Best Workshop Presentations : submit links

Baddcog

Currently working on presentations for a workshop set.

This is definitely my weak point so I thought it would be interesting to see what everyone's consensus was on the best presentations in the workshop.

Please post a couple links to authors/sets who you think do the best job. And maybe a description of what you think the strongest points are.

Swaggernaut

An easy tutorial and I think it makes your image look really well in the end: http://www.workshophatemachine.com/2013/03/28/promo-images/

pior

Swag : While this guide sure is interesting, it's good to note that there are now native ways to display dota2 assets in realtime without even having to modify or create new texture maps. Toolbag2 now has a native Dota2 shader, and there's also a very accurate viewport shader available for Max, Maya and MayaLT as well.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=110022

And then there is also HLMV, which can load already compiled assets. Last but not least, recent updates to the Dota2 game client allow to zoom on imported models at will, which is probably the fastest way to make item thumbnails.

That being said I think the OP is more concerned about promotional illustrations used as loading screens. This is not so much of a technical "3d" subject, and more about picture making really : image composition, value hierarchy within an image, color relationships between elements, and so on.

Baddcog : as mentioned in the chest thread, I would suggest you to look closely at the way movie posters are designed, as well as having a deeper look at figurative art in general. Here's a Kunkka loading screen from 1924 :

Swaggernaut

Haha pior, you're definitely correct, I was on my phone at that time and the first thing that came to my mind was vlad's tutorial. I totally agree that you could use marmoset toolbag, but I feel that using the dota 2 hlmv is a bit more accurate. (Also because I think you can use the animations to get a good pose rather than trying to do it in a 3D program such as Max or Blender.)

Baddcog

Well I was really just interested in having people post links of good examples of workshop submissions and why they like them personally.

I did check out the links for movie posters and all that. Worked a bit more on my load screen too (just posted in chest thread).

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But workshop submissions can go beyond just the movie poster.
In game shots, gifs, turntables, promo images (not loadscreens), item borders (the chest borders are really nice for example) etc...
Also some people put pictures or 'word graphics' (for fancy fonts) in their item descriptions.

I'll pull a couple examples:
Load screen, but he put the items on it for the set. I've seen this a bit, but it's not always the loadscreen:
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/718664200981857882/C6BCC4DC0FDB13703F2F6329FD30B3480E60BF37/

same thing, but NOT laodscreen (Pipotchi's Lich set for chest):
http://cloud-2.steamusercontent.com/ugc/534014905952373695/E45A2AA455D9162A14470CB7C668FF6527525141/

Desaturated hero/items to show off one piece or not:
a little bit
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/27360579578303680/CF9E2E4A86475584E85318C7D5EB4C9C95BA9998/

desat:
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/598156418865100703/E2E20B89FF90A9BC58928EC88BDB9033DD7CB87B/

'word graphics'

Snowstorm

IMO 's Armaments of the Leviathan set and Red Moon's Three Virtues collection have been the 2 most memorable workshop presentations so far. Armaments of the Leviathan for its use of themed icons and graphics. The Three Virtues for its awesome SFM trailer and variety of presentation styles.

Armaments of the Leviathan:
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=163241044

Three Virtues:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=217835377

Pior's ES set in the Three Virtues collection
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=217824328

pior

Ha Badd, I see what you mean now - I assumed you were mostly talking about loading screen illustrations in particular, my bad.

As for presentation in general, I think the one thing that really helps is to take the time, between sets, to create a bunch of presentation templates that you can then reuse later. Putting that kind of stuff together takes forever, therefore having it ready in advance can be a huge time saver - and then adjusting such templates to a given set is the icing on the cake.

Regarding custom graphics and other bells and whistles : some of that stuff can look very cool, but I think it's also important to keep an eye on diminishing returns.

Spudnik

I dig Danidem's elaborate illustration presentations.
Hunter of Kings
Also the 'info sheet' he did with Hunter on the Polycount Contest.
Rider of the Storm

The Lannisters pulled off an absolutely gorgeous presentation for New Bloom.
Fei Lian

I'm also a big fan of Pior's simplified, clean style.
Treasures of the Deep
Demon Stone

The Dark Lotus bundle for New bloom if you wanna go huge.
Dark Lotus

For bigger collabs as well, a nice unifying element is really cool like we had on the FNATIC chest in the tumbnail border and player/set logo.
Fly's Keeper
Era's Morph

Baddcog

Awesome guys, great examples.
Yeah those Red Moon guys :P
Just too much.

Armaments is very cool too.

@Pior, yeah workshop has been diminishing returns for me since day one
But I hear ya, I think SFM movies is probably just too much working solo. With TF2 it became required though (at least for screenshots), I guess much like a load screen is for Dota sets.

I definitely got smarter with this set, much more organized with all my textures (kept layer sets in main PSD for all items mask layers, etc..). And that followed through item icons, ability icons...

Quadscount

Hey guys, does anybody know if the Maya Dota 2 Shader still works for later versions of Maya? (Maya 2015)

pior

Hi Quad - it worked fine in MayaLT last time I used it, so I suspect that it will work in regular Maya too. You might get a few refresh glitches though, with some random triangles turning black.