Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls - art dump
polycounter
hi polycount,
it's been a while since i've posted, so it's rad being able to share some of my work from Diablo 3 and the new expansion, Reaper of Souls.
the first batch of images i'd like to share is a collection of hero armor sets.
each hero gender uses aligned base geometries called NKD, LIT, MED and HVY. these are constructed by the character team and serve as a base for each hero armor. the helmet and shoulder pads are then added to help distinguish a unique silhouette.
any and all feedback is welcome, i hope you enjoy.
kill.npc@gmail.com
it's been a while since i've posted, so it's rad being able to share some of my work from Diablo 3 and the new expansion, Reaper of Souls.
the first batch of images i'd like to share is a collection of hero armor sets.
each hero gender uses aligned base geometries called NKD, LIT, MED and HVY. these are constructed by the character team and serve as a base for each hero armor. the helmet and shoulder pads are then added to help distinguish a unique silhouette.
any and all feedback is welcome, i hope you enjoy.
kill.npc@gmail.com
Replies
Were they painted from scratch or were there highpoly bases for baking base maps?
Awesome work, man. I can't even tell you how stoked I am to see each new Crusader set as I sloooooowly progress through the game.
Are these top class gear?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/192198/D3_Armor_DH_M_CRobinson.png
I want to know i don't play diablo 3, touched 1 and enjoyed it for a time but that was it.
all of the hero armors i had made were hand painted using Photoshop. in a few cases, i had used Maya's paint projection tools to block-in more complicated themes across seams.
i know one of our newer demon hunter armors were baked from a sculpt. separate textures are used for the helmet and shoulder pads but, a hero's armor uses a 512x256. often times, a belt buckle will usually be created with about 16 pixels or so. but, depending on what the armor's concept looks like, a sculpt might actually be advantageous.
that being said, it is more common for us to use sculpts for monsters and large creatures.
the armor on the far left is the highest tiered armor before the expansion armors were added. actually a number of armors i made not shown here were "transferred" across genders and classes. the red and black "Nephalem Sets" were heavily based on the original barbarian armor set, created by Aaron "Goons" Gaines and concepted by Trent Kaniuga. Goons had also made the base hero skin, geos, and unwraps, for the male demon hunter and he did a fantastic job. as it turns out i never created many female demon hunter armors, so i tried to compensate by adding in my Nephalem transfer set for the male.
thanks a lot for all of your comments guys.
here is an assortment of some of my favorite weapons and items i had made. these were a ton of fun to make, enjoy.
kill.npc@gmail.com
email me at kill.npc@gmail.com
"There is no cow level" ?
Great to see some work from you Cory.
Boring software question: does anyone paint in 3d painting apps there? 3dcoat/mudbox?
aside from the character models created by and for the cinematics team (Tyrael, Deckard, Leah, etc.), no high-res sculpts were made for our in game hero characters.
there were a few high-res hand painted versions created at one point. they had been intended to be used in a rad dialog window, which you can see in the world wide invitational video.
unfortunately, it was decided it would be too expensive a feature. a lot of dialog was planned, so not only would a number of npcs need to be up-resed but, if we wanted the hero to wear the same armor they were wearing in game, we would essentially have to up-res every item from the waist up - and don't forget about skinning and animations. video games!
the Diablo team primarily uses Maya and Photoshop, and a few artists prefer using ZBrush. other teams at Blizzard might use entirely different packages. either it makes sense, as they know what they are doing, or they are trying to ramp up and grow as artists by learning new software.
the majority of Blizzard folk use ZBrush for their sculpts - i'm sure some use mudbox, i couldn't say.
ultimately, each artist uses whichever approach and technique they are most comfortable with given it's license is approved by production.
in some cases it will make sense to create a sculpt, like with the portal guardian. the concept was a large organic rock creature with multiple light sources. it made sense to use ZBrush to create the monster and bake the lighting in rather than hand paint it.
Suppose you're not allowed to post any flats?
nope, sorry.
the pics aren't there any more
thanks for the inside.
Would be nice if some of your environment guys give
a short inside about there stuff ^^
**edit just saw page 2. Hope you get them back up. Thanks
Awesome to hear. As long as the pipeline is fully nailed down and each artist is aware of the final state their geo needs to get to, I can't see why more studios do this. Casting a larger net and such.
I have to ask, when painting such crazy details into such low resolution textures are you guys working at the final rez when painting the source asset in photoshop? Or are you guys working at larger rez and downscaling?
a set standard to how an artist is supposed to generate the end result hasn't been defined. artists are free to work the way they want so long as it wasn't obviously counter-productive. so long as it makes the grade, it gets approved.
since the hero armors are so many, they've naturally fallen into a templated process, this and considering the middle ground where all the character artists' styles meet, i think, made working 1-1 make the most sense.
so like, one advantage might be that you could easily borrow other elements from other textures, like gloves or pants as a base, if need be. because the textures are so small, and the established texture treatments from other artists, if you do work large and scale down, chances are good you'll need to go in and pixel paint anyway. your boots will have to work with his gloves, etc.
earlier on textures were a bit looser and even smaller in size. but those sizes were increased and ultimately what resulted from that increase were more detailed textures. a higher standard of fidelity in textures began to increase along with the introduction of camera zooms and close up character views in the start menus.
i think the darker tone of the expansion pushed this aspect even further, increasing the acceptance of textures that looked more "grounded".
cheers