2020 Contemporary Dota 2 Workshopping

OhLawdie

Good morning Polycounters and Polycountees!!!

I have been making a series of posts over on Reddit regarding the Workshop. I'm looking to generate content and renewed interest for anyone that wants to join in Workshop collaboration for the official Spring Call to Arms; I posted yesterday in the Workshop Collab thread as well. I'm proficient with 3D tooling, however, I don't have a ton of experience working in the Workshop...I would like to change that this year. I'm looking forward to any replies - thanks!

Cheers, 
Evan

pior

Dota2 assets are way more complicated to craft than what they seem. If you are just starting out there really isn't any point in collaborating for an event, as I can guarantee you that it will result in a lot of frustration (like realizing at the last minute that the rigging constraints are very strict, and so on). Also a majority of your time will not be spent on the creative stuff, but on tech.

If you want to get started then download any of the simple heroes (say, Sniper or WR) and make a clothing item from start to finish (and by finish I mean : all the way to the import process and ingame testing, will textures plugged in and so on). 

This is all doable with practice, nothing impossible there. But yeah if you want to get into collabs then the very least you can do is to be proficient with the technical aspect of things before teaming up.

OhLawdie

Absolutely, thanks for replying @pior. I am (naively) candid and unassuming in my approach - you are astute! I am currently working with Grimstroke & I'm hoping to design particle effects / equipment. Working within budget (and rigging (yikes) ) constraints is challenging; I have to brush off my 3D tooling yet! I am mostly interested in working in collaboration not for gainful propositions but for the corroborative understanding of Source 2 and the Workshop workflow and the practice of bringing assets into engine. Put simply, I have just been attempting individual programmatic pursuits for too long +  the art of Dota creations I know is appealing and somewhat feasible.

dev.dota2.com is also a frustrating experience...not to mention some of the aspects of the Workshop in it of itself.
I have plans to use Paint3D, Paint.NET, Substance Painter, Zbrush, and Maya...much to my dismay I know that tooling (alone) may not be enough when dealing with unfamiliar restraints from Valve.

Pior, thank you again for your reply.

pior

If I may say : you are already overthinking/overplanning this. You absolutely do *not* need this full list of software/creation tools to get started.

What you do need is  : Getting the Workshop files of a single hero, and do, say, a hat for it. For that all you need is Maya or Blender, and one application to edit/create texture files. That's it. Everything else would just get in the way of understanding how things work. Trust me, start with the *very* basics.

[edit] oh btw, you don't need anything from dev.dota2.com either. Unless things have changed, last I did workshop stuff all one needed was the hero files and the workshop guides.