Anyone know how the item coloring works ?

[Loc_n_lol]

Not that I'm really interested in buying paint myself but I'm curious about the technical aspect of it. Seems like the models don't actually feature skins (texturegroup) for those colors, any idea how it works ? Any screens of recolored items yet ?

 

[fubarFX]

well, they don't need seperate textures. the bucket of paint probably has the same effect as adding a $colors in a vmt (which tints the whole vtf to a specified color). but yeah, my guess is that these temporary vmts might be dynamically generated. (that's why you don't find them in the gcf).

wild guess here, don't take me seriously

 

[Nineaxis]

I think they are just a tint masked to certain sections of hats.

 

[owly-oop]

Some hats seem to add tints, others seem to actually be recolored. The tints are ugly.

 

[Ravidge]

They have added a few lines to colorable items vmt's

Example (from the pith helmet):

	"$blendtintbybasealpha" "1" 
	"$blendtintcoloroverbase" "1"   // between 0-1 determines how much blended by tinting vs. replacing the color

	"$colortint_base" "{157 150 142}" // put the RGB value of whats being colored when no paint is present, if $blendtintcoloroverbase is 0 then put [1 1 1] here.
	"$colortint_tmp" "[0 0 0]"

And a few more in the proxies section further down the same file:

                "ItemTintColor"
		{
			"resultVar" "$colortint_tmp"
		}
		"SelectFirstIfNonZero"
		{
			"srcVar1"	"$colortint_tmp"
			"srcVar2"	"$colortint_base"
			"resultVar" "$color2"
		}

The textures themselves use a alpha mask to decide what parts of the material gets tinted.

 

[Loc_n_lol]

Tints with a mask... hmmkay guess that makes sense.
Didn't even know souce could do that

 

[Ravidge]

I think it's new.

Actually, this opens up the question whether modelers can create multiple skins with masked tints instead of full materials (vmts are MUCH cheaper than vtfs) for map props.

It's probably possible...

 

[Randdalf]

I think it's new.

Actually, this opens up the question whether modelers can create multiple skins with masked tints instead of full materials (vmts are MUCH cheaper than vtfs) for map props.

It's probably possible...

Except you need to pay $2 to view the VMT :3

 

[Ravidge]

Yellow fence set $4.99

 

[REEJ]

I'm just waiting to see some screenshot, don't wanna spoil my hats

 

[Mick-a-nator]

I think it's new...

It came with Alien Swarm I think. A certain prop type in Alien Swarm SDK can have its colour changed. This is just an overall colour change, and only works well on specific models (they are very neutral in colour, like grey or even just white with an AO map).
This is just adding a mask to that effect I think.

 

[Ravidge]

It came with Alien Swarm I think. A certain prop type in Alien Swarm SDK can have its colour changed. This is just an overall colour change, and only works well on specific models (they are very neutral in colour, like grey or even just white with an AO map).
This is just adding a mask to that effect I think.

AS and L4D (colored cars) have used various tint tricks before, for AS you can edit the tint on any prop with a keyvalue, the prop itself is white. It offers really good customization and doesn't increase the map filesize at all.
I dunno if that functionality has been ported to TF2 (I doubt it), but the ability to add masked tints to vmts as separate skins to custom models should now be possible (very filesize effective).

Let's hope it works

 

[TMP]

If you choose to use the paint on a hat, it shows you a preview of what it looks like.

 

[Terr]

Depending on how ugly paints are (and whether people can use them for a gameplay avantage) I hope there's a client-side option in the future to disable tinting.

Y'know, to avoid the "Everything I have is a blu/red purple color guy".

 

[sniprpenguin]

DX8 systems can't run tinting.

Need an upgrade here.