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Pior's workshop

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grand marshal polycounter
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pior grand marshal polycounter
Items available for purchase in the Dota2 store :

Spirit Of The Howling Wolf - a Sniper set with Bright and Dark color variants.
Each item can be set to "Bright" or "Dark" individually from the Armory screen - that means 25 possible combinations ! :)

http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20321

banner_small_zpsc38eb485.jpg~original

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Strength of the Demon Stone - an Earth Spirit set created in collaboration with the Red Moon artist BounchFX for the "New Bloom" Chinese New Year event. It is part of the "Three Virtues" bundle, which includes 2 other sets for Storm and Ember Spirit and a custom HUD.

The Three Virtues bundle :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20379?appid=570&r=1f4

The Earth Spirit set can also be purchased individually :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20368?r=cb

Bounch_Pior_ES_gallery_001-splashpage-small800pix_zps8912a076.jpg~original

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Treasure of the Deep - a Naga Siren set created in collaboration with Andrea 'Motenai' Orioli, in association with Team Evil Geniuses and pro player Arteezy. The set comes with two color variants for each item - Battle and Ceremonial.
It is released as part of the Treasure of the Elemental Trophy chest. Each time one gets the chest, there is a guaranteed chance to get one of the sets it contains with no duplicates on multiple purchases.

http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10740?r=cd

naga_treasure_gallery_800_zpsc30fcbd8.jpg~original


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Treasure of The Defender's Vision, a DotaCinema chest for which I contributed a Venomancer design, Acid Hydra. It comes with color variants and custom mouse cursors !

http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10930?r=cd

F62DE903A6B8649BC908D83D795C608B13AC45EA


The Venomancer set can also be purchased individually :
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/20660?r=c9

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Hello all !

Since I have some time on my hands I started to play with the idea of working on some DOTA items.
I am currently getting my feet wet with a set for Sniper, revolving around the theme of Inuit gear. I think I might have to trim down the volume of some elements in order to not break the silhouette of the character too much tho. Will see ...


Concept sheet :

SniperWolflayout001smallflat_zpsb82f281b.jpg~original


Rifle sculpt finished (turned the crossbow into a regular musket gun in order to avoid possible problems at the time of submission):
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/pior_ubb/media/pior_sniper_wolf_wip_001_zps1b52be0b.png.html

Blockout for the whole gear set, ready for sculpting :
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/pior_ubb/media/pior_sniper_wolf_wip_002_zps0abd1ee7.png.html

Once this one is complete and submitted I want to work on a courrier or two, and then probably some one-shot items (helmets, weapons ...) in order to keep things fast and fresh. I am also considering doing purely 2d concepts for collaborations with modelers.

I am really enjoying it so far, and browsing the workshop threads here is a pleasure !

Replies

  • Lennyagony
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    Lennyagony polycounter lvl 14
    Looking incredible so far Pior and good call on switching out the crossbow for the gun. Will be looking forward to watching this and any future works of yours progress :)
  • Snowstorm
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    Snowstorm polycounter lvl 5
    oh wow, that is a stunning looking concept. Looking forward to seeing this when it's done.
  • kendmd
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    kendmd polycounter lvl 5
    Damn, that concept is so sexy. Loving everything you've done so far.
  • Insaneophobia
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    Insaneophobia polycounter lvl 5
    Bloody amazing concept pior!
  • Shock
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    Shock polycounter lvl 5
    first sniper i see that does not look like a piece of shit :)
  • Nannou
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    Nannou polycounter lvl 5
    Solid concept. Looking forward to this.
  • Goeddy
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    Goeddy greentooth
    nice concept! welcome to dota
  • MeintevdS
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    MeintevdS keyframe
    I was thinking of doing a crossbow for sniper at some point. And was curious why I hadn't seen one yet. So I'm curious why you switched out yours for a rifle? What issue were you afraid of running into during submission?

