Wall Worm Forums

Thanks for all your help! I think I got it working. It produced a QC file that looks right. I'm going to hand it off to our level designer and see if it's switching textures how we want it to. I actually bypassed the proxy part and just mimicked your final multi-material that had other multi-materials in it.

I'm still new at understanding source and wrapping my head around concepts. I mostly come from a unity/UDK background where the tools are a lot more user friendly. I definitely wouldn't have made it this far into Source without your exporter. Keep up the great work!

Alright, looking through Valve's documentation and lots of threads on Steam, I think I found what I need.

I think I need a texture group that looks like this:

$texturegroup fruit_machine_skins
{
   { "fruit_machine_body"    "body_texture"   }
   { "fruit_machine_screen"    "game_state_01_texture" }
   { "fruit_machine_screen"    "game_state_02_texture" }
   { "fruit_machine_screen"    "game_state_03_texture" }
   { "fruit_machine_screen"    "game_state_04_texture" }
   { "fruit_machine_screen"    "game_state_05_texture" }
}


If this is the final result, how would I go about exporting my model to get a similar result?

So I got the file and checked it out. I didn't know about proxies, and it seems like a handy feature! I'm not sure if this is something that I need to use on my model or not.

Here is the model as I have it in 3ds Max:



Right now I have the body as one object, and the screen as another. I'm using the "Add Sel" button to make them one wall worm model. They do not use the same UVs. Since the body of the machine never has to change, we are trying to just use one texture for that. The screen will be the only thing cycling through textures. Though when our level designer changes the screen texture, it appears all over the model.

Perhaps it's a limitation of Source? I think that may be why when looking at a similar example, a jukebox, it's actually divided into two separate models that you have to align within Source.

Awesome! Once the update is pushed, just let me know how I should set up the model in Max, and I'll be happy to do some testing :P

So this has proven a bit tricky. I have created a slot machine mesh that will contain two materials. The body is the standard metal, while the screen will contain numerous textures in different game states so we can switch them out to give it an active state.

We have tried several different methods:

   
• Creating 1 object (containing the body and screen) with 1 multi-material
• Creating 2 objects (1 for the body, 1 for the screen) with 1 multi-material
• Creating 2 objects (1 for the body, 1 for the screen) with 2 materials (1 standard for the body and 1 multi-material for the screen)

Got the same results each time... replacing the texture on the multi-material for the screen will replace all textures on the model.


From what I can tell, the only way to create an object where you can switch out the textures is to actually export the body as 1 object with 1 texture. Then export the screen as 1 object with 1 multi-material texture. Then you would would have to manually line them up in the engine when placing them.


Does this seem correct? Thanks for any help!

Thanks for your quick reply Shawn! I spent the evening trying to figure out my spec issue. I dismantled some of Valve's vmts to check out what they did. Most use a phong shader to create the feel of a spec map while not directly using a spec map. I added a phong shader to mine and got something that looks way better. I'll have to keep tweaking it and hopefully get something decent.

So I'm an artist working with a mod team on a Left 4 Dead 2 mod. I've never used the Source engine before, and I sure have a lot to complain about (coming from UDK and Unity). So it's been absolutely wonderful to have WWMT to help automate a lot of the details that would have taken me a while to wrap my head around.

So I'm currently working on several props. We've had a few issues getting them working, but the biggest issue is getting the spec map to work. No matter what I try, I can't seem to preview it in the Model Viewer found in the L4D2 Authoring Tools. I'm using Tgas. I put the spec into the alpha of the normal and saved it as a 32bit alpha uncompressed Tga.

When I export from Max, I get the VMT that has the $normalmapalphaenvmapmask "1" I don't see why this shouldn't work after looking over different forums. Any suggestions as to what I could try?

Here's one of the assets from Max that has spec on it.