Katzes All New Workshop
polycounter lvl 18
I'm planning to work more on DOTA from now on.
Not only posting final assets but also a lot of work in progress.
Hope you give some feedback or ask me about my workflow
My latest finished sets:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=265734981
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=292616057
Last posts from the Workshop thread:
Not only posting final assets but also a lot of work in progress.
Hope you give some feedback or ask me about my workflow
My latest finished sets:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=265734981
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=292616057
Last posts from the Workshop thread:
katzeimsack wrote: »Starting a tiny level 4 version.
Concept so far:
katzeimsack wrote: »"finished" the first part (right arm). I will tweak it after i've got all parts this far.
Worked as planned, lowpoly is nearly 100% decimationmaster and texture 100% bake, even the glow was a lightbake in max.
katzeimsack wrote: »
still just baking, I'll add a gradient and a ageneral texturing/readability pass after all parts are finished.
Replies
No masks / texturing yet.
Quite funny to see lvl1 tiny with the big lvl4 head
Are you going to add wolf summons for your lycan set?
VOLVO ADD THIS AND GIFF ME ONE!
But seriously this is the best Tiny set around and it probably will be for a long time.
Keep up the freaking awesome job!
Unless you're going for arcana or bust.
Keep up the great work.
@vertical: Planned
@Insanophobia + Prosomogy + Vovo + pior: Thanks!
@Darren: Actually that's what I planned. I'll probably upload two color variations to the workshop and the let the community + valve decide.
@down_limit: Thanks, if they contact me I wouldn't mind
For the lycan summons, as long as you modeled and skinned them to the original in game skeleton you can rip the in game aminations out with crowbar and feed them back into the workshop uploader in FBX format.
I did this for Beast Master summons. I can explain further if you need more details.
The way I did it was to rip the .mdl with crowbar then load the .smd animation files into 3dsMax. Select all the bones and controllers and then Save out the animations as XML motion files. You have to do this one by one.
After this I loaded the base skeletons as downloaded from the Dota technical requirements site. Again select all the bones and controllers and load these new XMLs onto the skeletons. Save them out individually as brand new .FBX files.
Use these FBX files for the importer. Its a longer workflow but I avoided the errors like this.
Hope this helps!
Still hope valve will fix it one day. Won't help me, but manybe somebody else. Just makes no sense to set animations to required.
Still some texturing needed, but already like the look
I'll upload it to the workshop tomorrow, looking forward to see if people like the different tiny look.
If they do, i've got everything i need to creat the other levels
Finished my presentation scene..
Awesome job dude!
I teamed up with Team Empire and submitted Level 4.
just curious! came out great.
If, or rather, when this gets in, it'll be on the merit of your work alone and not the association with Team Empire who in the past have employed some quite shady tactics on the workshop. I really don't like the idea of them getting payed for not doing any work, but this also perpetuates a trend that the workshop community is trying to fight against where outside organizations wanting to make a quick and easy buck promise 'upvotes/views/etc.' in return for percentage share on an item they had no hand in the making of. Especially since these upvotes/views/etc have absolutely no influence on whether or not an item gets accepted.
but the set looks great mate
Looking forward for the rest of the forms!
Team Empire asked me and I think the tiny especially in the dark/red colors fits perfectly.
I'm still really new to the workshop. I released two sets and 3 items (not counting my two sets last year, that totally ignored the artstyle). I don't have a lot of subscribers and didn't get any set into DOTA yet, even though they were critically acclaimed. So I just want to try out what works for me. Get a few more subscribers, maybe get valve to notice what I'm doing, get some reputation etc.
That's what I was trying to articulate in the last post, great art rises to the top naturally, team/player/organization has very little influence there. But more importantly, votes are not a deciding factor for what gets in vs what doesn't. I've had 2-3 items in the top 100 voted of all time for more than a year now, and they aren't any closer to getting in than something somebody is gonna upload today. What irks me is that guys like Empire are basically getting free money by preying on the insecurities of new/unknowing people.