    The concept looks awesome and so far the gun looks awesome as well. I do have to say I miss the little crosshair add-on that's being shown on the concept. I think adding this to the side of the gun would add a nice extra detail to the gun that pulls it away from the original design.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Thank you for the encouragements everyone :)

    Mein : I actually had it all modeled as a crossbow earlier today but couldn't quite shake the feeling that it would run the risk of being refused for being too different from the original set. So for now I am going for a rifle ... but I will very likely do the crossbow variant later as a standalone item later, to see how much freedom is allowed.

    As for the crosshair : you are totally right !! And I can very easily put it in now that the simple rifle design accommodates nicely for it, since there are no bow strings getting in the way. Thank you for your suggestion - I will add that first thing tomorrow :)
  • Shock
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    Shock polycounter lvl 5
    problem with the crossbow is the sound of the sniper attacks.
    the picture of the skills and the attack animation itself.
    u would have to chance this all and create the crossbow as arcana item
  • 7thBattery
    This is so awesome. I love your work.

    One thing to keep in mind with the weapon is in Sniper's assassinate animation he puts his eye right up to the scope. So if your scope model extends further back than the default, you will have clipping. I got pinged on that by Valve for my Sniper Rifle and had to redesign.

    Although, for you, they will likely do custom animations :)
  • MechBgum
    You also can kinda replace crossbow limbs with a bipod.
  • hopgood
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    hopgood polycounter lvl 12
    I love your concepting skills, looking forward to seeing how this translates into the sculpt
  • bounchfx
    FFFFF. This is an AWESOME direction for him. Another leet artist joining the dota fold, bwahaha. Really excited about this one.
  • Hawt Koffee
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    Hawt Koffee polycounter lvl 13
    astounding work! keep it up
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    Poir enters the Workshop ring?

    Game over guys. :D

    In regards to breaking silhouette, Poir, don't forget that a characters pose in DOTA is just as defining. Seeing a hunched over cape holding a gun screams sniper to me no matter what colour or silhouettes I see. So I would say feel free to push it as long as you keep the larger elements. (cape, gun, scrunched up face)
  • Jalcober
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    Jalcober polycounter lvl 10
    Woah! Those Concepts are valve level!
  • HntrLuc
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    HntrLuc polycounter lvl 18
    Awesome work Pior! Really nice shapes and painting!

    I do think it'd be nice to find a way to work some red onto his back for the ingame view to instantly read as sniper. It might be unnecessary with his silhouette and animations though...

    Looking forward to seeing more progress.
    I am also considering doing purely 2d concepts for collaborations with modelers.
    Would be awesome to work with you on something if you go that route down the line!
  • BrontoThunder
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    BrontoThunder polycounter lvl 13
    It looks amazing! I'm curious about how you plan on breaking up the various slots, where does the head slot end and the back slot begin?
  • Sukotto
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    Sukotto polycounter lvl 8
    Ohhhh shit. I would love to work from one of your concepts too someday! :)
  • ncallow
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    ncallow polycounter lvl 11
    Really enjoy your concept design and I think that if you choose to collaborate with modelers there are going to be some awesome sets coming out of it! Can't wait to see the finished set for sniper. Love your painting style as well Pior! Keep up the great work, and you are inspiring me to continue to work on my concept design/painting as well as character art. Looking forward to keeping up with your thread.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Got some time to work on the head/cap today, which allowed me to practice the style I wanted to use for stylized fur sculpting. Still got the goggles to detail, then on to the other accessories, which should be much faster to do.

