
Last, I have a gradient map adjustment layer, which allows me to tweak the contrast and add a little bit of warmth.
But at the end of the day, the most important passes are AO and directional really. And of course, being careful during the retopo step - not too tight, not too loose
This is the final diffuse comp - I call that a "whitebake".
When it comes to the Tangent Space normals, I can actually spot a few bending artifacts here and there on this bake
regarding handplane, it also gives you better maps for max or maya
It's a cheap trick, but it's been working well enough for me for years now
Oroboros : now that you mention it, I'll totally try a Lycan color scheme for the sake of seeing how it turns out ! I was thinking grey snow wolf originally but yeah the Lycan colors are worth trying
Speaking of color schemes : Does Valve accept sets containing color variants of a given item ? For instance I could imagine a certain part of a Dota character being colored in two different ways, swapping the primary and secondary colors around without breaking the rules of this given character. Is there any history of such thing being accepted ?
Using the green channel from object space maps has revolutionized my texturing process