On the side note what I can say from my experience is that:
- I think votes don't matter I had some sets accepted that had small (~200) number of part votes (positive rating were high however. Maybe that is more important for Valve)
- Most sets are now published in bundles so popularity of single sets in such bundle don't have impact of revenue for that artist (revenue is split equally between all sets in bundle)
- Valve accepts sets that are even 2 years old (my faceless void was accepted after almost 2 years with many other void sets accepted in between). So I would not be surprised if Katze's Timber would hit store eventually
- also one advice at the end that is most important and was mentioned many times by Valve in feedback to users. Ingame view is most important. Gradients, clear forms, not-noisy textures with to much detail, wise distribution of detailed areas on model. I believe this greatly increases possibility to have your set included into game.
Sorry for to long post. I hope Katzeimsack your not mad for this spam ^^'
But I managed to get up without help already with timber and lycan, that wasn't the reason.
Just wanted to try something new.
My timbersaw is place 22 of most liked of all time, probably in the top 5 this year, it has a crazy 175k views and still didn't get in. Not sure if valve didn't like it or just didn't see it, or will add it in a year. Maybe with Team Empire they notice it, maybe they don't. Hard to know.. after all it seems like there is a lot of luck involved.
@Konras: Thanks for the long post
Spend roughly 8 hours on lvl3 tiny and the bake turned out so good, that I'm not sure if I'll spend any time on texturing. I'll check how he looks ingame and in Marmoset tomorrow and then decide.
On one hand, I do agree with Spudnik and Konras - the quality is what matters above all, and I doubt that being associated with an organization makes much of a difference in terms of votes and ratings. (well, unless the votes are "semi-rigged" with some kind of incentive or reward, which I suppose might be a way to inflate numbers, but that's not exactly a good practice and only brings bad reputation anyways). As for a third parties claiming that being associated with them will guarantee that the item will get in, that's just not true - for instance, the ability icons and custom levels that Motenai and I created for our RTZ Naga set did not make their way into the game despite the set being done with EG.
On the other hand ... collaborating with a third party can be a fun experience, as it can bring interesting design requirements and a deadline to stick to. That can be motivating.
But all that being said and after giving it some thoughts over the last few months, I think that a collaboration with (for ?) a third party should really not grant the organization a revenue share. They put zero work into the making of the item, so I don't see why they should get any money in return (the whole idea of 50/50 split "because of the added exposure" is just plain wrong in my opinion)... Having their name attached to a cool custom set is a great value to them already from a brand and marketing standpoint ; If anything, one could argue that third parties should actually *pay* artists for their efforts, as opposed to receiving a part of the revenue cake.
Anyways, that's just my general opinion and it's a bit of a case by case situation. Sorry for the derail
This sums it up nicely.
On the side topic:
Well I cant say I would agree with Pior on that one. I mean I would love to agree but I am afraid that's not possible and teams will never agree on such deals.
It works like this everywhere. If you want to make advantage of someone else brand you need to pay for it. Same thing goes if yu one to make any reference to real people/celebrities in your products. Even in sports for example Nike pays 'Ronaldo' that he will play in their shoes not the other way around. Put this in the perspective we are like Nike, we prepare products, not shoes obviously that they use but sets they play with.
One thing that could be done in my opinion is that deals with pro teams could have an agreement that team will use this set for given time period. Similar to how 'Ronaldo' is obligated to play in Nike shoes
In the end we could also think who benefit from exposure. Team that can monetize their popularity in any way or creator that after successfully set might actually put quality of his work in light?
@ Drew + shock: I guess i have to in order to get a complete set.. Burned tree sounds like a good idea.
I'll be happy when this is over! Uploading one set in Dota is annoying, but uploading 4 levels which all are bascially sets.. Takes ages
I'll release level 1 and 2 together this weekend. Not sure when I'll find the time to release the tree, but it's a single item, so not likely to block the front row.
I don't want to hide them, not sure how this would change my chances to get ingame..
I hope Valve fixes this problem soon. Especially tiny with the massive amount of assets..
Finally finished ALL levels. Fuck, tiny is a hell lot of work..
Still need to do the fucking tree