Texture Cobble Stone Blends fix

[Bakscratch]

Cobble Stone Blends - Cobble stone blend textures



IF ANYONE HAS SOME IDEA ON WHAT ELSE THEY WOULD LIKE TO HAVE FOR A BLEND LET ME KNOW.

Please don't edit these or share them without asking 1st!

 

[RataDeOrdenador]

Oooookay,so it was a freaking blend... Nice.

I really like them. They could be used for a nice village in the middle of nowhere. I'll definetly use this in the future.

 

[Pocket]

OK, I'm looking at this material file and I'm just baffled. (1) You're using an actual water material as the second basetexture and somehow the cobblestone is visible underneath it even though that's not how blending works; (2) you're using LightmappedGeneric instead of WorldVertexTransition; (3) it's correctly applying the envmap to only the water even though there's nothing in the material file telling it to.

When I tried recreating the effect the other day, I did everything the "right" way and it didn't work. You're doing everything wrong and somehow it's working. The hell is going on here?

 

[Inqwel]

Tell us your magical secrets, wizard!

 

[Fruity Snacks]

I really think there needs to be some sort of bump map (or a more stronger one) on the cobble in these blends. They feel far too flat.

 

[Pocket]

Also a perfectly flat normal map for the water, since this one doesn't actually animate anyway.

 

[Diva Dan]

These textures are incredible and I can already see some uses for them. Great work!

 

[Bakscratch]

OK, I'm looking at this material file and I'm just baffled. (1) You're using an actual water material as the second basetexture and somehow the cobblestone is visible underneath it even though that's not how blending works; (2) you're using LightmappedGeneric instead of WorldVertexTransition; (3) it's correctly applying the envmap to only the water even though there's nothing in the material file telling it to.

When I tried recreating the effect the other day, I did everything the "right" way and it didn't work. You're doing everything wrong and somehow it's working. The hell is going on here?

~~have a look at the normals....

 

[Pocket]

I have. And they look perfectly normal to me.

 

[Bakscratch]

I have. And they look perfectly normal to me.

Even the alphas?

 

[Pocket]

...Huh. Well... that certainly is a thing. What does it do, though? I've never heard of a normal map having an alpha before, and there's no documentation in the wiki about it. And this still doesn't explain how you're able to get $envmap to work in a blend material or how you're able to get blend to work in LightmappedGeneric.

 

[LadyRaee]

If it works, it works. We are developing content for game made of bugs and unexpected mechanics.

 

[fubarFX]

yeah LightMappedGeneric supports blend materials now, it just does. I'm not sure it's supported across all source games so I'd keep using worldvertextransition so assets can easily be ported to older games but yeah, just add the additional fields you'd find in vertexTransition and it will behave as a blend material. There's not a whole lot else you can do with $basetexture2 so it's a nice default to have.

hell even unlittwotextures doesn't use $basetexture2 (just $texture2)

 

[Dr. Orange]

Even the alphas?

So, I haven't actually downloaded this (it does look cool, though), but I'm going to make a guess on how iit works just as a test of how much I know about the Source engine.

$envmap is enabled for the whole material but uses the normal map alpha mask as an envmapmask, and the alpha is completely transparent on the cobblestone normal map?

 

[Pocket]

Nope. It's black in the cracks. Somehow this allows the water to be transparent; I tried replacing it with a completely solid normal map just to see if it would look better without the non-moving ripples, and it went opaque.

So what is the advantage of using LightmappedGeneric instead of WorldVertexTransition?

 

[fubarFX]

So what is the advantage of using LightmappedGeneric instead of WorldVertexTransition?

I guess it enables you to use the patch shader on lightMappedGeneric materials to create blends without overriding the shader

 

[Diva Dan]

Bumping this thread for a suggestion-

Can you make a blend between water and egypt stone? Or can I have permission to edit the files myself?

 

[Pocket]

Oh! I get what's happening here, kind of. It's not actually showing the cobblestone through the water; it's showing the normal map's alpha channel, which looks close enough to fool the untrained eye.

That's still really weird though, and only works on textures that are essentially monochromatic. Not grayscale per se, since you can tint the $basetexture2 however you want. Actually, you could probably just use a tinted duplicate of the main base texture as your $basetexture2 and not have to concern yourself with custom normals at all—freeing you to go back to using default water normals and proper animation and such. Haven't tested this yet but it shows promise. The important thing seems to be that using LightmappedGeneric allows you to enable reflections (but only on $basetexture2 because I DON'T KNOW), and you can basically go nuts after that.

 

[Bakscratch]

Oh! I get what's happening here, kind of. It's not actually showing the cobblestone through the water; it's showing the normal map's alpha channel, which looks close enough to fool the untrained eye.

That's still really weird though, and only works on textures that are essentially monochromatic. Not grayscale per se, since you can tint the $basetexture2 however you want. Actually, you could probably just use a tinted duplicate of the main base texture as your $basetexture2 and not have to concern yourself with custom normals at all—freeing you to go back to using default water normals and proper animation and such. Haven't tested this yet but it shows promise. The important thing seems to be that using LightmappedGeneric allows you to enable reflections (but only on $basetexture2 because I DON'T KNOW), and you can basically go nuts after that.

If you can make it look better i'm all for seeing it!

 

[Diva Dan]

The download is broken now