@kawfee, that sven mask is spot on! i can`t believe anyone didn`t think of such a strong and clear messaged design so far. great work!!!
@Rnjeesus, i like where you are going with that style. are you planning a whole set or just head-sword?
as for my punia cultist hat, i like how it turned out. still need some tweaking in the mask and colors department, but i am happy how it`s shaping up.
I`m having some priblems with the rigging part. for some reason, although i applied the same bones and parameters as valve did, the hat moves way smaller ammounts while the head moves freely... as heads tend to do. any ideas on what bones/weights/other stuff i should fix?
I`m thinking of making it a new shoulder piece as well to match the stype of the simple monk-budhist priest (as seen in picture 2).
Appologies for the HUGE post
Hi all, very nice assets here! I wanted to try this (spent some time searching for an "original" idea that works from top view), now that I've got something let's give it a try!
I will create a head item for Pudge (sorry Danpaz, same character, hopefully it's different enough : )) based on the "head in a bottle/jar" halloween trick.
I guess it will be pretty challenging as we don't have access to parallax in Dota shaders to simulate the "depth" (under the bottle Normal map) but I'll try something.
between trying to figure out how to actually make something in sculptris, and my busy work schedule, looks like i won't finish this month, sadly. i was really looking forward to this too
@Shock - DAMN! That's bad ass. Great job! @Sukotto - Very cool, it fits the hero very well. @Hawt Koffee - That helm fits Sven so well, and feels very spooky at the same fitting both normal and halloween themes. Great job.
I'm running a bit behind this month, but should be able to finish. Here is my completed sculpt. Should hopefully be able to finish up all the technical work tomorrow then texture throughout the week.
welp, i found energy to do some modeling today, thankfully, and now I think I just need to make a few adjustments, then it's on to texturing, and then I have to figure out how to use that VTA group or whatever it is that makes the "jaw" move...
Aitnar, that looks great but I worry about how well those embossments will bake/read at the ingame size and texture resolution. Its always tricky when dealing with any kind of ornamentation or decoration
@Hawt Koffee - Love the eye beams being moved into the mouth! Fits Sven super well! @Shock - Looks really strong! What process did you use for the diffuse textures? Polypaint then bake, or something different? They are really striking.
thanks elwing. this time my pipeline was different then on all my other items.
the modeler did a polypaint as basetexture. but i was not totaly happy with it.
so i used piors whitebake pipeline in photoshop (1. layer ao then on top of it 2. layer green channel of object space normal - for top->down light information - with 50% transparency).
on top of that whitebake i added the polypaint and multiplied it. on top of that i did simply overpaint and coloradjusted what i didnt like. and then in the last layer i added details like the red warpaint or the light grey lines on the borders of each metal material. im also rly happy with the result, but the pipeline to get there was very messy
@Shock- The re-purposing of the normal's green channel to get directional lighting for the map is really, really clever! I can never do flat texture paints cause I get super disoriented. That method could certainly help keep track of what is facing which way when painting a texture.
You can get a similar effect to the edge-lighting you painted in PS in Zbrush by baking a matcap into the polypaint texture. Less controlled then what you're doing but with a nice set of custom matcaps you might be able to get better result from that first polypaint bake thus needing less work in PS. Would really depend which you're more comfortable in.
Here's some concepts as well, with some evolution in design and some shots of us correcting the base mesh:
We decided to scrap the teeth as they didn't read well in game, and her base model teeth do the job we wanted the ruby teeth to do already.
Here's more or less the final design, we got rid of that tooth in the end though.
Making some corrections to the basemesh here with a red line to indicate where some geometry should be cut to, you can see zip made the whole face in the basemesh first to make sure it was all symmetrical and didn't look uncanny valleyish before moving on to the final phases which he shows above me.
Shock and Zipf: Great items guys! But I'm not sure if just lumping in all the WIPs in one post counts; we can't give feedback and see it progress from there which I feel is a major part of these contests. Just my two cents, obviously its up to the mods :P
Made a major news mistake, I forgot to invert the green channel of the normal map on my Chaos Knight head piece. Fixed that mistake and updated the item and page with new pics! I knew something looked off and its looking much better now!
