Okay, I probably won't ever use every sort of map for a single texture, but I just want to know what is possible to do within one vmt file. Would it be possible to have the following all in one texture: -color/diffuse -normal -spec -transparency -self illumination, or glow As it stands, I can get everything to work in one file except for specularity. I haven't tried glow yet, but specularity is my main problem right now. It won't show up. Here's the vmt: "LightmappedGeneric" { "$basetexture" "custom/platform_color" "model" 1 "$surfaceprop" "wood" "$envmap" "env_cubemap" "$bumpmap" "custom/platform_normal" "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 "$translucent" 1 } As you can tell, I am using the base color map's alpha to make the transparency and the normal map's alpha is supposed to determine the specularity. When i'm viewing my scene in hammer, I can see that the material is being displayed as specular, but not in game. I also have a valve-made floor tile texture that is displayed as specular in hammer as well, but doesn't show in game either. This makes me think that it's either my lighting setup or that it's some setting that i'm unaware of. I'm using a plain old default "light" entity to light the room, and I have a cube map in it to handle the reflection. I've tried the mat_specular 1 command and it doesn't work. I've also tried rebuilding cubemaps and trying HDR lighting. Nothing seems to get it to show. Does anybody know how to solve this?
Your best bet to figure out what works and doesn't is to play around with the material editor. Copy your tf2 shortcut, and go to its properties, and add "-tools" to the command line. Then you can play around with material parameters in real time.
I'm sorry, but could you explain in a bit more detail? I'm not familiar with such a process or maybe it's just the wording, i dunno, but I'm confused either way. Thanks!
You can also just right click tf2 in the games list, select properties, go to set launch options, and add -tools.
Hey, thanks for the help, but I'm still a bit confused. What exactly does -tools do? I tried it, and nothing happens when I boot up TF2 from within hammer. Is there an additional command that I have to enter into the console? Sorry about my confusion as I'm still pretty new to all of this, I appreciate everyone's patience.
-tools is not entered in the console, it's a launch option. 1. Right-click on the game title under the My games tab in Steam and select Properties. 2. Under the General tab click the Set launch options... button. 3. Enter the launch options you wish to apply (be sure to separate each code with a space) and click OK. 4. Close the game's Properties window and launch the game.
Okay, I know what I was doing wrong. I was trying to launch TF2 from hammer which is why it wasn't working. You have to actually launch it from your desktop or games list, so I got it working. Quite a nice little tool for vmt editing I must say. In the bottom right view where it shows the sphere with your texture applied to it, it shows the specular map working. However, the game operates in full bright even though I have lights in it. Anyone know why this is? And now that I know that the VMT is okay for the specular, what might be causing it to not show up in game?
Nevermind, I figured it out! I assigned the cube map to certain faces, built it, and reloaded the map. Works great! Thanks for the help everyone! Here's a link to a thread that helped quite a bit. http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=3369&highlight=reflection
