Dota 2 Noob Challenge - Ideas and Planning
polycounter lvl 7
So, I had this idea for a while, and I begin thinking a bit more about it after adam's thread asking for ideas on how to improve the Dota 2 section, so figured I should create a thread to gather some ideas and opinions, then probably start something up next month.
The basic idea is pretty similar to the 'Monthly Noob Challenge' threads over at Pimping & Previews, where we get a concept and you have a month to finish it up. The main goal is to try to help people out on the general workflow of submitting an item for the workshop, since we are getting new people here pretty frequently, and helping everyone out on ironing the whole creation and submission process would be really great.
The rules and guidelines are also similar to the other threads, which would be something like:
There have been some concerns about people submitting the finished items on the workshop, which is not the point of it, so there are two possible options: the first one is to disallow any submissions to the workshop from the concepts used here UNLESS explicitly allowed by the original artist, but unfortunately there is always the possibility that people ignore this and just submit it anyway. The second option is to only use concepts from items already in-game, so we have a clear goal and even if someone submits it, there's no real risk of it being accepted and people would just call them out.
In short, this challenge would help a lot of the people new around here and on the workshop on getting through the pipeline of submitting an item. It's not a place to "learn how to model" or anything like that, since you're supposed to have some sort of understanding of the softwares you'll be working with, because if not, it would just become a place where people with no experience at all on 3D would come expecting to learn everything under a month, when that's not really the goal, though sharpening your skills certainly is.
I'd love to hear some more thoughts on the idea! Like about the time: do you guys think that one month is too long for a single item? Maybe one or two weeks every month? If it were monthly, we could kinda structure it around 1 week for every major step (planning and base, sculpting, retopology and uvs, texturing and wrap up). About the concepts, do you guys think about making it strictly Dota 2 related concepts or anything that could fit? Anyway, suggestions are highly appreciated!
The basic idea is pretty similar to the 'Monthly Noob Challenge' threads over at Pimping & Previews, where we get a concept and you have a month to finish it up. The main goal is to try to help people out on the general workflow of submitting an item for the workshop, since we are getting new people here pretty frequently, and helping everyone out on ironing the whole creation and submission process would be really great.
The rules and guidelines are also similar to the other threads, which would be something like:
- Try to leave a least one critique every post
- You must make everything by yourself. You can use any reference you need, but no stealing
- There are no software restrictions
- Post your progress on the thread
- Try your best to finish on time
- The finished item should have a promo image and be presented with pictures from both the loadout view and in-game view. Extra stuff like model viewer and Marmoset shots are a plus, though not needed
There have been some concerns about people submitting the finished items on the workshop, which is not the point of it, so there are two possible options: the first one is to disallow any submissions to the workshop from the concepts used here UNLESS explicitly allowed by the original artist, but unfortunately there is always the possibility that people ignore this and just submit it anyway. The second option is to only use concepts from items already in-game, so we have a clear goal and even if someone submits it, there's no real risk of it being accepted and people would just call them out.
In short, this challenge would help a lot of the people new around here and on the workshop on getting through the pipeline of submitting an item. It's not a place to "learn how to model" or anything like that, since you're supposed to have some sort of understanding of the softwares you'll be working with, because if not, it would just become a place where people with no experience at all on 3D would come expecting to learn everything under a month, when that's not really the goal, though sharpening your skills certainly is.
I'd love to hear some more thoughts on the idea! Like about the time: do you guys think that one month is too long for a single item? Maybe one or two weeks every month? If it were monthly, we could kinda structure it around 1 week for every major step (planning and base, sculpting, retopology and uvs, texturing and wrap up). About the concepts, do you guys think about making it strictly Dota 2 related concepts or anything that could fit? Anyway, suggestions are highly appreciated!
Replies
or the everything
So to add to this discussion, I've added a list of people need to know, so the thread won't be cluttered up by, how to start or anything like that. There are plenty or tutorials that show you how to start.
1-basic knowledge of any 3d software (3ds Max, Maya, Zbrush, Blender)
2-basic knowledge of any 2d software (photshop, gimp, paint.net, etc)
3-basic knowledge of shaders (ie. Normal, Color, Specular, Illumination)
Advice: Be familiar with the software you are using, if you are new, then instead of embarking on a project, just fiddle around with settings and test different parts of the software. Look at the software as a whole rather than a tool for something specific. You can discover new techniques and make things much faster than done by hand.
