Demigod Character Art

"Pixels, Polygons, and Milk Tea: It's Business Time"

By Timpulse on July 28, 2008 2:32:00 PM from

I represent roughly half of the Demigod character modeling crew. I say “roughly” because, while Matt Dudley and I are currently the only ones tasked with modeling and texturing characters at this stage, Nate has also had his hands in some of the earlier modeling work. (Furthermore, I believe that Matt is an inch or two taller than me, making me just slightly less than half of the character crew, if you go by height.) To the point, the Demigod art team is an extremely small one considering the project scope, and easily the leanest lineup I’ve ever been a part of.

Beyond the obvious financial benefits of a small dev team, our ability to know what’s going on in the areas of design and engineering and our ease and freedom in communicating ideas amongst each other is amazing. As Nate has already stated, the entire team participates in routine play testing of the game and everyone can have a direct and meaningful impact on its evolution.

I am fortunate to be a part of a project that has been so well planned and executed, and to work amidst such skilled and experienced people. As a bonus, the concentration of wit and humor per capita at GPG is extremely high, which makes for lots of good times. Yes, I do love my job and the fine folks I get to work with, and I take note daily that I am a part of something great.

The Demigod project and a surprising amount of the art were already well under way when I joined the Demigod team in early January of 2008. The standard of quality was set pretty high, as the “waterfall” map and many of the characters you see in the trailer and in the earlier screenshots were nearly complete. The art pipeline was well thought out and established, which made it easy for me to get acclimated and start creating.

The character concepts (all done by Nate or Steve) are expertly done and very concisely detailed, leaving very little guesswork when charging forward with the modeling. I have worked with Nate in the past, so a solid rapport and a kindred sense of silliness were already in place. I really liked where he was going with the art style. It felt mythical, unrestrained, innovative and fresh, and there was a nice balance between uniqueness and familiarity, and I was pretty jazzed to start creating a Demigod! Creating a Demigod…I should probably write home about that!

My biggest obstacle initially was some unfamiliarity with ZBrush, which I hadn’t touched in a couple of years. When getting acquainted with ZBrush, the “first date” is often not so great, but with some dedicated courtship, a meaningful relationship will eventually blossom! Thankfully, Matt is very technically knowledgeable, easy-going, and was really helpful in getting me up to speed with the features of version 3, our primary tool for generating the highly detailed normal maps we’re making for our characters. I’ve learned a lot and I am especially glad to be working with him. Matt shares his milk tea with us. It is good.

I’d like to talk more about ZBrush or critical decisions we’ve made regarding our character art pipeline, but for now I’ll wrap this up and invite questions or comments anyone may have about our character art creation process for Demigod.

-Tim Cox

+2 Karma | 72 Replies

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is...

Hmm. Ice, antibiotics, or Demigod. Ice is only temporary, and antibiotics aren't fun. So that means...

More cowbell!

Ice is only temporary

Unless you make a freezer chair. Keeps your butt in a state of perpetual freeze!

More cowbell!

Less cowbell, more generals. >D

Hmm, rampant speculation on hero numbers eh? Well DotA currently has 91 heroes, and since Demigod is apparently built with DotA in mind I'd have to hazard a guess that it'll have more than 12. I'd guess at least twice that, 24 heroes in total in an even split between generals and assassins.

For major bonus points, the dev team can contact Icefrog and ask if it's alright to make all of the DotA heroes too for assassins/generals. Chen the Holy Knight and Furion the Prophet are definitely generals. >D

Ooo... but how would Meepo work...?

Well DotA currently has 91 heroes, and since Demigod is apparently built with DotA in mind I'd have to hazard a guess that it'll have more than 12. I'd guess at least twice that, 24 heroes in total in an even split between generals and assassins.

But you realize that DotA heroes are essentially modified templates of a couple different types, yes?

Whereas Demigods will be entirely unique in appearance, abilities, animations, etc. It's a lot faster and easier to make 91 iterations of the same few heroes, than even 12 unique ones

That's not to mention balancing.