    Bronto, this should answer your question about the slots - I am using a piece of leather at the back of the wolf head in order to control the overlap with the cape.

    pior_sniper_wolf_wip_004-small_zpsafa0b8b7.jpg~original
  • Rob Macko
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    Rob Macko polycounter lvl 6
    This looks great, sub'd for awesomeness
  • identikal
    Amazing. Really love the way you sculpt mostly larger and more defined details.
  • 87roach
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    87roach polycounter lvl 5
    Excellent character sheet for the outfit, the design is awesome too! (even thought I really don't like sniper haha)

    It's too bad about the crossbow, that could of been really neat! The gun turned out well but the barrel might be a bit too short(initial impression). I look forward to seeing where it goes.
  • Prophet9
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    Prophet9 polycounter lvl 9
    Agree with everyone here - your work is fantastic.
    Checked out your webpage too, thanks for the Mudbox settings :)
    Looking forward to seeing your stuff in the workshop!

    Cheers.
  • OrganizedChaos
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    OrganizedChaos polycounter lvl 17
    Looking good so far dude! It'll be interesting to see how many freak out about this being more lycanish or fitting for beastmaster, but opinions seem to vary all over the place. Best of luck!
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Slow update ... Going from the more complex parts to the easiest for the sake of sanity :D

    The detailing is probably a bit too busy at the moment - might have to smooth out some bits later ...

    pior_sniper_wolf_wip_005b-small_zpsadc99311.jpg~original
  • Frump
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    Frump polycounter lvl 12
    Awesome! Welcome to our weird corner of game art, Pior.

    Really cool concept. Keep in mind how it will look from above and behind. If the wolf pelt covers his entire head/back and is grey and white with brown leather, that will stray from sniper's typical reds/yellows. You might want to skew the colors that warm direction or add some accents to aide readability. Same idea for the armor pieces.

    Coming along great so far. I really look forward to seeing what else you come up with. :)
  • MdK
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    MdK polycounter lvl 9
    Amazing sculpts, this is shaping up fantastically!
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Frump : thanks for the advice, and yeah I do feel that some parts of the set might be drifting away from the Sniper design rules too much ... I guess I'll just have to see how it goes at the texturing stage, playing with colors just like you suggest...

    This set is mostly a test tho, so I don't mind it too much if it doesn't get accepted :) Gotta start somewhere !

    Update on the sculpt :

    pior_sniper_wolf_wip_006-small_zpsa7ccf143.jpg~original

    Still the tiny knife to do ... and then from there on, retopo and texturing should go fairly quickly. Can't wait to start on the collaborations after that !!
  • Coyo.Te
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    Coyo.Te polycounter lvl 4
    damn your stuff good.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Thanks man, I appreciate it :)

    Prophet9, about the Mudbox settings : I have some newer ones that I have been using for some time in Mud2012 now. I am not sure if the brush engine behavior changed after this release, but I'll post them later regardless in case it could be helpful to anyone...

    The entirety of the set is now sculpted - I edited the rifle as suggested (longer and with the added crosshair), also did the small single-handed knife holster that might or might not fit within the lowpoly budget ...

    pior_sniper_wolf_wip_007_zps779d7044.jpg~original

    Now time for retopo and bake ...
  • quockhanhlk
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    quockhanhlk polycounter lvl 11
    Look great man, great
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    Looking fantastic!

    Just offering encouragement!

    :D
  • JasonLavoie
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    JasonLavoie polycounter lvl 18
    So clean... so well done, god damn Pior you`re nailing it dude!

    I am really interested to see what you do with the colour, maybe the wolf pelt may have some paint markings to help bring back some of the characters colour palette.

    Great job as always Pior, very happy to see new art from you :)
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Thanks for the encouragement guys :)

    I have a question regarding items attached to two limbs (like the forearm and shoulder items in Sniper). Is the polygon count given on the model page true for one element, or should both left and right items, combined, fit within this budget ?

    For instance, shoulder is said to be LoD0 500 and LoD1 300. Does that mean that the two shoulder pads combined can add up to 1000 tris ? Or is it 500 total ?

    I am a bit confused because I first assumed it was 500 total for both combined, but then the Valve model for the basic Sniper outfit has the two shoulderpads combined weighting in at 672 tris, which is over the 500 limit ...

    I understand I could simply test it out with the importer and find out what gets rejected that way, but I thought that maybe someone here might have better information on this subject.