I would also like to discuss about error problems. I've had errors before and couldn't find out what the problem is, so I think we should make a new thread dedicated to errors. Since such thread doesn't exist, i think that we should make the thread after the first competition to see common mistakes people make.
I don't think we should share workflows to the detail, some people might think that it is an all in one workflow loose out on experimentation. If we want to help them on a specific task, we do it only for that specific task. We should not have to answer, how do I model x or?
Of course we shouldn't just tell them make x and y and not tell them anything. We just shouldn't tell them "do this" "click this".
Finally, I don't understand why you wanted to prevent the workshop submissions? Or was the noob challenge meant take from existing concepts.
I think that if this is truly for learning processes, 3 weeks is a good amount of time. Given workflows, painting tutorials, trial and error, life, other items/submissions, jobs and the like.
How would you see this running in the grand scheme of other competitions? I.E The Monthly Unofficial Polycount Compeition, or any other events/challenges that get brought up along the way?
Since this isn't for beginners persay, where would you see the average participants skill in these compeitions? Who would judge them?
Personally I like how "freeform" the learning is that happens in these competitions. It's really organic, and driven via competition and brotherhood, which I'm all about. I think that besides the general "dont submit the item", "make this concept" and "your time limit is X" it should be open for anything the people competiting should throw at it. Learn from the mistakes and move on like a tumbleweed.
@Ghost.
I'm sort of really confused by the majority of your post.. This is just brainstorming, not any type of official thread. The general idea of noob competitions is to get better at your craft, not really produce high quality portfolio work, or submit a killer item to the store.
Although it's friendly competition based on improvement, I don't think it would be worth mentioning anything about software, workflow, or the like or even bringing it up in discussion. These competitions always seem pretty freeform, and the learning from them happens naturally, there shouldn't be any prerequisites besides "use the programs/general knowledge of asset creation." There are enough tutorial threads, I don't think we need another one, and I think that learning your own specific workflow in and out throw tasks such as these is an invaluable process, and definitely worth doing.
Finally there is a prevention of submissions because if everyone is following the same concept, the store could potentially become flooded with entries that aren't up to snuff,and ain't nobody got time for that.
I know that the competition is so you can improve on skills, but still if someone comes up here and says I want to learn 3d modeling, where do I start. What do we do? Do we hold his hand the entire time? Thats why they need atleast the basic knowledge out there.
As for workflows, all i'm saying is to tell them not to follow someone elses' workflow because that make the person tunnel visioned and then the person cannot adapt and/or understand a different method or even why that person is doing what he is doing. But we should tell people the basics because they may miss something important.
The prerequisites was to ensure that people who have no knowledge just come here and ask without doing any work.
The advice was for new people.
The error problems was because new people will get errors, and those should just be archived somewhere so we don't have a million posts saying that X was the problem.
I don't think it's safe to assume that this competition would be for absolute beginners. As Belkun said in his first post
So that infact says there will be no hand holding going on in the competition, just honest feedback, and sharing tips while working on the same piece. So all concerns about beginners should be put on the back burner in spirit of this comp.
I think that you are not wrong in wondering about the amount of "hand holding" that we "should" do on the forum. I think that this is a p.good topic for discussion, and I think that it deserves it's own thread, but clearly stated this competition would not cater towards people with zero knowledge or wanting to learn from scratch.
Sorry for hijacking Belkun!
One month is perfect, has good starting and end points, doesn't get confusing. I think we need to limit everything to one thread and keep it simple. Not everyone works at the same pace, breaking it down into steps could make it difficult for everyone to keep up. Especially if they are new to the process.
I'd almost love to see everyone working from the same concept, we could have one of the veteran concept artist here draft up a single item and everyone could work from that. Each person can then submit it to the workshop. Every month we could feature a new concept artist work to work from. I almost feel there is a potential way to expand the whole noob concept to concept artists as well.
At the end of the day, this is perfect and should be a thing on Dota2Polycount! Well done Belkun!
heboltz3 is right (thanks by the way!), this isn't a place for REAL beginners, the point isn't to learn how to model, texture or whatever, but instead how to do it specifically for Dota 2 and help people get used to the general pipeline of submitting an item and the style we do stuff. I would always have links for Polycount Wiki, the tutorials thread over here and extra guides for creating Dota 2 items. As I said, it's a challenge for people who are noobs on the workshop, not newbies in general, I'd put a disclaimer about this on top of the thread. We would definitely help people with any errors they encounter along the way, which to be honest is one of the points of this.
