It's a very high quality set but making the spell effects blue and breaking away so strongly from the usual color themes/silhouette concerns me.
There are so many colours and none of them can be identified at a glance as juggernaut's. It's going to play havoc with the visual comprehension of the character, I think.
Yup, gotta agree. I guess it's sort of your style, but you guys tend to really break all of the heroes colors and silhouettes on your sets. Everything is really high quality, but I don't think that this matters when the set barely fits the hero.
I think using the blue as an accent in smaller quantities would have been a good idea but changing the color palette so drastically makes this look like a completely new hero.
I'm probably the one guy who shouldn't say that, but: I think you've overdone with particles a bit.
The blade fury effect looks pretty nice and simple but in my opinion the blade glow is not very well executed:
a) the particle count for the ember sprites is way too high
b) the spark effect is generally oversized (flying too high)
c) your alpha fade in causes the effect to look like it spawns in thin air without any connection to the blade when moving
My personal opinion is that it really doesn't look decent, it looks like noise from in game view (Selling the set by zooming in close will of course net lots of votes).
I think you tried to squeeze in too much, there's so many layers, not sure if its the technical limitation and having to use a plane + alpha or not to make the polycount, but compare these 2 images
Left side = noisy mush, right side = well defined, there's a example of what neck fur shoud look like, legion commander, big and bold chunks.
Hope this is valid criticism, because its just what I feel when looking at it!
Yea, gonna have to agree with plant above me, in that the fur on the collar is really rather abysmal ingame. It sort of looks like you didn't use any existing furs ingame for reference, or at least not the official fur and hair you'd see on heroes and summons. There's just too much visual noise and clutter and it doesn't offer a very good looking weapon, it just looks unappealing.
Try making it thicker and more stylized in design and appearance, not in frequency of strands, the thicker it is, the better it'll look.
Well, I perfected the fur to the best of my abilities, considering the slot was 250 poly and i had to fit in the fur there was quite hard for me personally. FYI as boldly mentioned in the top corner of that Hi-Res image which u used for comparison, its for the Particle preview, the Jpeg is pretty compressed to fit in the 2mb limit for workshop upload.
Here are some in-game direct screenshots, although the fur might still look bad in it for most people, but after re-working it several times, this is all i can do for it, period.
Also about the sword, the concept artist wanted to it like that, so it is like that.
Gotta agree with the critiques so far. The fur is extremely noisy and doesn't read very well from the ingame view. I also don't really think the rest of the set is that original, some parts really remind of other items already ingame, and the sword doesn't really fit with the rest of the set. The particles are also pretty overdone, just like on the Juggernaut set. I get that it's cool to submit custom particles, but when they're that exaggerated I think you would be better off using the default stuff or get someone with more experience working with particles.
No offense, the models and textures are really well done as always, but it's one of the 'weakest' sets from you guys IMHO. But the community reaction so far is being positive and it's a Kunkka concept, sooooo... yeah.
@bekun, well the concept was done by Kunkka, unlike rest of my previous submissions, thanks for the honest feedback, and also like u said, this time I didn't handle the particles, it was done by "The Horse Strangler" who did the particles for the EG ES set on store now and who imho has done an amazing job on the particles, he even made sure to respect the particle load and didn't over-do it, thus the new particles would work without taking up any extra memory or performance.
And as i mentioned before, the fur was quite hard to handle, andl u can see it didn't turn out that well haha, but i did gave it my best shot. ! Thanks~
Agree with the above crit, I might add that the new particle animations for torrent might affect gameplay as well though. The original torrent begins subtle enough that you can accidentally walk over it and not realize you're about to be caught in the torrent. The new animation is pretty obvious off the bat, which makes me wonder if those playing kunkka with this set will be at a disadvantage. Great marketing as usual though!
Torrent buildup isn't visible, only kunkka's hand gesture when performing the skill is.
Particle wise I disagree that they are overdone. The stock Torrent and tidebringer are made up via tons of sprite sheets in the particle system. For example, the stock tidebringer effect has a bunch of fast animating, high alpha (opacity) splash textues. It was my goal to transition that visibility into the rings that swirl around the sword. In return I transitioned the dripping effects into a much more subtle role so that all the focus would be concentrated on the rings themselves.
As for torrent, again the goal was to create a noticeably unique water plume that distanced itself from the stock effect. Ultimately when talking about water effects that's a pretty tough question to ask oneself "How do I make this water look different when technically it's still just water". Based on the initial concepts DFX and Kunkka created, I arrived at a torrent effect that was much faster in its overall motion and visibility. I also made the decision to go with a solid body of water (like a water tornado somewhat) so that it would mirror the whirlpool at the startup.
However I combined the systems together to obtain a specific type of sprite sheet sorting, i.e players would remain visible from the waist up as they get blasted up into the air.
Maybe 'overdone' was the wrong word, but I feel that some of the particles are a bit too different from his default ones. I mean, they look gorgeous, and I'm a sucker for particles, but the custom torrent is just too massive and exaggerated. The swirly thingy on the sword, while really cool and pretty, is a big change from the water dripping on the default one, and I'm not a big fan of it. I really like the X though!
