Comprehensive DDE Workshop Guide

This guide is designed to explain the entire process on how you can use the workshop to have one of your submissions be accepted in-game.

Introduction

Welcome! The purpose of this guide is to help everyone understand the current process that is being used to upload items to the Workshop for Dungeon Defenders Eternity. Please note that this guide is subject to change, and I will do my best to keep it current as things develop!

How the DDE Workshop works

On Steam, there are two different kinds of workshops:

• Subscription Workshops: These kinds of workshops are where custom content can be subscribed to, which immediately downloads the mod into the game. The classic Dungeon Defenders has this type of workshop; everything you subscribed to was available in Open Mode.
  
• Paid Item Workshop Submissions: These kinds of workshops are where custom content is submitted to the game publisher as a potential item to be sold in the game for Steam Wallet Funds. These items cannot be downloaded; instead, it is up to the community to upvote the items they like for potential inclusion in the game.

The Dungeon Defenders Eternity workshop follows the latter description. This means that each submission can potentially be included in the official game as an armor skin, and you get paid royalties based on how many are sold. Please note there are several guidelines to follow - if you think that random low-quality submissions are going to be accepted, think again.

What to Submit

I'm going to start with the stuff that will be reported, rejected, and removed from the workshop. DO NOT SUBMIT ANY OF THESE! If you do, I will not be held accountable for the laughing stock you become and/or any rude remarks the community may make at you:

• Obscene or inappropriate content: Doing this is a great way to get banned from submitting items! Please, for everyone's sake, don't even bother submitting these.
  
• Copyrighted content: Models ripped from other games and/or submissions that clearly infringe on registered trademarks will not be accepted under any circumstances.
  
• Does not include a 3D mesh and texture: If it does not include these files, it does not belong in the workshop!
  
• Suggestions or requests of any kind: If you have suggestions to improve the game, create a thread in the Dungeon Defenders Eternity Suggestions subforum[www.dungeondefenders.com]. It does not matter how good your idea is, suggestions are not valid workshop submissions!
  
• Merely an image of what you want to see in-game: If you want to post an image of something you want to see in-game, post it in the Dungeon Defenders Eternity Workshop Thread[www.dungeondefenders.com]. This is called concept art, and while is serves as an excellent and integral part to workshop submissions overall, they are not valid submissions by themselves.
  
• Dye color suggestions: I want additional dyes in-game as much as you do, but this is something that Trendy is responsible for.

Now that those are out of the way, onto the stuff that is valid and encouraged!

• Armor skins: hats, helmets, pauldrons, bracers, shields, belts, and greaves in all varieties are highly encouraged!
  
• Player costumes: This is some *CRAZY* advanced stuff, but if you're an experienced 3D artist, you're welcome to take a crack at it. I'll likely create an advanced guide on this topic sometime in the future.

There's also some grey-area stuff. You're welcome to try your luck at submitting these, but keep in mind the likelihood for these types of items to be accepted is extremely low. On the other hand if you're simply after workshop brownie points, you're welcome to give these a shot!

• Weapons or weapon skins: Weapons cannot be skinned, and anything tied to stats cannot be purchased with Steam Wallet funds.
  
• Pets or pet skins: Same deal with pets; no skin support, and can't be bought.
  
• Taunts: This is more because a process has not been established on how to submit them yet. As talented 3D animators begin getting involved in the workshop workflow, I'm sure a solid process will be established so they can be accepted and sold in-game.

Concept Art

If you have little to no experience with 3D modeling or texturing, this is an excellent place to get involved in the workshop workflow. If you are a 3D modeler/texturer and are not sure of what to model, you can get some ideas from concept artists.

For this guide, I will be making a magician's top hat from start to finish. To create concept art, you require two things:

1. An Image Editor. Here are some image editors you can use:
Adobe Photoshop CC Trial[creative.adobe.com] (requires an AdobeID)
Adobe Photoshop CS2[helpx.adobe.com] (requires an AdobeID)
Paint·NET[www.getpaint.net]
GIMP[www.gimp.org]
2. Reference Images. You can download them here.[www.dropbox.com]

Because my guide focuses on the workflow rather than how to use these respective tools, I am going to do my best to be as tool-agnostic as possible. Learning to use these programs is something that takes a ton of practice, so be patient with yourself as you learn them!

Now, since I'm making a magician's hat for this example, I think the concept would look the best on the Jester. I could technically use anyone for the concept since armor skins are always going to be for all heroes, but I think it will look best on her. Because her existing hat would clip horribly with the hat we want to make, I'll use the reference photo without it:



I'll sample colors off her existing palette so it doesn't look terribly out of place:



Flat colors don't really fit well into the DD universe, so I'll add a bit of shading and a bit more detail to make it more interesting:



Kay, that's looking like a pretty solid concept! Now that we know what we're going to make and have a good idea of what it's going to look like, time to break open a 3D modeling program and bring it to life!