The great point in DotA is Diversity
I played 1 hour ago , i said , " Wait , i havn't played tiny for a while , let s play him a bit
It was great to re discover him
I wish i will have the same experience in Demigod
If the spells/Heroes are just modification of the old ones
The way each hero have his Own spells , (Blast 330 dmg only on hero / Blast 300 in line / blast 200dmg with stun / Blast 150 area Effect, etc) change everything

On the other side, you re right for the Models/templates/modifications easier on DotA , and tools already exist
Not like in Demigod , Begining to Ash
But i dream about a large scale of heroes and each one different of the others
Even if I know it s impossible to have , since the begin , a large panel

And finally , a great work is made in dota , in order to Balance each unit
We don t count how many versions of the DotA map exist , and how many DotA Allstars map Exist
It s one of the best part of this game , the Modularity

So , to make short , I wish for a Game allowing changes
=> In order to include New Assassins/Commanders with Update
=> looking for a well balanced Game (No E=MC2 troopers => Age of Empire 1

PS: I m french, ( not an excuse ) so sorry for my English

The normal Maps are looking Grade A by the way, gamers like me appreciate the time put into making them instead of favoring higher poly models with crazy amounts of tiny details. So far the work is looking good, hope to get a handle on how well the Art blends with the game mechanics and animation. Once it leaves the hands of the Artist all they can do is hope, and like the player - hope for something really fun and enjoyable.

Once it leaves the hands of the Artist all they can do is hope, and like the player - hope for something really fun and enjoyable.

Quite the contrary. The character artists on Demigod are fully involved with Design and Animation every step of the way. The departments collaborate to an insane degree to make sure the art, animation, design and balance all "gel" to ensure that each Demigod reaches its full potential.

We're not a "throw it over the fence" style team. Not even a little bit.

Mike "Tyo" Marr
Demigod Lead Designer

So everybody influences it all?

The normal Maps are looking Grade A by the way

Thankyou, OrleanKnight! We're giving it our best.

I have to say that often my most favorite part of what I do is handing my model over to the animators and watching this static thing come to life and become a dynamic personality in the game. Then our FX guys come in and REALLY put it over the top with coolness.

The "whitebox" approach allows us to see our character operating successfully in the game before we do any of the hard work. So no, we don't do a lot of hoping.

So everybody influences it all?

Absolutely! As Tim mentioned, we do white boxing before we do any of the hard lifting. When we go to create a Demigod, I pull up our "List of candidates", which is a document that any team member can enter ideas into, and select the best candidates. From there the team sits down and spitballs ideas to flesh out the character. Based on that meeting, art spearheads some initial concepts while design draws up an ability list. After that we meet again, critique one another and iterate on the process.

Once we've come up with an initial concept we like, a model gets built and content engineering implements the abilities. At that point the character is in game and we begin to white box the Demigod to work out any kinks. After white boxing, if all goes well it is off to the presses for full production.

Mike "Tyo" Marr
Demigod Lead Designer

I love these little insights, makes me feel my pre-order money is in good hands, more companies need to be like this.

Oh, and love the art so far too!

Actually to my knowledge only one hero in DotA shares a model with anyone else, and that'd be himself (Meepo). The essential "basic hero" portion is done already, as far as programming is concerned. At least I would hope that the GPG programmers have a "basic hero" class to build upon. ^.^;
For DotA, a bunch of JASS is added for custom abilities that don't exist in the game (Meathook for Pudge and Primal Roar for Rexxar to name a few), which is what amounts to adding a new demigod in this game. Albeit a bit more complex, and featuring purpose made assets which of course take time.

To simplify things, DotA and Demigod share a great deal on the surface as far as game play seems to be concerned (having not played Demigod yet, I wouldn't know. Let's change that people, shall we? >D ), and additions in turn are done in mostly the same way. Having said that, DotA's been in production for QUITE a while, at least 4 years and probably 3 years longer than Demigod at the very least. So yeah, I don't expect 91 heroes straight away (maybe next year? >D ), but at the same time as was said above, diversity helps make the game fun. I don't find 24 to be wholly unreasonable.

Addendum:
Perhaps other versions of DotA share the same models. I just remembered that other people choose not to play the Allstars version. My argument is based upon the Allstars version, so that'd be the only one I know it has validity for.

