The 5 - Workshop

THE 5

Ok, time to try another set for Sven:

I want to do a multi-layered heavy armor and keep it edgy and somewhat "modern".

Blockout WIPs with shell+turbosmooth:







October 2014:
--------------------
This time I will attempt a full set for Sven and post WIP images in order to get some early feedback.

HELP!
My BKB sword never went visible in the workshop even tho it was submited via Dota's workshop interface.
I provided my personal information but NOT banking & taxes yet.
Can someone confirm that one needs to supply banking and/or taxes info in order for the submission to even be visible for others?


CURRENT STATE

---

Done:
- lowpoly
- textures
- rigging
- LOD1

ToDo:
- Weapon (The BKB-Sword is just a placeholder)
- (2nd style for the hood)
- (rework glove if budget allows it)




(Got rid of the glow on the arm meanwhile.)






The plan is to make sven a somewhat sinister, vagabonding knight rugged up in some torn pieces of cloth while keeping the rock-like heavy armor layered over it.


C&C appreciated!

--- --- --- --- --- ---
Previous Projects:

Sven BKB sword
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138615
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=300848675

Gajun

A hooded sven set :poly142:. YES PLEASE

Chaos Prophet

Nice sword

THE 5

Concepting is done.
I'm kinda worried about the triangle count and the backfacing on the cloth tho.

Automedic

This looks really promising. I'm curious how it will turn out in highpoly.

THE 5

While I liked the cuirass and the knight-ish design it was not what I originally planed.
So I reworked my concept and blocked it out again to see how it looks.

THE 5

Started on the basic highpoly shapes.
I will probably do the details with floaters.





Tinkering with the head.

Puppypower

that bkb sword for sven is nice different from all other sven swords that looks like the same ..anyway you used zbrush too on that? sorry im a newbie

THE 5

Sadly I have near 0 experiance with sculpting, so nope, BKB sword was all hardsurface modelling.

Puppypower

and the sven set too is from hardsurface modeling too? im new to this kind of stuff
..i have no experience doing sculpting too

THE 5

So far yes, I'm actually trying to get into mudbox atm to add the details for the set.

Puppypower

looking good so far man

THE 5

Since I barely ever rigged something I wanted to give that a shot and preview the lowpoly in Dota b4 baking the textures.



While the rigging is done I forgot to reset X-Forms and move the Pivot to (0,0,0).
When I do this afterwards everything breaks appart



I also started a thread in Technical Talk about this issue.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2180892#post2180892
Hopfully one of you guys with rigging experiance can help me out as I am quite stuck now.

EDIT:
I tried saving the weights and reimporting them to a new skin-modifier after resetting the X-Forms.
It kinda worked exept for the head BUT everything is scaled up now.

THE 5

So the model files provided by valve are outdated, in sven's case the actual ingame model is way smaller.

Thanks to hayes87 who provided me with a decompiled version of the current model I was able to resolve the rigging issues.
The exporting and re-importing of the vertex weights even worked so I did not have to re-rig everything.

THE 5

Did some quick preview bakes (some stuff is lost to the alpha channel).



And started texturing.

THE 5

Finished the diffuse.
Gotta fix the rigg here and there.



Added some orange patterns to the cloth parts.

THE 5

Strangely I can't seem to get the diffuse's alpha channel working with Ace-Angel's Hero Shader for Max 2015.

Need to darken the lower cloth bits a bit.

Vovosunt

I don't think you added ambient occlusion to your textures.
I would suggest you do that (more often then not it's actually the first step before you even begin texturing).
It'll make everything pop really nicely and make it clearer.
Currently everything is just too uniformly lit.
You could also add a directional lightning pass in there too.

But overall looks quite nice

THE 5

I did a 3 Omnis + skylight lightmap with MR (so that got AO in it per default).
Tho the bake had artifacts from the lowpolys triangles, I had to paint those out.


While the whole diffuse is based on this lightmap as the bottom layer, the textures still looks quite flat.
I extremely exaggerated the scratches along the hard edges like in the original sven textures too, but it still doens't quite pop.



Maybe putting another AO with higher opacitiy in the mix could help.
EDIT, with additional 100% multiplied AO:


I'm thinking about baking a plain directional lightmap with shadows too to get some darker areas in the cavities of the shoulder and helmet.

