custom blend textures

nobody88

L1: Registered
Nov 9, 2008
15
0
i have been working on my first map since late august, but i am new to this forum. i ran into a problem thats turning out to be a real butt breaker. i posted at steam powered and so far got no response, so i may just be s.o.l., but here goes- i tried making a custom blend using 2 standard TF2 textures:

nature/ground_04
nature/dirtground_002

heres my .vmf:

"WorldVertexTransition"
{
"$basetexture" "nature/ground_04"
"$surfaceprop" "dirt"
"$basetexture2" "nature/dirtground_002"
"$surfaceprop2" "dirt"
"%tooltexture" "nature/blendgrounddirtground002_tooltexture"
}

1) the problem is i cannot get it to show up in the texture browser. i tried every combination of filename/ file path/ tooltexture name i could think of, and i have hit the search button in the 3 main forums including this one and i am completely at a loss as what to try now. it seems like it cant be that hard of a solution- it looks like other ppl do this successfully all the time!
2) is there a way to bypass the texture browser so that i could apply the blend texture to the displacements some other way?
 

Altaco

L420: High Member
Jul 3, 2008
484
120
It's a VMT, not a VMF. You probably have the file extension wrong.
 

nobody88

L1: Registered
Nov 9, 2008
15
0
well you had me excited there for a bit (although i would have felt really stupid)(yet REALLY happy to have fixed it) but alas the 'vmf' is only a typo in my post- not in my file extensions. so do you know how that toolstexture line is supposed to read? is it supposed to be an exact character to character copy of the vmt as i named it?

and does anybody know how the file structure is supposed to be? there is a 'materials' and a 'materialsrc' folder in my computer, but i cant see that they contain any of the .vmt or .vtf files that i would expect to find there, like the game textures that are obviously somewhere on my computer. are they hidden files?

this is my file path for the 'content' side: G:/program files/steam/steamapps/me/team fortress2/tf/materials/
this is my file path for the 'source content' side: G:/program files/steam/steamapps/me/sourcesdk_content/tf/materialsrc/

btw...in case anyone is wondering, i have an 88 in my name but i am NOT A RACIST SKINHEAD. just in case...
 
Last edited:

Apom

L6: Sharp Member
Sep 14, 2008
366
65
Use GCFscape to extract game content (and just copy-paste one of the blend vmts in there).
 

TheDarkerSideofYourShadow

L10: Glamorous Member
Apr 12, 2008
792
286
"WorldVertexTransition"
{
"$basetexture" "nature/ground_04"
"$basetexture2" "nature/dirtground_002"
"%tooltexture" "nature/blendgrounddirtground002_tooltexture"
// "$bumpmap" ""
// "$bumpmap2" ""
"%keywords" "tf"
// "$ssbump" "1"
"$surfaceprop" "dirt"
}


I just opened a custom one I had working, and copied your info over in the proper places.

It goes here:
G:/program files/steam/steamapps/me/team fortress2/tf/materials/Nature/
 

nobody88

L1: Registered
Nov 9, 2008
15
0
thanks everybody that tried to help but its still not working. there must be something else wrong thats messing things up- i think at this point since i lost 2 whole days trying to figure this out i have two options 1- just work with the blend textures that are already in hammer, which is going to change the colors and lighting scheme i was going for, or 2- just make do without blends. since tf2 is sort of 'graphic' or impressionistic looking anyway, #2 is prob my best option. but its frustrating as hell- it seems like this shouldnt be so f/ing hard...
 

nobody88

L1: Registered
Nov 9, 2008
15
0
Yeah, I'm not sure why you have that tool texture line in there.

the tooltexture line is supposed to be what loads the vmt into hammers texture browser, as i understood it. it was there in both tutorials i followed and in the wiki vmt
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
the tooltexture line is supposed to be what loads the vmt into hammers texture browser, as i understood it. it was there in both tutorials i followed and in the wiki vmt
No, tooltexture is for displaying a different texture in hammer than the one the material actually uses in game.
 

nobody88

L1: Registered
Nov 9, 2008
15
0
ok i figured it out. there were two things wrong, and here they are for any future searchers:

1) you have to manually remove the .txt file extension when you create a vmt in notepad. heres how to show the hidden file extensions:
http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/security/trojanext.html
then you rename your file, manually remove the .txt extension, click yes when windows asks if thats what you really want to do

2)this is the code that worked for me:
"WorldVertexTransition"
{
"$basetexture" "nature/ground_04"
"$surfaceprop" "dirt"
"$basetexture2" "nature/dirtground_02"
"$surfaceprop2" "dirt"
}
turns out to be the most barebones basic one
altaco was right to question the tooltexture line, which is used only if you have created a blend vtf in photoshop and converted and imported it in. yay i'm mapping again!