Side note: if you want to learn more about this topic, check out this guide on TF2 concept art.

Concept Art FAQ

Q: What if I suck at drawing?
A: Learn2draw.

Q: Are there any rules or guidelines to using the geared/non-geared images?
A: Mostly common sense that matches the reputation of the hero. For example, the apprentice should always have his eyes obscured, the summoner should always have his head shrouded, etc.

Preparing your 3D Workspace

Keep in mind that many of these steps can be accomplished either by yourself, or collaborating with one or more people. Just like Dungeon Defenders, the workshop can either be soloed or done cooperatively in a group. You can do whatever you prefer!

In order to create the magician's hat for use in-game, we will want to download a 3D modeling program. There are a ton of different ones out there, but these ones are used by most workshop artists:

Blender[www.blender.org]: free and open source
Maya[www.autodesk.com]: what Trendy uses, free for students
3ds Max[www.autodesk.com]: also free for students

Throughout this tutorial I'm going to be using Blender, but I will do my best to be 3D program agnostic. Again, this guide is to specifically outline the workflow in publishing an item to the DDE workshop, not how to use Blender/Maya/3ds Max. If you want to learn more on how to accomplish something, there are tons of resources online that can walk you through really any step of the way. If you're stuck, Google it!

Anyways, now that you have a 3D program downloaded, you will want to obtain character assets so we know how our hat will look around our character. Here's how to obtain them:

1. Open your steam library, except instead of 'Games', go to the 'Tools' library.
   
2. Locate the 'Dungeon Defenders Eternity Upload Tool'. Right click and install it.
   
3. When it finishes, you'll have the resources needed. Now to bring it into your modeling program:
   
4. Open your 3D modeling program of choice and delete all existing objects. In Blender there's a camera, cube, and light by default which will interfere with texturing in the future.
   
5. Go to the Import menu and select .fbx.
   
6. Navigate to the folder where you downloaded the DDE Upload Tool assets. By default on Windows, this directory is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DunDefEternity Workshop Tool\HeroTemplates".
   
7. Since we are going to be working with the Jester, go into that folder and select S_Jester.fbx.

We will now have something that looks like this:




Now that the Jester is in our 3D modeling program, we are ready to start modeling the hat!

3D workspace FAQ

Q: I installed the upload tool, but I can't find the Hero Templates. Where are they?
A: Are your Steam games installed in an alternate location? If you right click on the upload tool in Steam and go to Properties, it will tell you exactly where it is installed.

Q: Why does the Jester have spikes coming out of her when I import her mesh?
A: Those are representations of the Jester's bones, which are used in animating her. Since rigging is taken care of by Trendy, you are welcome to either hide or delete them.

Q: In Blender, my Jester is massive and is missing her bones. Why is that?
A: Make sure you are on the latest version of Blender. There have been many recent updates to the .fbx import tool in Blender that resolve those issues.

Q: What is the S_Jester.ma file next to the S_Jester.fbx file?
A: That's specifically for Maya users. If you're using Maya, you can open that file natively instead of having to import the .fbx file.

Creating the 3D Mesh

This is the part that has the highest learning curve. Again, this isn't a tutorial on how to use a 3D modeling program; if you want to learn the basics, open a new browser tab and search "blender basics", "maya basics", or "3ds max basics". They all have tons of tutorials for you. If this is your first time modeling, be prepared for a few of these steps to take hours or even days. These are learned skills that are not mastered overnight!

For my magician's hat, I'm going to start with a 20-sided circle, extruding it multiple times with varying diameters:



I quickly found that a lot of this hat is going to be symmetrical, so to save a bit of time I chopped half the hat off and used a mirror modifier. Next I'll add a bit of curviness to the brim:



My concept has a yellow band and a nested card. Since the card is not symmetrical I'll use a separate object for them so it's not mirrored too:



Try to make every surface visually interesting and non-linear; for me, this included everything from the fold in the card to the slightly curved crown of the hat.

Now that we have the mesh created, it's time to smoothen everything out and make it look less blocky.

Mesh FAQ

Q: How many tris should my mesh be?
A: Generally speaking, it should be less than 1000. The top hat ended up at 426 tris.

Q: Why are you only using 20 sides for the hat? It looks really bad being that blocky!
A: That's what smoothing is for! You can read about it in the next section. I used 20 sides because 16 looked a bit too blocky even smoothed, and 24 sides seemed like it was a bit overkill and would unnecessarily increase my tri count.