To simplify stuff, take a look at the 'Monthly Noob Character Challange'. This is the model I'm trying to follow.
I kinda fear that it would die off after most people begin to iron out the general pipeline, but it could also turn out into a thread where people who know the general workflow come just to have fun and see how they keep up with everyone else when working on an item.
@cagdasx44
I don't think that is the point. I mean, if this happened someone with decent knowledge (lets say Motenai, just as an example of an amazing artist) could come here every month and just wreck everyone with a super amazing work. Also, if we went with the idea of only using concepts from items that are in-game, submitting wouldn't even be an option.
It's not a contest to see who makes the best item, but a thread where people help each other along the way of making an item and try to improve their techniques along the way.
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Hip Hip Hooray!
like what i read sofar
It could even work if just a brief was given, rather than an actual concept piece. This way people can become familiar with the workflow, & we can have a variety of original content that some people may want to put into their portfolios.
If you have any links with guides, tutorials or anything that you think may be helpful, just drop it here!
Anyone else that knows any other helpful website, feel free to link it! I'll start to edit the OP here with some of them.
The help is very much appreciated!
@FlashL
Yeah, I thought about doing away with the concepts, but I think that a lot of people have some issues doing decent ones (myself included!), and it could take a long time until people get something that looks good, so I believe that having a concept already and making everyone work based on it would be a lot more helpful for newbies, since everyone would pretty much start on the same level.
Again, thanks everyone for the feedback!
Because you use your time to make a item which already done and you are doing for almost nothing. Because I dont need to do the same item to get critism, I am getting critism on my own thread and I think I am getting a lot better.
Summary: I dont think people like me would wanna spend their time on this if they got another projects on work.
I guess you dont' really get the idea of the contest then. It's not about winning or losing, its about self improvement and improving alongside your peers. That should be winnings enough.
I imagine most people aren't here for gaining earnings, or prizes, or money as a primary goal. It should always be about how you can improve your art and make kick ass things. This contest is a thing to help you with that process while seeing others do the same task.
Practice makes perfect bro.
Then I think the contest is for having fun (which I need to) or "I got nothing to do so why not?".
Time management is a skill.
[ame="
the first one really takes you by the hand and explains how to use blender from not knowing anything till whatever comes last. this got me into the whole modeling business cause it helps you with basic camera movement, basic model steps and precautions and whatnot.
the second one gives you a basic clue on what to expect from dota2 modeling. it took me propably 4 - 6 months to always redefine my workflow but thats where it all started. definetly a very good starting point if you literally know nothing about modeling dota2 items and want to start at least somewhere.
Also I am ready for this event
I've never heard anything about valve hosting a noob contest. But this topic is about polycount's upcoming noob contest. Maybe.
I believe, fom what I've seen in pnp these contests are way less of a contest and more of a sprint of creating an item along side a handful of other greentooths while documenting the process for self improvement and learning. Its not really about exposure or winning prizes. I think it would be neat to mention that we are holding a noob challenge, but displaying the pieces, since tey are practice and probably made after an exisiting item in the store, doesnt really seem needed.
Yes there is a massive update coming in the next few months. We did already discuss the topic of Dota specific showcases, and I think it would be nice to have a "noob of the month/contest" type show case.
As heboltz3 and Insaneophobia said, the contest is not supposed to reward people with prizes or anything, but instead with better skills through the criticism you're going to give and receive. If you believe that the time you're going to spend on the contest isn't worth of the stuff you may learn and the skills you may acquire, then don't participate. The contest is about having fun and improving yourself as an artists while doing so.
@Coyo.Te
Thanks a lot for the resources! Going to save those here for the thread next month
@GhostDetector
Again, this is not about prizes, doing the best item or anything like that, but learning and improving with the help of the Polycount community, something that some of you may be overlooking or underrating. heboltz3 managed to sum it up quite nicely on his last post:
Anyway, if you guys think that it would help, we could recap some of the best submissions of the last month (in this case, recap the best items from the challenge from February on March's challenge), but I still think that it's not about making the best, but learning how to do it.
