Making Textures in a Valve game...

[JackHundeswald]

I'm currently trying to make new textures out of scratch for my TF2/SFM map. making the texture itself is simple, but making the normalmap for it... well let's just say it doesn't work. I've tried many files for it, ended with tga, changed the name in the vmt to not have any typos, asked a software online to make a new Nmap
and no matter what I do, even reloading and rerunning the map, the normal still doesn't get used and black and white checkerboard appears. I know the vmt knows he needs a Nmap, but I just can't give it to him.

What did I forget?

 

[Dr. Orange]

What does your vmt file look like?

 

[JackHundeswald]

What does your vmt file look like?

 

[Dr. Orange]

The texture filepath for the normal map ends with .tga. You need to convert the normal map tga to a vtf just like with your base texture, and remove the .tga from the end of the file name.

 

[Pocket]

Also, if it wasn't clear from the presets in whatever program you use to do that, normal maps are typically going to be saved in "uncompressed BGR[A]888[8]" format, depending on whether you have an alpha channel (which by default serves as a reflection mask) or not.

 

[JackHundeswald]

right, Orange, I had tried to do that before (forgot to say it, sorry) and Pocket, I used VTFEdit and GIMP.

The Valve Dev Wiki said "tga" but I'm gonna trust you guys.

 

[JackHundeswald]

So I did what you all said, and it seems to work, I don't see any checkerboard. I don't understand why it works now when it didn't before, but I'll say it was me, otherwise the program will kill me. I'm sure it is sentient too.

 

[The Siphon]

right, Orange, I had tried to do that before (forgot to say it, sorry) and Pocket, I used VTFEdit and GIMP.

The Valve Dev Wiki said "tga" but I'm gonna trust you guys.

Don't know the context on the wiki, but if you save the image as .tga before turning it into .vtf, then you can use the alpha channel for masks, for example, $selfillum mask. Which don't work with certain other image files.