Dota2 Art Bibles

r13

Valve has uploaded a character and texturing guide for the Dota2 community on the Steam Workshop page for Dota2.

These are essentially now your "art bibles" for modding Dota2. Pallets, silhouettes, geometry, UV's, and tons more are discussed to give you guidance to crafting some awesome pieces for the game. These are an awesome pair of documents. Even if you aren't interested in modding the game, I encourage you to download and take a look at them. They are great examples of the range of considerations that developers can/should/sometimes deal with when creating their own projects.

They are both pdf's so you can download them to your own machine and ponder them slowly off or online as you see fit. There is even some hints inside them that more testing tools are in the pipeline for us.

r13

We need to get these linked into the Wiki

ScudzAlmighty

they also have 13 different character models available to download there as well.

UltraLrod

Just. WOW. saved the pdf version they have up. Definitely in the Wiki be helpful to everyone.

cox

This is so damn cool!

Mister Sentient

thanks, andrew. some great insights into colour theory and texturing there.

KateC

This is kind of amazing. I learned something just by skimming through it, can't wait to see what happens when there's enough time to sit down with it.

Thanks, Valve.

nfrrtycmplx

Anyone else getting "this file is damaged and could not be repaired" when trying to open the character guide?

SleepyThing

@nfrrtycmplx
Switch to another web browser. I got that problem with firefox but the link worked in IE.

Alismuffin

So THAT's how to create a diffuse map!

Torch

This has already helped a ton, defo recommend it as a read to anyone doing Character art!

Avanthera

pretty awesome! Thanks for the heads up r13!

nfrrtycmplx

Word, that worked, thanks Sleepy Thing!

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Holi

some stuff are cool.. but this one os the coolest

Eric Chadwick

Awesome! Added to the wiki here.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryConceptFundamentals

D4V1DC

About time someone did a step by step, now we will see some awesome artwork, thank you so much VALVE!!

LuCh!

Valve documents are always interesting to read, whatever it's about!

Red-Fox

Excellent !!!, as usual Valve has outstanding documentation!

Sirdelita

2 Questions,

1. They said used 'clamping' on the point light map, what exactly does this mean?
2. Does anyone have any ideas on how they light and render in DOTA 2? It has a distinct style to it.

ekunzendorf

These Art and Texture guides are great! I learned loads just by reading them.

Sirdelita, I think they have put a 90 90 90 grey layer set to screen on top of the point light map, group that and then set the layer group to Soft Light. Setting the grey layer to screen causes all values darker than that 90 90 90 layer to the same shade of grey. If I am wrong, someone please let us know.

My question is about the UV map. It looks like there are overlapping UVs, but the two halves are not symmetrical along the head and spine. Wouldn't that cause a line in the AO and Point light maps along the UV seam where it repeats?

reinanc

Can someone upload a fixed version of the Character Art Guide? Pages13-14 are the same. I can't edit it in my Acrobat nor i can't export it to any other file format. I know this isn't a big deal but any help would be appreciated.