Wall Worm Forums

Okay so I'm making a snow level and wish to use the blend texture in 3DS Max.  After seeing Shawn demonstrating it in his displacement tutorial i knew i simply had to get used to it.

Is it okay to switch from 'Standard' to 'Blend' or will that not work?  I had seen 'DirectX Shading' floating around in the documentation but I'm not quite sure why I'd have to use this and furthermore how to even use it as a blend texture.

I suppose that i could just use trial and error but I'd rather hear it from the horses mouth so to say, rather than wasting valuable time trying to get it to work.

Thanks!

**This is for Counter Strike: Global Offensive**

Okay so i made a model of a safe but envmap doesn't give a dull enough reflection so I've decided to go with $Phong.  Here's an example of the sort of "sheen" i wish to have on the metal texture (yes i know it's wood in this picture but you get the idea)

As you can see it's not super reflective but has a mild glossiness to it which is what I'm looking for, and i believe that can't be done with envmaps.

Below i shall list my workflow of how i believe i should be doing it but maybe I'm missing something:

1.  Set shader type from Blinn to Phong.  Made sure WWMT is implemented into the material editor
2.  Put my diffuse texture (main texture) into the 'Diffuse' slot.
3. Put my normal map (that has an alpha channel for the Phong to work with) into the 'Bumpmap' slot.
4.  Done the same as in step 3 but this time for the Specular Level slot.
5.  Not touched anything else in the WWMT parameters to be on the safe side.
6.  Exported the textures (for some reason the .VMT exporter wont even do anything from within the material editor)

This is the resulting .VMT file, but for some reason it still reads as using an envmap AND Phong yet there seem to be a few Phong parameters missing:

"VertexLitGeneric"
{

   "$model" 1
   "$phongboost" "1.0"
   "$phongfresnelranges" "[0 0.5 1]"
   "$surfaceproperty" "Metal_Box"

    $basetexture "textures/Phong_test_1"
    $envmap "env_cubemap"
    $envmapmask "textures/phong_test_1_s"
}

So could somebody possibly tell me what I'm doing wrong?  Shawn has tried to help me and I'm sure, from his end, his explanation works but for me something just isn't going right and i end up with an envmap as well as a Phong shader.

Sorry if I've been asking a lot of questions but I've started to make notes of the ones that yield the best results and possible solutions, so that i have them to reference to in the future.

Okay I've noticed that if you export your model first and THEN the texture, the texture won't work in the engine.  I've now come to realize that you must export the texture first and then the model, in that order.

I didn't think it really mattered but now i know otherwise so i just thought I'd mention it in case anybody else runs into the same issue.

Do i still need to do it the old way by manually setting up the .VMT orcan you do it within WWMT now?  It's been a long time since I've made phong shaders but i always thought that the .VMT used the alpha channel of the bumpmap?

I watched the tutorial but it doesn't really talk about phong textures  :o  The exporter doesn't even recognize 'Specular Color' yet that's the thing needed to make phong shaders apparently.

THANKS!

So this is something that i've been pondering a lot lately:

Is making modular content good or bad for a typical Source map?  I'm just talking about things like buildings that you can't walk into and things like that.

I know that you can do it on an older engine very similar to it (GTKRadiant) which was around the same time as HL1 and you can do it for that but how about this?

So basically for things like scenery buildings are prefabs/modulars better than brushes?

Thanks!

I spent all day trying to work it out, i even tried doing it the old ways using stupid studiocompile whatever it's called.

Whenever i try to inject:

$includemodel humans/male_shared.mdl
$includemodel humans/male_ss.mdl
$includemodel humans/male_gestures.mdl
$includemodel humans/male_postures.mdl

^^^^These seem to point to things that don't even exist?  I was following a tutorial by NOESIS which may also explain why it refuses to compile in studiocompiler.  I may also be having issues since the pipeline update because things don't seem to work as i remember.

Into the .QC of the player for DeathMatch, HLMV crashes but without it there's no animations at all.  I really want to try and get a decent or moderately stable workflow going between WWMT and Source when it comes to making player models.  Once i get it working i intend to make a Youtube tutorial teaching people how to do it.

I've compiled the model to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Half-Life 2 Deathmatch\hl2mp\models\humans_sdk\Male\Group03m.

I know i've asked for help already but this is driving me crazy, and since nobody has really tried to compile a player model using WWMT i'd really like to sort it out so i can see if it even works or if i'm doing something wrong.

Could somebody please post what i'd need to inject into the .QC for it to use DeathMatch animations so i can at least try trial and error?

I also noticed that K@RT had made a 'tank' model and put it into Source via WWMT so ummm yeh lol.

I was advised to ask you, K@rt, because apparently you're pretty much in the know how.  I can't seem to import even a player model provided by Valve with all the correct bone names and everything.

The player model is view-able in HLMV but there are no animations for it and i just wish to use default HL2/CSS animations so i can get a feel for making custom players.

Could you please help me as i've been through a lot of Google search results but had no luck at all so i figured i'd come here to ask instead of pestering Shawn who has been a lot of help as it is xD

I've tried using the cs_player_shared.qc and injecting into the QCI in WW but then it comes back with messages like:


And i am again reminded of why Source used to infuriate me when other engines are much more lush yet simpler to use lol.

I can pretty much do everything else regarding modeling and mapping but this is just not working for me xD

***EDIT***

Okay i got it working but now i get messed up poses like this  >:(

This is driving me crazy.  How do i tell it that i want, for example, my directory to be this?:

Models:  E:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\sourcemods\sgm_dev\models\sgm_sgc
Materials:  E:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\sourcemods\sgm_dev\materials\sgm_sgc\models

It needs to be compiled in the SDK 2007 by the way because later versions will not work with this mod.

So can somebody please tell me how i can make it compile to them folders?

Thank you!