Texture appearing checkered on displacements

Dec 25, 2007
566
439
In the map I'm currently working on, I've got some displacements textured with nature/blendrockgroundwall004. I've painted alpha on the walkable parts so they look like ground, and it all looks fine in Hammer. But when I build the map, all the alpha-painted parts have a strange checkerboard pattern all over, like this:

ctfvfigtest01f0000vb7.jpg


I'm at a loss as to what could be causing this. Any ideas?
 

Snipergen

L13: Stunning Member
Nov 16, 2007
1,051
150
This looks awesome to be honest. Sombody on steam forums had the same problem.

Solution 1: recompile
Solution 2: build cubemaps

I searched for the original thread but i only founr similar ones;. i hope one of these works.
 
Dec 25, 2007
566
439
Yeah, I'd tried rebuilding the cubemaps, but it didn't change anything.

It turns out that some of the alpha blend textures show this problem: http://tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=128 -- if I change the texture I'm using it should be OK.

I might need to make my own blend textures anyway, because I'm not sure any of the defaults have the combinations of dirt with rock/gravel/grass that I want.

Edit: I'll try and find out why this texture does this, although I'm guessing it might be a developer feature to help highlight overly stretched/squashed polygons in the displacement.
 
Dec 25, 2007
566
439
Found it. It turns out that this is the result of a missing bump map for the dirt half of the material. The vmt specifies "$bumpmap2" "Nature/rockground001_bump-ssbump", but the real bump map name is Nature/rockground001_height-ssbump.
 
Dec 25, 2007
566
439

Snipergen

L13: Stunning Member
Nov 16, 2007
1,051
150
Great, another good mapper :p

Some parts look good, other parts need more details, but i guess you are just releasing for a bit playtest right?
 
Dec 25, 2007
566
439
Yeah. There's piles of work to be done, but the layout and props for cover that I'd planned are there. It's not even a beta, because it's not ready for general public testing yet.
 

Earl

L6: Sharp Member
Dec 21, 2007
284
38
Found it. It turns out that this is the result of a missing bump map for the dirt half of the material. The vmt specifies "$bumpmap2" "Nature/rockground001_bump-ssbump", but the real bump map name is Nature/rockground001_height-ssbump.

How would you go about fixing this? How do you edit the .vmt?
 
Dec 25, 2007
566
439
The .vmt is a text file that specifies the properties of the material (whereas the .vtf is just the image)

You wouldn't edit the original .vmt; rather you'd extract it from the .gcf, give it a new name, and put it in a tf\materials\your_mapname\ folder. Edit your copy to fix the error, and you'll be able to use your new material in Hammer and in the game.

You can find all the gory details of the .vmt file at http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Material