Kinda throwing together a brief of the challenge using the feedback I got:
A challenge created every month, where a concept from an item (already in-game) is presented to the community, also where everyone with an interest on submitting items for Dota 2 is welcome, though it's extremely recommended that you have an understanding of the softwares you're going to use, since the contest is not about teaching those (though links for recommended guides will be provided). The artists have one month to make an item based on the presented concept, which is creating a base mesh, a high poly sculpt, a low poly (both lod0 and lod1), all of the textures (diffuse, normal and masks), rig it, test it in-game and finally present it with a promo along screenshots from the loadout view and in-game view. That workflow may vary, but as long as the item is working and presented by the end of the month, that means that you beat the challenge. Along the challenge you should post pictures of your progress, while trying to giving critique and help for other artists every time you post.
Did I miss anything? Any extra suggestions in mind?
As always, I appreciate all the help!
I am so reggie for this.
Not sure if I am going to join it, but the idea is amazing and I love you for taking the time to plan it out!
Oh, one more thing! You guys have any items in mind for next month? I was thinking about something simple like some Juggernaut swords or stuff like that, it's even better if we manage to get the actual original concept from the item and perfect if we get a creator from around here to greenlight it.
Everyone is welcome! Though it's recommended that you know how to use the softwares you'll need to create the items, since teaching people how to do it isn't the point of the challenge.
Here are a few really simple Sven and Juggernaut sword from Valve that I suggest to start off the challenge:
Like any of them? Go ahead and post with an image of it as a vote! Don't like any of them? Post another one!
I'd say sven sword numer two has a nice shape!
I agree with Coyo.te - the second Sven sword looks like a good start. Well defined but simple and stylish. With the typical suspects for details like hand wraps and all that. A lot of bread and butter details in there.
Also, maybe we want to consider making these challenges not a monthly thing, but more a sign up based thing? If we hit like at least 5 participants then each contest may start and lasts for a month or something? After all the influx of new artists isn't really uniform over months.
Exaclty because the income isn't uniform I think this is hard to pull off. If I think back to when I started, I wouldn't have waited for some others guys to sign up as well. I wouldn't have participated in the whole thing in that case and would have tried to teach it myself.
Which is exactly what I and probably most of us did. I googled for a tutorial and started. And to be honest I think I had even more fun doing it since I was able to work on my own design...
I still think this challenge is a good idea, if it's well executed.
I believe it would be better to announce the challenge and let everyone start at their own time. As soon as we know of 5 (or any random number of) persons working on it, we close the challenge for more participants. (maybe every participants gets X weeks to work on it. The time starts as they sign up on the forum for it.)
Then we start a new challenge for the next participants.
Might also be a chance to try out some Houdini workflows for asset creation.
Also, im new here Ahoy!
I don't think that any of those items breaks the tris budget, and if they do, it's a nice challenge either way.
On the note of changing the challenge to be signup based instead of monthly, there's no real need for that, since you don't have to start at day 1. You can start at the last day as far as I know, as long as you manage to finish everything before the month's end. Much like the Noob Challenges over at PnP, people come and go all the time. Some people may see it and think "oh, I should try that out", something that I'm doing with the hardsurface challenge for example, and just drop in, finish the designated concept and that's it.
I also plan on maybe making a thread on reddit along the lines of "3D artist interested on the Workshop? Come learn at Polycount's Monthly Dota 2 Noob Challenge!", which would help to get some more people with interest on the workshop so it's not only a couple of participants.
Yup! According to the wiki, all of those swords were created by Valve haha
EDIT
Since it's apparently unanimous, I believe that this sword will be our first challenge! Here's a better picture of it from the model viewer:
Hopefully I get the thread all set up by saturday, and then we can start working!
and that is why they are common items.
steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=221546572
But as models, yeah I don't think they'd be the best to introduce new workshoppers with.
This is my first test item, if it diserve to be called and item haha. I made it only for be sure that the way I will start to modeling is o.k.
I did the color, mask1 and mask2 in photoshop and normal map with nvidia tools (Ps also). The idea is starting to do in the same way (low poly in blender) and then high poly in zbrush/blender for normal maping.
I would like to participate in this challenge, but you didn't say anything about dates for now, right?
Thanks for reading, I'm learning a lot from you, guys!
As soon I get better level and create few items I will start to record some Spanish tutorials because there is nothing our there for dota with blender/zbrush.
Well I will pratice some workflow once I finish my other projects