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Interview with Maxime Lebled

— How long ago was you first match in Dota 2? What were first impressions and why you decided to make videos about this game?



— My first Dota 2 game was in late 2013… back then, like many players, I thought Bloodstone was the most amazing item ever; so much regeneration! I tried Windrunner & Death Prophet first. I’d played Age of Empires during my childhood, and in my teenage years, the SpellForce series, which actually does bear an interesting resemblance to the MOBA genre. As a result, I had many assumptions and preconceptions about the game that were promptly shattered. I remember thinking: “Wait, so you only ever play on just one map? Doesn’t that get boring?”



But the game ended up being very fun to play with friends, and it’s still how I tend to view it… as a social activity, something to play with friends first and foremost. Working together to achieve a common goal. It’s satisfying. So I almost never play solo!



In mid-2014, I had the opportunity to help two friends with a Steam Workshop submission to the game; they needed a courier animated, Bearzky the Polar Ursine. He is supposed to be one of Ursa’s cubs. I kept on collaborating with friends & artists on more Workshop submissions over time.



In mid-2015, Valve announced the Dota 2 Short Film Contest as part of TI5, and I knew I wanted to participate… I find the characters in this game to be well-written and fairly unique. The way the background stories and the lore are written—just vaguely enough—makes them, in my eyes, really evocative. There are lots of blind spots in the word, which people and artists can have lots of fun carving out and filling out with their personal interpretations. Whether it’s drawings, paintings, fan fiction, Steam Workshop submissions of couriers & sets, or in my case, animation. Well, some of it, you could call “animated fan fiction”, really.



— How did you learn to create videos in SFM? Did you have some basic knowledge about all this stuff when you started working with SFM?



— Before the SFM, there was Garry’s Mod, and before Garry’s Mod, there was the Source SDK with its Faceposer choreography tool—which was used to play back animated gestures, lip-synced dialogue, etc. on Half-Life 2 NPCs. I picked up 3D animation because I wanted to have more at my disposal than the animations that came with Half-Life 2. Then, in Garry’s Mod, I enlisted the help of friends proficient in Lua scripting to help me have a sort of SFM-lite environment for rendering movies. Back then, people thought I was using a leaked version of the SFM! But I was just the one guy who had worked out a pipeline that allowed me to import my character animations made in 3ds Max into Garry’s Mod, creating a look & feel radically different from the usual rag-doll stopmotion stuff.



So, to answer your question: yes! I did have some decent knowledge of the engine before I picked up the SFM. In fact, when it released officially, I was a little less than one year into using it “professionally”; my first job was working on Garry’s Mod.



— How could you describe the process of creation the video in SFM for those who don’t know how it works? What suggestions would you like to give for beginners?



— Imagine that you can load the “map” of a game as if it were a stage; being able to place models and characters from the game anywhere you wish, not being constrained by a physics system or game rules. Then being able to play back animation on these entities—or make your own from right inside the same tool! That’s how powerful the SFM is. Being able to work (or continue working) on your animation, right in there, is truly what elevates it to being an immensely useful tool.



Unfortunately, I don’t really have solid advice on where to start, because the way you’re going to be looking at these tools will be drastically different depending on your background: are you a complete beginner? Have you already done a little bit of 3D here and there? You’ll have a completely different outlook.



There is (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2B46DEB4157E67C4) an official tutorial playlist here. It’s for the original stand-alone Source 1 version. In Source 2, which Dota 2 uses, there are many differences, but it’s a good place to start.



— Do you use the basic models from Dota 2 in your SFM videos?



— There are a few filmmakers who have completely remade a few character models from scratch, but personally, I’ve stayed with the actual in-game models. Though I do enhance them a little bit!



I import higher-resolution textures (from the Steam Workshop source packages: http://www.dota2.com/workshop/requirements), and I end up modifying those textures and their materials to make them look better under movie lighting, give them more expressive eyes, fix a few things, etc.