Atm I'm revisiting the glove, im not entirely happy with the mesh.
Gotta see if I have the budget left to add something to the overall shape.

PrivacyEnt

I don't know that if it's included in your AO map, but the part of the helmet where it stays under the hood should have much more shadows. Other than that, I love the design well done

THE 5

Originally I wanted it to throw a deep shadow so his eyes glare evil inside the dark.
Saving me the triangles from the back of his head aswell.

However, the hood is for the "back" slot of sven.
I decided that I want the head and the hood to be usable in conjunction with other sets indivduably. A shadow inside the diffuse would mean one oculdn't use the helmet without the hood unless they want a big black spot ontop of it. (I also plan to do a alternate style for the hood with the hood resting on his back so it's usable with otherwhise clipping helmets.)

I'm thinking about putting a simple plane into the opening of the hood and placing a black alpha gradient there but I have yet to see if that looks good.
EDIT:
Apparently alpha is approximated into a 1 bit channel, so no gradinets.

I baked some new lightmaps with a higher specular exponent, the texutre definatly looks less flat now, not sure if sufficient tho.
A directional light from above did barely affect the helmet at all, so I went with a couple of omnis again.
I'll post new WIPs as soon as I do another full export to Dota.


While I like the orange and it is used in svens sword and one of his old sets a swell, I am not certain if it is allowed for his colour palette.
Replacing it with a dark, likely desaturated, blue might work but I think this orange looks way more intersting.
I think I will try out some variations once the textures are done.


EDIT:
+ hard specular Lightmap
+ 100% multiply AO
+ 100% soft light cavity
+ 100% soft light "edge map" (find edges filter on normalmap, invert)






(Why is Sven's portrait preview so red?)

THE 5

EDIT:
Is there some script/action fpr PS(CS4) that alows for exporting layers to channels quickly?
Currently im doing it like this:
- creating a new empty document with a white layer
- go back to my texture PSD
- collapse the layer I need, CTRL+C copy it
- go back to the empty white document
- go to the channel
- CTRL+V paste into the channel
- go back to my texture PSD
- repeat...
- scale new document down and save
Takes quite a while to get the 10 masks exported like that.

--- --- ---

Was fiddling with the masks again and noticed i still dont quite understand them.
For example, the specular tint seems to behave inversely: 100% is no tint.

The tempalte files for Sven also seem to have the mask2 G and B channels swaped.

So I went ahead and did some testing, hope my observations are right.


--- --- ---

Textures done!
Lod1 next.

Puppypower

the bkb sword comes with the set?

THE 5

Nah, it's a previous project.
I still gotta do a sword for this set.

EDIT:
Started blocking out a shape for the sword.

No Pie For You!

yo 5, i had the same item submision problem a few months ago when we talked about the ward.

yes you MUST ABSOLUTELY submit your banking info for your submissions to show up.

as for the sven set, it looks awesome. great work and good balance.

chrisjuuuh

liking the set

a comment i would give on the sword is that it needs some kind of counterweight at the bottom. that thing looks insanely top heavy at the moment.

THE 5

Thx No Pie. I hope banking is enough since I don't rly wanna bother with a US tax ID.

I'm currently fairly busy with university, hopefully I can finish this set during holidays.
The design for the sword is still just a first idea, I don't know if a asymmetric sword like that goes well with the fairly symmetric armor also I feel it's still lacking the spikey-ness of the armor.

PrivacyEnt

I think the sword should have similar shapes to the shoulders, like that "U" curve
Also, not pretty sure banking is enough but yeah, that tax id thingie is weird.

No Pie For You!

THE 5 wrote: »

Thx No Pie. I hope banking is enough since I don't rly wanna bother with a US tax ID.

I'm currently fairly busy with university, hopefully I can finish this set during holidays.
The design for the sword is still just a first idea, I don't know if a asymmetric sword like that goes well with the fairly symmetric armor also I feel it's still lacking the spikey-ness of the armor.

you will have to take that.....US banking test or whatever it`s called, take the interview, and in about a day you should get a mail from valve with a email adress you should send th completed form to. do that and in about 2 days time, you will have your banking info done

THE 5

Ok, time to try another set for Sven.
I want to do a multi-layered heavy armor and keep it edgy and somewhat "modern".
Blockout WIPs with shell+turbosmooth:

MickeyMania

 I was quite fond of the older set. Nonetheless looking forward to how the new one will turn out.