Q: What about rigging?
A: Placement of your cosmetic is different for every character and costume; in addition, helmets also greatly affect hat placement. Trendy said that they would take care of all rigging, so this is not something you need to worry about.

Smooth and sharp edges

Next we're going to take the blocky mesh we've created and smooth it out, despite it only having 20 sides. This process is different across each modeling program, but each have plenty of tutorials out there. If Trendy accepted our mesh in-game as it stands, it would look just as terrible and blocky as it does right now.

Here's what my hat looks like without smoothing (top), my mesh with lines marked as sharp (middle), and my fully smoothed model (bottom):



Once smoothing is done, we are officially done with the mesh! Now we can proceed to texturing.

Smoothing FAQ

Q: Parts or all of my mesh looks really blobby and not crisp like yours! What did I do wrong?
A: These are called smoothing errors, and its likely because of a missing edge split modifier or missing sharp edges. Here's what my hat looks like with smoothing applied but without sharp edges:



Q: Okay for realsies how do I do smoothing in Blender?
A: Check 3 things:

1. All faces are set to smooth and not flat
   
2. An edge split modifier is active but not applied - set it to a relatively high angle, like 70-80° so it doesn't make a sharp edge you don't want
   
3. You've marked edges sharp using Ctrl+E > Mark Sharp.

UV Unwrapping

Every model has a UV map, which is in essence your 3D mesh translated onto a 2D surface. Pretend the mesh is made of paper, and cut the paper so it lays mostly flat.

First we're going to mark seams; these are the cuts that are going to be made to flatten everything out:



Next we're going to unwrap it and go to the UV/Image Editor:



Yikes, that's a REALLY bad use of space. Shift stuff around and resize stuff until you have things as large and tightly packed as possible. You can also shrink less seen components (like the underside of the hat) to make room for important detailed components (like the playing card):



Now that our mesh is flattened into a UV space, we can start focusing on the texture.

Unwrapping FAQ

Q: I'm in Blender and the cyan sharp lines are interfering with my red seam lines. How do I hide them?
A: Push N, and under Mesh Display there's a checkbox labeled Sharp. Uncheck it - that option hides it while preserving which edges are sharp.

Preparing your 2D Space

We will want to extract two things from the 3D program: The UV map and an ambient occlusion bake.

The UV Map is exactly what we've been working with in the last section, except we are converting it to an image. Doing this allows us to know what to color where. It only serves as a guide, and will not be visible in the final product.

The ambient occlusion bake (hereon abbreviated as AO) creates shadows in crevices to emulate soft light, and "bakes" it directly onto the texture. This image is a major component to the final texture.

Here's my UV map image:




And here's my AO:

2D Workspace FAQ

Q: How big should these exported images be?
A: If your item is on the smaller side, such as bracers or wristbands, 256x256 is plenty. I'm using 512x512 for mine. Anything larger than that is unnecessary.

Q: My bake came out really uneven - what do I do?
A: Delete all existing lights in your project, and make sure world lighting is set to Ambient Occkusion. Other objects (such as an imported hero) can block light from bakes, even when hidden. Move your cosmetic away from other objects and try baking it again.

Q: My bake didn't come out nearly as bright as yours - how can I fix this?
A: Make sure the bake is normalized. Also, any existing lights in the project can also cause bakes to turn out dark.

Texturing

In DDE, all cosmetics are solid-colored dyes (base colors) multiplied over your texture, which means that the dye color is as bright as it gets. To work with this filter, we will want to pretend we are texturing something dyed white. If you attempt to use a colored texture, your hat will end up extremely dark when dyed in-game.

Here's what my hat looks like with just the AO on:



Even though its supposed to be dyed completely white, that looks super boring. We can spice it up by creating stark-white highlights, a bit of subtle texturing on the hat, and other wear marks/details. To do this, set all layers that create highlights (white) above the AO, and all layers that create shadows (black) below the AO. Using slightly sepia-tone colors helps make it look a bit more polished.



Now it's time to see what it looks like in full color.

1. Open your .tga file - not the layered image file you've been working in, but the exported + flattened .tga.
   
2. Create a new layer, and set it to 'Multiply'.
   
3. On this new layer, paint solid colors on each UV island to indicate what you want the default dyes to be. If you'd like to sample in-game dyes, here's a chart you can reference:

I'm personally not a huge fan of the current in-game dyes, so I'm going to use my own colors. Here's what my base color layer looks like:



Here's my texture underneath the multiplied base colors:



When combined, we get the final result:

Texturing FAQ

Q: Do I need to worry about a normal map?
A: Nope. I mean you're welcome to include it, but when I asked this exact question Trendy said not to worry about it.

Q: What about a specular map?
A: Nope. Same deal - you're welcome to include it, but there's no guarantee it will actually be used.

