Obsolete's workshop

obsolete

Hello i made this butterfly using maya, zbrush, xnormals and photoshop.
I hope it will get accepted.
LINK: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=367083317&searchtext=
please vote

obsolete

I'm a bad concept artist but here is a witch doctor idea i have.
some aztec gold stuff

obsolete

i modeled the hires stuff on maya.
i guess ill go to zbrush and add just a bit of wear and tear and maybe do some polypaint while im at it aswell.
next step for me is to build the low poly meshes, UV them and bake those muffins out.

obsolete

well this is where i got to and i dont really like it, so im just gonna drop it and work on something else :-D

Markovnikov

Okay, woah, slow down there buddy. Firstly, the butterfly looks great.

Secondly, the WD idea isn't bad, it jsut need a bit of tweaking. And abandoning it now seems a little... well, not good, ya know? It's still salvagable. Maybe add some better contrast, slim the staff down a bit, and put some more colour in.

obsolete

Well Markovnikov, you have convinced me to continue the WD idea and i thank you for that. here are some WIPs...
lighting is terrible but it should give an idea of my intentions...

Also, i tested the gold shader in Dota 2 using the gold that is on Nyx's armor.
i managed to get these values out:
COLOR: gold diffuse color
NORMAL: normal map
MASK 1: R: black G:black B:114;114;114 A:black
MASK 2: R:white G:51;51;51 B:191;191;191 A:17;17;17
does anybody have a better approach for getting a gold shader in Dota 2?

Also, i need to make better looking feathers and make a nice alpha for them, these are not final i guess.

obsolete

Hello I drew these Concepts for Pugna.
I will make the chinese Pugna in 3D. Feedback is most appreciated.
Does anybody know if i can change Pugna's head?

obsolete

Hello here is a WIP.
I blocked everything in softimage preparing to move to zbrush soon...

BohSheh

I think you should had done it for the spring event

obsolete

you mean new bloom festival? yeah probably :P but im still eager to do it

obsolete

Here is another wip. just polypainted the poly islands and applied noise in zbrush with alpha ON. Also quickly polypainted the head just to get an idea.
time to make sculpt for some normals!
something yet seems to be missing for the overall design :poly141:

obsolete

some more zbrush wips...

obsolete

Some more Zbrush wips with polypaint!
modelled a few extra ornaments in maya too.

obsolete

zbrush wip
polypainted the head

obsolete

zbrush screenshots from multiple angles

whatever

This might be good.Keep going!

obsolete

here is a test bake for the head. baked normals AO and Vcols from zbrush.

Swaggernaut

OHHHHH this is actually pretty sick! keep going!

obsolete

thanks swaggernaut! i will quickly bake everything on low settings just to see where things are. then ill make good 4K bakes and tone things down.

obsolete

ok so i baked some stuff and modeled LODs
now i havent really pushed the settings to the max as you can see the shirt still has jagged edges and other baking errors which are fixable if i crank up the AA settings on xNormals i guess.
I still havent used up all my triangles so now i have to focus on optimizing each part and rebaking and texturing.
things should go fast now that i have all my low res and hi res models inside of xNrmls (epic freeware)

Swaggernaut

Maybe try to tone down the color of the light purple, I just feel that it is too vibrant for Pugna, since he usually has a more dull color scheme.

obsolete

yeah good point Swaggernaut! ill definitely tone down that purple. i think it will even help focus the viewer's eye on the face even more!

obsolete

here is a new update

obsolete

Dear Polycount Community,
I am really excited to work on items for Dota 2 Heroes.
I have an issue with pugna. I am working on a Set for pugna where i have to change his face geometry that belongs to pugna_modelShape. As you probably know, there isnt a default slot to do that. So i wanted to ask if there is another way to do that?
I already replaced the textures.


Oh and here is an update too...

obsolete

in other words, how do you add an item if it doesn't have a default slot?

Nekhro

Add it to other item slot
Btw textures lack contras. Loving the mask sculpt.

obsolete

thanks for the reply Nekhro
what do you think i should to to create more contrast for the clothes?
I still need to do some gradients for everything.
I already have items for the following slots:
BACK
HEAD
BELT
ARMS
SHOULDER

if i replace the pugna dragon face with the WEAPON slot then pugna will lose the weapon!