I'm a pretty big fan of Dota, been playing it for almost 2 years now. Therefore, obviously, I was thrilled when I heard about Demigod.

When I first watched the trailer for demigod, though, I was very reluctant to be thrilled, because what I saw differentiates itself substantially from the Dota I know. Sure, it all looked awesome, but it's a sad trend nowadays that looks counts for much more than it should. After watching the trailer a few more times, and readin up a bit on the game, my hopes rose again, but I have some questions I would be happy if you could answer:

1. A very big part of Dota is the way that you are able to ambush other players, sneak behind them without them noticing, hide behind a turn in the road and then suddenly storm out and take them by surprise. Another part of Dota is the socalled 'Juking', which in short terms is about shaking off followers by hiding in shadows and taking unexpected routes. From what I've been able to see, none of this will be doable in Demigod, simply because you have full visibility, and because the maps just don't encourage sneaky ambushes and clever shaking-off-of-followers. Now, I realise that Demigod isn't supposed to be a Dota remake, but have you taken this into consideration? For these a key parts in what makes Dota such a competitive game.

2. Are you going to ask the public (or a specified amount of devoted forumers) to help you brainstorm what Demigods should exist in game? Because the Dota community have some very active forums, where a lot of creative people are good at being original. I realise that if you asked the public to come up with suggestions, you could spend your time on nothing but reading and discarding heaps of suggestions, but 1.000 minds think better than 100, and I know that a lot of people would be willing to put a lot of effort into this creative process.

I realise this post might sound a bit negative, but I assure you, I'm following the progress of Demigod with great interest. I suppose you get a LOT of comparisons to dota, and I'm sure you get sick of it, simply because people are looking for a "Dota v.2: now with better graphics". So I'm sorry if I sound like just another Dota fanboy, I am not

Oh, and I'm very impressed with the way you interact with your community!

Keep up the good work

(and sorry for such a wall-o-text)

1) Just becaue there isn't Fog of War in the trailer doesn't mean it won't be in the full game.

2) There is a suggestion forum for a reason. If GPG decides to make new Demigods after release, they will probably look there for inspiration

Given the amount of submissions they'll get, I'm willing to bet there will be some kind of contest for the top X entries to be made into characters. IF they're going to accept community suggestions for characters. I don't see why they wouldn't, but it's equally possible that they'll open it up so that the community itself can make however many characters they want. Then the game might be modded beyond its initial tally of characters into a whole other game, like TA which still enjoys fan made unit submissions.

Hey all,

A couple answers based off Rustrum's post.

1) We feature a Fog of War; in fact with different looking fogs for each map. And while our maps are fundamentally different than DOTA, and our game play is also moderately different, our maps do offer opportunities for ambushes.

2) Of course we'll take suggestions! This is already occurring and will certainly ramp up during beta and continue post release. You all need to know what the game is about first

And I've just got to say, comparing a War 3 model to a Demigod model is like... comparing a '92 Honda Accord to an '08 Ferrari. There's a bit of a cost, look and power difference.

Mike "Tyo" Marr
Demigod Lead Designer

No doubt. >D
Warcraft 3's like... What, 500 polygons or less? Most modern games are 1-3k for the mooks (definition 7) and 4-6k for the important people or close up models. Definitely no contest. But I was simplifying things a bit for my comparison. Definitely liking the models in play at present, and hope to see more in the coming months before release. >)

I could of sworn that the rook had less polygons than tiny (my eyes must begetting bad)

>.>

<.<

Ahem, again YAY! for Tyo releasing info.

It's good to know that your taking suggestions allready, and that there will be fog of war, as while there have been some quotes that there will be, It's good to have more detail (unique to the map, ohhh fancy

)

Edit: Thank you again!

I think the hill giant model (Tiny) is around 600-700 polys because it's suppose to be big, and you aren't typically allowed to make a lot of them.

ok, thank you for replying TyoArk.

1) Thats very comforting to hear

2) Ah, sounds great. Perhaps I should start concocting a theme for a demigod suggestion?

EDIT: oh what horrible, horrible smiley's you've got on this board

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Demigod Character Art

"Pixels, Polygons, and Milk Tea: It's Business Time"