@Sukotto: Looks really nice! The only glaring thing wrong with it is that it is a skull, if you're going to do human skulls you really need to have a "safe" version for china. Valve is very strict about this, and they recently reiterated this rule on a submission from hayes and myself. Good work otherwise!
@Tvidotto: this list is 3 months old so it isn't super reliable, but what about a single item from heroes with 20 or less total items (decompiled of course)? http://i.imgur.com/bfoiod3.png
@next competition theme: lowest crowded back, shoulder or arm slot?
@sukotto, well i did post the steps of the clockwerk in my personal polycount thread and also on the skype group. i didnt want to be annoying with my stuff, so i only made combo post in here (also the head was mostlikly done in not even 1 day, so i couldnt rly stretch it alot more)
I think there was a lot of freedom with this month, it would be good to have a month with real restrictions.
I think a good idea for next month is to have only one hero to work on (a hero that doesn't have many items). That way everybody will have knowledge about the hero and can give feedback for other peoples ideas.
Dark Seer, Huskar, Leshrac, Ogre Magi to name some possible heroes.
we could try going for small sets this month. What i mean is 2-3 piece sets that would compliment Some parts of the heroes. Example: Butcher`s boilers set for pudge.
I agree with danpaz3d with the low raster ideea... too much freedom on heroes brings us back to the overitem-ed ones.
Dark seer sounds good, Leshrac, Booty hunter, Riki, Meepo mby?
@Sukotto: Looks really nice! The only glaring thing wrong with it is that it is a skull, if you're going to do human skulls you really need to have a "safe" version for china. Valve is very strict about this, and they recently reiterated this rule on a submission from hayes and myself. Good work otherwise!
@Tvidotto: this list is 3 months old so it isn't super reliable, but what about a single item from heroes with 20 or less total items (decompiled of course)? http://i.imgur.com/bfoiod3.png
that list is great! we could use it as a base for the next month
I think there was a lot of freedom with this month, it would be good to have a month with real restrictions.
I think a good idea for next month is to have only one hero to work on (a hero that doesn't have many items). That way everybody will have knowledge about the hero and can give feedback for other peoples ideas.
Dark Seer, Huskar, Leshrac, Ogre Magi to name some possible heroes.
I agree with that reduction of heroes, what about we get the list that blades of evil shared and get the lowest ones? the 3 or 4 lowest?
could be
shadow Demon, Venomancer, medusa and storm
Maybe change shadow demon because I believe we used him couple months before
Hi guys, small gif with some steps of the texturing process (in Substance Designer).
I still adjust some things, but will try to achieve the publishing process this evening.
@TVidotto I think we can have one month where everyone makes items for one hero. There'll be a lot more communication and answerable questions because we're all working on the same hero. Venomancer is fairly low on items and new-ish to the workshop, I think it'll be ok.
@Aitnar: thanks, I'm glad you like it
Your sculpt looks really good, just a small feedback for the mesh: the triangles at the bottom left seem to be less detailed than the other parts (maybe add some polygons? Or reduce the size?).
@Uzziel - Thank you! I originally had more polygons there, but had to sacrifice them to the technical requirement gods. T_T I'm right at the polygon limit. It really bummed me out to lose some detail.
Thank you for your feedback. I learned a great deal from doing this model. Any additional feedback is always welcome!
@TVidotto I think we can have one month where everyone makes items for one hero. There'll be a lot more communication and answerable questions because we're all working on the same hero. Venomancer is fairly low on items and new-ish to the workshop, I think it'll be ok.
I think this idea is great but may be too much restriction for the other guys. lets see what they have to talk about it
Should we restrict the next month to one hero?
the good side is that everyone will learn a lot by seeing the others work in progress, like how to work with the color scheme, poligons limitation for the low poly....
Hey all, it's coming down to the wire. I got the model complete and all. Just need to get my import correct and make a marketing image tonight. Hopefully I'll have time to do that. *crosses fingers*
Hey all, not sure if anyone is around, but I need some help. When importing my model onto Death Prophet, my helm isn't fitting right on her head. I nudge it a bit in Max, reset pivot to 0,0,0, reset xform, re-skin, and import. Upon inspection in-game, it's floating just above her head or clipping inside her head. Any ideas?