    Thanks !
  • bounchfx
    Unless sniper has 2 shoulder slots listed, it's combined. And yeah.. valve breaks their own budgets pretty often.. jerks. heh
  • Shock
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    Shock polycounter lvl 5
    its exactly as bounchfx said. they break their own budgets very often. u got 500 for 2 :(
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Ok perfect, thanks for the details. That should be doable just fine anyways :)

    [edit]
    Alright ! That was a tight fit but it all worked out. Knife included :) Thanks for the info about symmetry again !

    pior_sniper_wolf_wip_008_zps01e912f8.jpg~original
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Baked ! I wasn't sure if it would come out alright given the very tight polygon count, but it worked in the end.

    pior_sniper_wolf_wip_009_zpsa08ede43.jpg~original

    Some clean up and geometry tweaks left to do, and then on to the fun part !
  • MdK
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    MdK polycounter lvl 9
    Hey Pior, looking amazing, that is one of the cleanest bakes I have ever seen, did you use xNormal??
  • Insaneophobia
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    Insaneophobia polycounter lvl 5
    So I have to ask... How did you get such clean bakes? They look beatiful!
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Oh thanks :)

    Yeah this is Xnormal - I bake Tangent Space normals, Object Space normals and AO in it.

    For the base diffuse I have the AO as a main layer, and on top of that I add the green channel data from the OS bake at 50% opacity - this is effectively top-down lighting information. It comes for free with an OS bake, therefore I don't have to setup any complex point light bake at all.

    I then knock down the whites a bit, by multiplying a very light grey on top of the main layers. I use #cbcbcb.

    Then I add a very faint edge detection on top (the kind that Crazybump can generate - there are also scripts to do that straight in Photoshop too, and I think that Xnormal can generate that aswell. Very faint white on convex edges, very faint black on concave edges.)

    Last, I have a gradient map adjustment layer, which allows me to tweak the contrast and add a little bit of warmth.

    But at the end of the day, the most important passes are AO and directional really. And of course, being careful during the retopo step - not too tight, not too loose ;)

    This is the final diffuse comp - I call that a "whitebake".

    pior_sniper_whitebake_zps8ed43c94.jpg~original

    When it comes to the Tangent Space normals, I can actually spot a few bending artifacts here and there on this bake :) Therefore I think that the next step will be to try to convert the OS bake to the accurate Valve TS format using Handplane. I never tried that before, but according to their videos this would give the best shading possible for models going to a Source engine game. Will see !
  • Neox
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    Neox veteran polycounter
    dem shapes, very ace work man - love the concept, reminds me of that fortune teller dude from Asterix

    regarding handplane, it also gives you better maps for max or maya
  • Insaneophobia
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    Insaneophobia polycounter lvl 5
    Sweet, thanks a lot man. It'll be really helpful^^
  • fearian
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    fearian greentooth
    Wow, that is some seriously nice AO. Can we see the AO on its own? I'm interested how much detail comes from the AO and how much fro the OS bake.
  • Oroboros
    Amazing looking set. Jaw drop and all that. Is he wearing some skinned Lycan wolves? :)
  • Snowstorm
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    Snowstorm polycounter lvl 5
    Fantastic bake. Using the object space normal sounds like a cool trick! I have to try that out some time.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Fearian, sure ! Here it is :

    pior_sniper_AO_OS_zpse7b7d67f.jpg~original

    It's a cheap trick, but it's been working well enough for me for years now :)

    Oroboros : now that you mention it, I'll totally try a Lycan color scheme for the sake of seeing how it turns out ! I was thinking grey snow wolf originally but yeah the Lycan colors are worth trying :)

    Speaking of color schemes : Does Valve accept sets containing color variants of a given item ? For instance I could imagine a certain part of a Dota character being colored in two different ways, swapping the primary and secondary colors around without breaking the rules of this given character. Is there any history of such thing being accepted ?
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