Hammer (recently) won't show or use my custom tutorials- help?

(s2a) yahodahan

L3: Member
Apr 22, 2009
144
18
Hammer (recently) won't show or use my custom materials- help?

Hi all, thanks for any help-

I'm going back and editing an old map (this one)

Seems my custom textures are no longer showing up at all, anymore. Granted, I've fully formated my comp since I last worked on this map, so I had to place the files/folders back in manually, however I've painstakingly made certain I did this correctly, and checked every option I can find. No luck!

Let me give a specific example- the big "Shipment" sign above the gate uses a texture called "shipment_sign", however is currently showing up simply white. In the "Face Edit Sheet", under "Current Texture", it shows "CUSTOM MODELS/SHIPMENT/SHIPMENT_SIGN". The Image preview is black, showing "No Image". Obviously, Hammer isn't able to find it.

However, looking at the folder structure, I definitly have "shipment_sign.vmt" and "shipment_sign.vmt" in the folder "...\team fortress 2\tf\materials\custom models\shipment"

Next, I check the VMT, and it is proper as well-
Code:
"LightmappedGeneric"
{
	"$basetexture" "custom models/shipment/shipment_sign"
	"$surfaceprop" "Metal"
}

At this point, I was stumped, but didn't give up, and eventually found that if I moved the VMT file into the root of "materials", it would show up in Hammer. Okay, it's a start- however, this breaks the link that my object has in Hammer, of course- and there are lots of items with this issue, I'd rather not repath them all (teeedius!).

Next, I dug around in the options, and found that Hammer was excluding the "models" folder from being loaded into the materials. I thought, "perhaps it's just searching for "models", and my folder is called "custom MODELS", and therefore ruling my folder out too!"

So, I removed that folder name from the "block list" in "tf.fgd", made sure it was gone from the "Material directory exclusion list", restarted Hammer, and- fail. Still not showing any textures within that folder.

At this point, I'm at a complete loss. I've googled all over on this, and am not finding a fix. Please, if anyone can think of what I'm doing wrong, or if something has changed in Hammer that I need to work around, please let me know!!

Thanks again :)
 
Last edited:

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
So, this sign of yours. Is it a brush or a model? Because models need VertexLitGeneric instead of LightmappedGeneric. And if it's a brush, you were better off sticking the texture files in /materials/signs or something.
 

(s2a) yahodahan

L3: Member
Apr 22, 2009
144
18
Hi Steve- It is actually a brush, yes. That's just bad naming convention on my part...it's just that I have many parts that I also included in that not-so-aptly-named folder, and I would really like Hammer to simply "see" them right there. Thanks for the suggestion though!