Update: Hey guys, so I got it to align on first import. However, the moment I switch to Portrait view, the helm moves inside her head. Any ideas or is this a Dota2 bug?
Aitnar,
Portrait view uses Lod0, so it's possible your low is aligned and not your high?
As far as Max, I have never been able to trust xforms so I have always done this:
Delete skin modifier,
Create a cube next to your model. Make it edit poly. Select it and attach your model (this renames your model, either rename the box first or rename your model after).
Then select the polys of the box and delete them.
Now your models pivot and scale are reset (for sure, xforms can't be trusted )
Now select your model, reset pivot only to center of model, align world.
Reskin.
Do it for each Lod and you should be golden.
==========
If that doesn't work the DP you have may be outdated... re-dl and or decompile)
Sorry, I'm not too clear on next month. Is next months hero already decided?
more or less, we had a good suggestion about using a chart of the heroes with less cosmetics but we are still deciding the number of heroes. There was another suggestion about making it just one hero but personally I believe that is too much restriction
Finished listing the entries this month, please check on the second post (first page) if I am not missing anyone
I disqualified one entry for posting on the second day of the month the finished item, I believe that broke the rule of making the item on the month and also there was no work in progress posted before the item being finished.
more or less, we had a good suggestion about using a chart of the heroes with less cosmetics but we are still deciding the number of heroes. There was another suggestion about making it just one hero but personally I believe that is too much restriction
I understand now, thank you. I do agree that one hero is a bit too restricting. Maybe two heroes, or three. However, each hero must have low item submission, imo.
Replies
@Rnjeesus, i like where you are going with that style. are you planning a whole set or just head-sword?
as for my punia cultist hat, i like how it turned out. still need some tweaking in the mask and colors department, but i am happy how it`s shaping up.
I`m having some priblems with the rigging part. for some reason, although i applied the same bones and parameters as valve did, the hat moves way smaller ammounts while the head moves freely... as heads tend to do. any ideas on what bones/weights/other stuff i should fix?
I`m thinking of making it a new shoulder piece as well to match the stype of the simple monk-budhist priest (as seen in picture 2).
Appologies for the HUGE post
Im making a whole set.
I will create a head item for Pudge (sorry Danpaz, same character, hopefully it's different enough : )) based on the "head in a bottle/jar" halloween trick.
I guess it will be pretty challenging as we don't have access to parallax in Dota shaders to simulate the "depth" (under the bottle Normal map) but I'll try something.
Here is my current base mesh:
The helm comes with some particles that simply fix the flares coming from the eyes by moving them to the mouth.
here is the sculpt
texture test with very simply dummy masks
color map
the maskwork, gave it a soft metalic look with lots of noise in the specular for some fine light reflecting details.
thats how it looks ingame with the final masks on it:
True Form of Chaos by Sukotto and Noblebatterfly
Finnaly managed to finish it. Hope it rises up to the quality of the other hats for this month.
Oblivion Initiate`s Cowl by Mr. No Pie For You!
Give it some up-claps!
@Sukotto - Very cool, it fits the hero very well.
@Hawt Koffee - That helm fits Sven so well, and feels very spooky at the same fitting both normal and halloween themes. Great job.
I'm running a bit behind this month, but should be able to finish. Here is my completed sculpt. Should hopefully be able to finish up all the technical work tomorrow then texture throughout the week.
keep it going.
@sukotto: i love the thumbnail
Grand Vizier's Turban by Elwing.V3
@Shock - Looks really strong! What process did you use for the diffuse textures? Polypaint then bake, or something different? They are really striking.
the modeler did a polypaint as basetexture. but i was not totaly happy with it.
so i used piors whitebake pipeline in photoshop (1. layer ao then on top of it 2. layer green channel of object space normal - for top->down light information - with 50% transparency).
on top of that whitebake i added the polypaint and multiplied it. on top of that i did simply overpaint and coloradjusted what i didnt like. and then in the last layer i added details like the red warpaint or the light grey lines on the borders of each metal material. im also rly happy with the result, but the pipeline to get there was very messy
You can get a similar effect to the edge-lighting you painted in PS in Zbrush by baking a matcap into the polypaint texture. Less controlled then what you're doing but with a nice set of custom matcaps you might be able to get better result from that first polypaint bake thus needing less work in PS. Would really depend which you're more comfortable in.
