Hey people :)

Spent my free hours over last week making this for Dota 2 Short movie competition:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=480682227

The idea was to take official Dota 2 artwork and make it alive, while make a small story out of existing voice overs for given characters. Animation is clunky, but given time constrains and a fact that I was doing it alone, I think the quality is reasonable. The whole thing is rendered in passes from SFM (used: beauty, diffuse, depth, AO, lights) and composed in various tools later on. I've used Maya to export camera for projections and animation data for applying it to actual model's geometry: SFM -> Maya -> Tool of interest (stored camera in .fbx or .abc). This way I could re-apply textures, and do whatever (including re-lighing) in compositing.

What I've spotted working in the following way:

- lack of render manager (so I can assign multiple scenarios) is a pain in the ass! You sit and wait to render 10 different things and you have to keep track of that. Not good;
- the easiest and cleanest way to get alpha for you character is simply put it over green/blue screen. Depth map is Ok but the edges won't be perfect (if this word is applicable for GPU renders at all :) - you will always have some glow which you don't want to deal with around this or that part character (thank you, shaders). If you use depth map it MUST be 32bpp (i.e. .PFM);
- SFM (XYZ) = MOST 3D SOFTWARE (ZYX), in case you need reconstruct a point precicely in 3D space;
- particle editor is SFM is outdated :) It's super powerful, thought it's 10x time faster to make something, let's say in Particle World or at Particular in AE. Maybe someone have different opinion, I don't know (please share);

That's a small summary. Please vote for it if you like it!

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to export character's facial animation data from SFM to Maya 2013 32bit using Valve's sdktools. While there is no problem with importing both character and camera animation into Maya I can't get any of facial data. Has anyone ever encountered this issue an if so, maybe you've found a solution? Thanks!

No idea how to do that, but I guess there are tons of tutorials around.

Thanks guys!

Hey guys,

I`m playing around with ported to SFM dota 2 maps and for me it seems much better when there is no default light at all. I mean I wish I could setup entire scene starting with purely black screen. Maybe I could turn it down in Hammer or somehow else (kill HDR link)? Please advise. Thanks!