Q: How about an emissive map?
A: If your object has components that light up, it's probably easier to simply include a .txt file in your submission that indicates what parts of your item light up.

Q: How does transparency work?
A: The potion consumables are the only objects in all of DDE that I know of that have transparency; all armors, weapons, and costumes are completely opaque. If you want to take a stab at transparency, assign all transparent faces to a separate material, and include a note in your .zip file that you want them to be partially transparent.

Q: Are animated textures supported?
A: Along the same lines of transparency, there aren't any items with animated textures in DDE. I'd recommend including an animated texture version and a non-animated texture version in your workshop submission. There's nothing wrong with including multiple versions of your workshop submission in your .zip file and letting Trendy pick which version is most compatible with the current state of the game.

Q: When I sample Onyx dye as a base color, my texture is black no matter what! Can I fix that?
A: Onyx dye is sorta a lost cause. If black is the brightest color, there's not much you can work with.

Creating Preview and Cover Images

Do whatever you want for this section - showcase your item to make it look as awesome as possible.

That last picture I took of my hat was pretty good, so I'm going to use it for my cover photo. I'll give it a little extra eye candy with a blurred background from the King's Game and a thin black outline to emulate the game engine's contour lines.



Since the Hero Template textures are blank, I improvised by making the heroes mannequins for my preview image, giving them their own AO bake. Again, this is showcasing your model, so you can do whatever you'd like.


We are now ready to upload this thing to the workshop!

Showcasing FAQ

Q: Why are the hero template textures black?
A: The official answer from Trendy is "that's just the way it is right now", so we get to deal with it. I'm really hoping they update the upload tool with textures later on down the road, but its not a priority right now.

Q: Is there any way to see what our items look like in-game as client-side mods?
A: Unfortunately not.

Q: What about some sort of model viewer that uses in-game lighting?
A: Also not available. This means our 3D modeling program views are the best we have right now.

Compiling Everything for the Workshop Submission

Compiling everything effectively translates to "plop the right stuff into a .zip file". You'll want to include:

• Your mesh: Export it in .obj, .fbx, or .ma format. You only need one of the three.
  
• Your texture. Include two .tga files: Your texture without any base colors, and the solid colors that you want the default dyes to be.

That's basically it. I like to start a new 3D workspace and import my exported file to make sure it contains everything I expected and that there are not any issues with my mesh.

Files to include FAQ

Q: Should I include my .psd file too?
A: If you want to include the .psd file in case Trendy wants to make any slight modifications to the texture before accepting it, you're welcome to include it as well. It's 100% optional.

Q: What about .blend files?
A: Trendy does not have a use for .blend files, as they don't have a way to open them (they use Maya, not Blender).

Using the Dungeon Defenders Eternity Upload Tool

WARNING: MAKE SURE YOU LAUNCH THE UPLOAD TOOL OUTSIDE OF STEAM - this means navigating to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DunDefEternity Workshop Tool" and launching the .exe there. If you launch the upload tool from within Steam, your submissions will not be visible in the workshop. I have a shortcut to the upload tool in the same folder I keep my 3D models, so I have it for easy access.

Once you launch the upload tool, this is what you'll see:

1. Click 'Upload and Publish New File'.
   
2. Select your cover image. WARNING: YOU CANNOT UPDATE YOUR COVER IMAGE AFTER UPLOADING IT, SO BE 100% SURE YOU'RE UPLOADING THE RIGHT IMAGE!
   
3. Input a title and description. For some reason the upload tool doesn't allow new lines in the description, but it's really easy to add from the workshop submission in your browser.
   
4. Click 'Select File' and select the .zip file you created from the last section.
   
5. Click Publish.

Your item is now officially on the workshop! Woohoo!

Upload tool FAQ

Q: What's the Uploaded Files tab for?
A: It's rather redundant because you see the same info when selecting each individual workshop item. For all intents and purposes you can ignore that tab entirely.

Finalizing everything and Tax Info

Once you've uploaded your file, give it a few seconds, then head out to the Steam Community and locate your new submission. I usually find it by going to my profile and clicking my workshop link. Once there, you can edit your description and upload preview images.

If this is your very first workshop item, you'll get to take care of tax information here as well. Be sure to fill out everything accurately, because it won't let you proceed if there are any discrepancies (not to mention you won't get paid if any of your items are accepted).

Once tax info is validated and everyone accepts revenue percentage allocations, your item is officially out in the wild for the community to vote on. Share it on the forums, social media, even your classmates - the more the merrier.

At this point, its up to Trendy to determine if your item is accepted. In the meantime, you can refine your skills by working on additional workshop submissions. Good luck!

[Don't touch my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pasta!]

Thank you!