I'm using the Suite for a while and I love it, but I never actually tried it for Dota 2. Since it's geared towards PBR, it may be a bit weird to work on something more stylized, but it's definitely possible. A Dota 2 preset would be absolutely perfect, but for now, it's not really optimized for Dota's workflow IMO.
A bit off the topic but I would like to mention something, maybe it will help me and many others.
One concern that I have for using this sort of tools that convert tangent space normal maps to other type of maps(cavity,diffuse,Ao,etc) is that the generated maps amplify the seam line breaks that are generated from tangent space normal map.
Tangent normal map obviously has very obvious seams if used as just as a texture and "based on my understanding",it is supposed to be that way since it's not a texture map, it's a vector representation in 3D space. Now if u turn tangent normal map to smth else u have practically used it as a texture, therefore you will receive ugly seem lines.(and sometimes color flips along the seam lines)
OK let me make it easier, maybe I'll make sense.
Please take a look at picture below from one of my recent projects:
As u can see when using OS normal maps, there is no seam line whatsoever, but there are some very clear and obvious and ugly seam lines and color flips when using TS normal as a texture and if TS normal is the base for another map, more or less the seam lines still appear.
now from what I've seen almost all the softwares "ndo2,crazybump,knald,mindtex" convert TS to other maps which means there is no way to get rid of those seam lines unless you poly paint them at the very last stage.
Now back to topic:
yes u can use them but keep in mind what I just said
1. Select empty spaces on your rendered UV with Magic Wand Tool 2. Select>Modify>Expand>Expand by 1 pixels 3. Choose the layer (cavity, for example), press delete 4. Then go to Filter/xNomral/Dilation and set something like 32 or whatever you want.
It usually works in almost cases for me, if texture resolution is about 2k-4k.
I am starting to use it as well, they do have a DOTA 2 preset that spits out the correct files (as far as I know).
Beyond that I suspect it's just like any other 3d painting suite... you can poly-paint in it and since hand-painting in 3d can be done in other programs (like mudbox) and other users utilize mudbox works just about the same. Would suggest using painting layers for the hand-painted stuff after you have your base schemes based on maps.
@bounchfx do you have any good information/examples of building stylized materials? Good examples of how you used existing maps to capture shading/etc to get to a good starting point for hand-painting?
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One concern that I have for using this sort of tools that convert tangent space normal maps to other type of maps(cavity,diffuse,Ao,etc) is that the generated maps amplify the seam line breaks that are generated from tangent space normal map.
Tangent normal map obviously has very obvious seams if used as just as a texture and "based on my understanding",it is supposed to be that way since it's not a texture map, it's a vector representation in 3D space. Now if u turn tangent normal map to smth else u have practically used it as a texture, therefore you will receive ugly seem lines.(and sometimes color flips along the seam lines)
OK let me make it easier, maybe I'll make sense.
Please take a look at picture below from one of my recent projects:
As u can see when using OS normal maps, there is no seam line whatsoever, but there are some very clear and obvious and ugly seam lines and color flips when using TS normal as a texture and if TS normal is the base for another map, more or less the seam lines still appear.
now from what I've seen almost all the softwares "ndo2,crazybump,knald,mindtex" convert TS to other maps which means there is no way to get rid of those seam lines unless you poly paint them at the very last stage.
Now back to topic:
yes u can use them but keep in mind what I just said
1. Select empty spaces on your rendered UV with Magic Wand Tool
2. Select>Modify>Expand>Expand by 1 pixels
3. Choose the layer (cavity, for example), press delete
4. Then go to Filter/xNomral/Dilation and set something like 32 or whatever you want.
It usually works in almost cases for me, if texture resolution is about 2k-4k.
Beyond that I suspect it's just like any other 3d painting suite... you can poly-paint in it and since hand-painting in 3d can be done in other programs (like mudbox) and other users utilize mudbox works just about the same. Would suggest using painting layers for the hand-painted stuff after you have your base schemes based on maps.
@bounchfx do you have any good information/examples of building stylized materials? Good examples of how you used existing maps to capture shading/etc to get to a good starting point for hand-painting?