btw here is the wip of how i did the texture in single steps, from whitebake to final:
and then (this is less important, since for the competition only the head counts) i repeated
those steps exactly also on the other itemslots:
Shattered Facade by Zipfinator and BladeofAvilliva
Here's the block in:
My base mesh:
The sculpt:
And here's the final textured model:
Here's some concepts as well, with some evolution in design and some shots of us correcting the base mesh:
We decided to scrap the teeth as they didn't read well in game, and her base model teeth do the job we wanted the ruby teeth to do already.
Here's more or less the final design, we got rid of that tooth in the end though.
Making some corrections to the basemesh here with a red line to indicate where some geometry should be cut to, you can see zip made the whole face in the basemesh first to make sure it was all symmetrical and didn't look uncanny valleyish before moving on to the final phases which he shows above me.
Made a major news mistake, I forgot to invert the green channel of the normal map on my Chaos Knight head piece. Fixed that mistake and updated the item and page with new pics! I knew something looked off and its looking much better now!
we are about to finish the month and we need to decide the next theme, any suggestion?
@Tvidotto: this list is 3 months old so it isn't super reliable, but what about a single item from heroes with 20 or less total items (decompiled of course)?
http://i.imgur.com/bfoiod3.png
@sukotto, well i did post the steps of the clockwerk in my personal polycount thread and also on the skype group. i didnt want to be annoying with my stuff, so i only made combo post in here
I think a good idea for next month is to have only one hero to work on (a hero that doesn't have many items). That way everybody will have knowledge about the hero and can give feedback for other peoples ideas.
Dark Seer, Huskar, Leshrac, Ogre Magi to name some possible heroes.
I agree with danpaz3d with the low raster ideea... too much freedom on heroes brings us back to the overitem-ed ones.
Dark seer sounds good, Leshrac, Booty hunter, Riki, Meepo mby?
that list is great! we could use it as a base for the next month
I agree with that reduction of heroes, what about we get the list that blades of evil shared and get the lowest ones? the 3 or 4 lowest?
could be
shadow Demon, Venomancer, medusa and storm
Maybe change shadow demon because I believe we used him couple months before
I still adjust some things, but will try to achieve the publishing process this evening.
JARHEAD by Uzziel
In-game preview:
Your sculpt looks really good, just a small feedback for the mesh: the triangles at the bottom left seem to be less detailed than the other parts (maybe add some polygons? Or reduce the size?).
Thank you for your feedback.
I think this idea is great but may be too much restriction for the other guys. lets see what they have to talk about it
Should we restrict the next month to one hero?
the good side is that everyone will learn a lot by seeing the others work in progress, like how to work with the color scheme, poligons limitation for the low poly....
Update: Hey guys, so I got it to align on first import. However, the moment I switch to Portrait view, the helm moves inside her head. Any ideas or is this a Dota2 bug?
Portrait view uses Lod0, so it's possible your low is aligned and not your high?
As far as Max, I have never been able to trust xforms so I have always done this:
Delete skin modifier,
Create a cube next to your model. Make it edit poly. Select it and attach your model (this renames your model, either rename the box first or rename your model after).
Then select the polys of the box and delete them.
Now your models pivot and scale are reset (for sure, xforms can't be trusted
Now select your model, reset pivot only to center of model, align world.
Reskin.
Do it for each Lod and you should be golden.
==========
If that doesn't work the DP you have may be outdated... re-dl and or decompile)
Here is my high res final render:
Death's Crown by Aitnar
more or less, we had a good suggestion about using a chart of the heroes with less cosmetics but we are still deciding the number of heroes. There was another suggestion about making it just one hero but personally I believe that is too much restriction
I disqualified one entry for posting on the second day of the month the finished item, I believe that broke the rule of making the item on the month and also there was no work in progress posted before the item being finished.
I understand now, thank you. I do agree that one hero is a bit too restricting. Maybe two heroes, or three. However, each hero must have low item submission, imo.