For example, for my TI8 short (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mqZz0Z), I wanted a younger, less battle-scarred Bristleback; I modified his materials to remove the huge scar, I replaced the eyes, and I remodeled his quills to be a lot more detailed.



— What software do you use except of SFM in process of creating videos about Dota?



— I use Autodesk 3ds Max as my general-purpose 3D software, Adobe After Effects for special effects and compositing, and MAGIX Vegas Pro for final editing. There’s a lot of other software that gets involved here and there, but these are the most important ones.



— How much time does it take to create high-quality video in SFM?



— What’s actually in the video will determine how long it takes to make, to a point that any number I give here would be useless!



To give you an idea, my short films from TI5 to TI8 took, in order: two weeks, ten days, three weeks, one month. The only real correlation with how much time you take to make something is how far you want to take it, and how much you are actually able to. The video “Seven Sticks of Dynamite” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl3iq5g72qs) took a bit over three weeks, but it’s 3 minutes and 30 seconds long…! And that’s because it had a very different set of challenges.



— You did some great moments in SFM for True Sight this and previous years. Could you tell how Valve asked you for this work first time? What emotions did you have? And how hard is it to work on projects like these?



— Well, the first time, they just e-mailed me! And of course, I was very excited to work on something official. As the French saying goes, I was able “to contribute my own stone to the building”, even if it was a tiny one, and only tangentially related to the game itself. I wouldn’t say that working on projects like these is “hard”, but it is challenging—in a good way. I like it when a tricky problem comes up, and forces me to come up with an interesting.



— You also did a video about Void Spirit. Tell me please about the process of it. Was the plot of the video your idea or you worked only with SFM stuff? How much time did you spend on it?



— I was included on that as if I had been a member of the Dota team. They didn’t treat me as an outsider, but as an equal. So it’s hard to say where the responsibility for certain things starts and ends. I did make the majority of elements that appear in the trailer, but even then, I received guidance and advice on many, many elements. It’s not so much the achievement of an individual as it is the result of several people working together and helping each other.



— What work are you most proud of?



— Like many artists, I tend to only be proud of the latest thing I worked on. ;)



— You missed the SFM contest by Valve previous year, do you plan to participate this year?



— I want to! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to... but I do want to make it happen.



— The winner of the last contest did his video in Unreal Engine, did you try to make videos in this software?



— I’ve used UE4 in a game development context but I haven’t explored its cinematic tools… yet. It’s tempting to think about, but ultimately, as far as I’m concerned, there are too many drawbacks.



Like I’ve mentioned before, the SFM isn’t just a tool you can render movies out of, it’s also where you can animate them, with a graph editor, keyframes, bookmarks, and especially the Motion Editor tool, which is something I would love to see in other “proper” 3D software. My point is, in theory, you can make your movie from A to Z right inside the SFM. Not so much in Unreal.



It would also involve porting so many Dota models & materials over to a new engine, which is a daunting task… which would need to be done every time there’s a major update… and let’s not even talk about the challenge involved in trying to faithfully re-create the look and feel. I think the UE4-powered Dota videos that have come out have had a tendency to go a bit too hard on the shiny metals, the photorealism, and all that stuff.



I want to stay faithful in the way the world of Dota is presented, and only “enhance” it according to my personal interpretations of the existing material. I don’t wish to radically alter its foundations.



— Do you follow the Dota 2 professional scene? What is you favorite team or player?



— I only follow it very vaguely during the year, and only start really paying attention a few weeks before TI starts. At TI8, I was rooting for OG since they were the underdog, and because I’d met Ceb a few times at TI afterparties before. At TI9, I was rooting for OG again, but for a different reason: their story about the power of friendship overcoming all obstacles. It might seem a bit cheesy but I think it’s a message that holds true and that we all need to hear, especially nowadays. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the way they play Dota is really funny to watch — and it made for some great plays to animate :)

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