Resource icon

Texture Cobble Stone Blends fix

Bakscratch

Finisher of Maps
aa
Oct 29, 2010
714
1,492
Cobble Stone Blends - Cobble stone blend textures

20160509164453_1.png

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!
 
Last edited:

RataDeOrdenador

L5: Dapper Member
Oct 12, 2015
230
105
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

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
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?
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
Also a perfectly flat normal map for the water, since this one doesn't actually animate anyway.
 

Bakscratch

Finisher of Maps
aa
Oct 29, 2010
714
1,492
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

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
I have. And they look perfectly normal to me.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
...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

CHEERFULLY SUICIDAL
Sep 1, 2012
197
216
If it works, it works. We are developing content for game made of bugs and unexpected mechanics.
 

fubarFX

The "raw" in "nodraw"
aa
Jun 1, 2009
1,720
1,978
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)
 
May 25, 2015
390
307
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

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
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?
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
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

Finisher of Maps
aa
Oct 29, 2010
714
1,492
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!