Nekhro

Add it to head or shoulders

Baddcog

You can use other slots but be wary of things that will clip with stock/other items.
For instance if you add something to his belt and combine it with the head slot it's fine.

But if you add something to the head slot that takes shoulder space it will clip with other items badly.

Also, you can't replace his stock body base mesh parts. You can cover them up, but not remove them.

obsolete

ok awesome idea thanks so much!

Nekhro

Pretty much what i said, only smarter.

obsolete

yeah i was agreeing to both of you guys
thanks Nekhro and Baddcog

Nekhro

Oh and mind the tri count as item has count no matter how many meshes you add.

obsolete

yeah now that i know what you guys told me about the item combining thing for slots, i kind of have some tri count issues now... so i need to figure that out now!

obsolete

ok guys i came up with a solution, but i had to kill alot of tris.
i made the dragon mask (thanks Nekhro & Baddcog ^_^) have less tris and im gonna put it in the SHOULDERS slot.
because of that, i had to make the horns and the shoulders into one mesh and ill combine them and put them into the HEAD slot.
I shouldnt run into any problems since i can paint suitable skin weights for the meshes.

time to rebake :poly142:

obsolete

ok so i rebaked everything.
now my pugna is DOTA ready...
now i need to texture the stuff and make the needed masks.
i think ill also have to render out some 4K textures for some promo art to be posed in maya and rendered with marmoset.
ride on......................................................

Nekhro

Make an 'in-game' shot and check how it looks with textures on the bg with other charas to be sure you fit the dota style.

obsolete

i only know how to import one piece at a time and view them inside of dota
what is the fastest way to import all my set and see it in-game?

Nekhro

I say screen from game, set camera, plugin for dota rendering and that's that

obsolete

ok so here is my pugna in-game!
i can see some skinning issues but im not worried about that for now
the colors of his clothes are definitely off and i still didnt apply a gradient yet.
and by the way, mask1 and mask2 for all items are currently all set to black.
any ideas about what i should do?

Nekhro

Thats what i told you earlier about mask texture. Its all blurry cause its in one color so you cannot see details.

Swaggernaut

Yeah, just play with the mask maps to get the effect that you like. Also, I think the color is a bit too dark now so I take back what I said earlier about it.

obsolete

hey are you talking about mask1 mask2? or his dragon face?
what do you think i should do? add more colors to the dragon mask?

obsolete

ok cool ill fix mask1 mask2 now... clothes definitely need some contrast
hoping a gradient will fix it

Swaggernaut

Both of them I'm taking about.

Baddcog

masks are complicated, easiest to read guide AND look at the originals and try to duplicate them.

obviously you can't mirror the front but it's looking a bit low res, did you mirror the back and arms? (and belt)

The self illum mask will do a lot for his glow.

---

obsolete

@Baddcog, YES! masks are really complicated to use! because they work so closely together, each channel can affect the other for the good or for the bad...
i managed to duplicate the original masks and got decent results (dragon face still needs mask fixing)
i only mirrored UVs on the horns and the shoulder guards. i can mirror certain parts of the shirt. i did not mirror the belt and the back and dragon face. do you think i should go back and mirror the belt and back and shirt and dragon face? that would mean re-baking and re-texturing. i'm afraid its the only way :poly122:

here are some screens

Baddcog

I would definitely mirror anything you can, the texture sizes in Dota are really tight budgets so you need to maximize them as much as possible.

I meant to say before,
You can update each layer of a mask and save the mask, then (stay in game-model view) just recompile for quick tests to make it easier. However they won't update for the ingame tests (sunlight, moonlight, ingame modes), for that you need to update the name then recompile.
(I just add a 1, 2, etc.. to the name to recompile and see the update)

obsolete

well alrighty then...
time to RE-UV RE-BAKE and RE-TEXTURE...
now i know how important it is to mirror UVs since texs are so low res!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Baddcog, WE SALUTE YOU!

obsolete

fresh bake
i mirrored most of my UVs and got way more texture resolution...
and i still had to swap the ARMS slot with the BACK slot because the BACK slot can take textures 256x256 where as ARMS slot took 256x128 and the shirt needed those extra pixels.
need to texture now and setup masks 1 & 2

Baddcog

looks better. I guess swapping those slots could work. Might have a lot of clipping issues with other sets though.