I just don't think that everything goes together to form a cohesive whole set. The sword and particles are very different from the other parts.
Even with the highly detailed fur, I think it needs a high to low gradient. There is no value transition on it towards the head which washes out a lot of the details.
Congrats on squeezing so much out of the limited Dota specs ! It is quite remarkable really. Great job !
And such a slick presentation too. Loving the way all the pages are linked together, it makes thumbing up everything very easy. Can't wait to see it added to the game !
Yea i retouched the textures on it a bit, to make it more low violenece, removed the blood and replaced with fire (?) burning (?) style! haha We also retouched the loading screen accordingly!
Our second collab with Alliance, so the team was Me, Wei and The Horse Strangler on this.
We wanted to make an Iconic set so we used the Million Dollar Dream Coil scene from TI3, the scene that is textured onto the orb is subtle so that a person who doesn't know about this will feel its just another env map.
Replies
pior - Thanks a Lot Buddy !
Pudge - Delicacies of Butchery Set : http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20362
Sven - Armour of The Iron Drakken (They changed the name) : http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20380
Congratulations!
A silly question: how did you make to upload the censored version of pudge? Maybe a new and non-public submission?
Abaddon Set for Team Alliance.
Steam Workshop : http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=231063811
Custom Ability Icons for the Set:
Also Did some Custom Particles for it.
Watch this Video if u wanna compare the New and Default Particles : http://youtu.be/d63zcS7egi4
Steam Workshop Link : http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=234641806
DotA2 Workshop : http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=251658827
Decide for yourself how the new color and set looks by seeing the Set In Action here : http://youtu.be/VC9gHACPekY
There are so many colours and none of them can be identified at a glance as juggernaut's. It's going to play havoc with the visual comprehension of the character, I think.
The blade fury effect looks pretty nice and simple but in my opinion the blade glow is not very well executed:
a) the particle count for the ember sprites is way too high
b) the spark effect is generally oversized (flying too high)
c) your alpha fade in causes the effect to look like it spawns in thin air without any connection to the blade when moving
just my two cents;
Store : http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20486?r=c9
Valve finally starting to add complete particle overhauls to the shop is amazing news.
Was one of the hardest sets I've worked on, period. Barely managed to get that fur decent in-game, hope u guys like it.
Workshop Link : http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=257002376
Video Link : http://youtu.be/hmi0YywXbmg
My personal opinion is that it really doesn't look decent, it looks like noise from in game view (Selling the set by zooming in close will of course net lots of votes).
I think you tried to squeeze in too much, there's so many layers, not sure if its the technical limitation and having to use a plane + alpha or not to make the polycount, but compare these 2 images
Left side = noisy mush, right side = well defined, there's a example of what neck fur shoud look like, legion commander, big and bold chunks.
Hope this is valid criticism, because its just what I feel when looking at it!
Try making it thicker and more stylized in design and appearance, not in frequency of strands, the thicker it is, the better it'll look.
Here are some in-game direct screenshots, although the fur might still look bad in it for most people, but after re-working it several times, this is all i can do for it, period.
Also about the sword, the concept artist wanted to it like that, so it is like that.
No offense, the models and textures are really well done as always, but it's one of the 'weakest' sets from you guys IMHO. But the community reaction so far is being positive and it's a Kunkka concept, sooooo... yeah.
And as i mentioned before, the fur was quite hard to handle, andl u can see it didn't turn out that well haha, but i did gave it my best shot. ! Thanks~
Edit: Whoops, I'm completely wrong, ignore me.
Particle wise I disagree that they are overdone. The stock Torrent and tidebringer are made up via tons of sprite sheets in the particle system. For example, the stock tidebringer effect has a bunch of fast animating, high alpha (opacity) splash textues. It was my goal to transition that visibility into the rings that swirl around the sword. In return I transitioned the dripping effects into a much more subtle role so that all the focus would be concentrated on the rings themselves.
As for torrent, again the goal was to create a noticeably unique water plume that distanced itself from the stock effect. Ultimately when talking about water effects that's a pretty tough question to ask oneself "How do I make this water look different when technically it's still just water". Based on the initial concepts DFX and Kunkka created, I arrived at a torrent effect that was much faster in its overall motion and visibility. I also made the decision to go with a solid body of water (like a water tornado somewhat) so that it would mirror the whirlpool at the startup.
However I combined the systems together to obtain a specific type of sprite sheet sorting, i.e players would remain visible from the waist up as they get blasted up into the air.
I just don't think that everything goes together to form a cohesive whole set. The sword and particles are very different from the other parts.
Great work otherwise. Congrats.
And such a slick presentation too. Loving the way all the pages are linked together, it makes thumbing up everything very easy. Can't wait to see it added to the game !
Treasure of Molten Steel
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10544?r=cd
@Pior : Thank you so much for understanding. *tears of joy.
We wanted to make an Iconic set so we used the Million Dollar Dream Coil scene from TI3, the scene that is textured onto the orb is subtle so that a person who doesn't know about this will feel its just another env map.
Hope u guys like it !
Workshop Link : http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=261609148
You can check out the particle fx here : http://youtu.be/sFl80fd9PjU