How to Port This Texture? | Source Engine | Page 1

valid lintel Mar 9, 2025, 1:35 AM

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and the green face is an emission, which means it will always be the same shade of green regardless of lighting conditions.
the equivalent of this in Source is selfillum

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 1:36 AM

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Aah right

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My main issue is baking textures. I don't know what I need to bake and what I don't, and I generally just lack knowledge on what to do. There was one tutorial I found about porting a self-made model and texture to Source, and it was just a solid color material. It seems that anything more does not work with that proceedure

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 1:44 AM

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I'd bake the noise onto the albedo to create a diffuse to use as $basetexture; you could also use a tiling version as a $detail. Use either $selfillum (uses alpha channel of $basetexture as mask) or $detailblendmode 5 (uses $detail as the glow itself) for the green glow

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 1:48 AM

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What's albedo?

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Also I'm sorry but I don't understand almost all of that

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I'm very new to this

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When you say "create a diffuse," are you referring to like the base color texture?

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Cuz in Blender under the bake tab, for baking colors you pick the Diffuse option, right?

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It seems that that's what you mean because you said I could use that as a base texture. So if that's what you mean, then I agree, I should do that

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The problem is, I have no idea how to combine my noise texture with my base color, or my "diffuse."

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I don't understand what you mean by "tiling version" and "$detail" and "uses alpha channel." $detail sounds like a parameter I would find in a VMT, but I don't know what it does. I know what alpha is, but I don't understand your use of it here
Also I don't know how to use selfillum

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@stiff turtle

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 1:58 AM

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albedo is an "image texture" with no AO baked in. Diffuse is the same, but with AO included. $basetexture is usually a diffuse.
I have no clue how to bake things in blender.
By tiling version, I mean to generate a version of your noise texture that tiles around the edges instead of being baked to the UVs like you have here.
$detail is a very versatile VMT parm that, by default, acts like the "overlay" blend mode in image editors like photoshop and gimp. $detailblendmode changes how it works. See https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$detail.
By default, $selfillum uses the alpha channel of $basetexture as a mask.

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 1:59 AM

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What's AO?

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 1:59 AM

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Ambient occlusion.

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 2:00 AM

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Uuuh.. hold on I'll look up what that is

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 2:00 AM

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Self-shadowing, basically.

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 2:00 AM

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Oh okay

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 2:01 AM

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which is basically what your noise texture is doing.

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 2:02 AM

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It's self-shadowing?

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 2:02 AM

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Sorta.

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in a way

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 2:02 AM

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How? Where?

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 2:02 AM

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It's making it look like there's small bumps or something

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Imo

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 2:03 AM

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Those aren't shadows, those are just flat details on the surface

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Noise

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Okay, so you don't know how to bake textures in Blender. But do you know how I could make that green face a selfillum?

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 2:04 AM

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yes

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 2:05 AM

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I'll create a VTF

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and copy the model

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agh wait I gotta port the model from Blender first

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Alright I ported it

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@stiff turtle

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Were you gonna help me make the green face selfillum?

slow ermine Mar 9, 2025, 7:43 AM

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slate kestrel Were you gonna help me make the green face selfillum?

selfilum is handled by the textures alpha channel

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 7:44 AM

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What does that mean?

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And how do I make it self illuminated in game?

slow ermine Mar 9, 2025, 7:44 AM

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lemme get an exsample texture up to visualise what i mean

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so this is the combine prison soldier form hl2s base texture

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and heres the alpha channel of the texture only

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the parts that are still showing will appear to glow in game

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to enable this add $selfillum to the vmt

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 7:53 AM

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But how do I even make this texture? I have the three textures. The base color, the surface detail, and what should be the selfillum

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I have no idea how to bake them all into one texture. And even if I did, how do I make some parts of the texture glow and others not to glow?

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I’m a complete beginner to making textures

slow ermine Mar 9, 2025, 7:55 AM

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theres a way to bake layer of a texture into a single one in blender iirc

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base colour and surface detail can both be baked into the defuse/basetexture

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then the emessive should be inserted into the textures alpha channel using external software

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thats the geist anyways

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a short cut can be to use $selfillummask to have emessive stay as its own image to make things way easyer

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infact you already have all the images as seperate files so heres what you could do

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il put together a sample vmt for you to fill in

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//the shader, vertexlitgeneric is for models, lightmappedgeneric is for world textures.


// note: engine assumes we're already searching in the materials/ folder so you do not need to include it in the path
// use / instead of \ for paths aswell for consistancy with valves workflow
"$basetexture" "path/to/texture/here"
"$detail" "path/to/detail/here"
$selfillummask "path/to/emmisve/here"


"$selfillum" 1

here. just replace the paths

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i hope this is what ur looking for

stiff turtle Mar 9, 2025, 3:24 PM

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ah, yeah, vertexlitgeneric can use a separate texture as a mask, unlike lightmappedgeneric

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 6:15 PM

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slow ermine base colour and surface detail can both be baked into the defuse/basetexture

I’m sorry that I’m getting frustrated, it’s just that trying to find solutions to this has been frustrating.
But that’s literally what I said. I already said that I need to do that. To bake them all into one texture. I said that. To you, even. How the hell do I do that is another issue, because I haven’t the slightest idea how. I tried figuring it out myself. I tried following tutorials. They either didn’t work or were too complex for me. I know I should bake it into one. But how??

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Everything else you said I think I understand though

slate kestrel Mar 9, 2025, 8:43 PM

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Again, I’m sorry

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Do you know how to bake all those into one texture?

slow ermine Mar 9, 2025, 11:21 PM

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with the method i gave above you dont need to

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because honestly i dont know either

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 6:31 AM

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But you didn’t give a method

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You just said that the selfillum is handled by the alpha channel, and you suggested to bake the base color, noise texture, and the selfillum into one texture

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 6:33 AM

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slow ermine ```"vertexlitgeneric" //the shader, vertexlitgeneric is for models, lightmappedg...

Oh wait, now I’m seeing this. I think I tried this before and it didn’t work, but I’ll try again

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If this method works, I’ll still need to learn how to bake it all into one texture, just for the sake of organization and convenience

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I could have sworn I tried this before and there was a fundamental thing stopping it from working, but maybe I just had the wrong idea. I’ll try again

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 7:00 AM

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nothing there should conflict, you might have to use a different detail blend mode if the engine complains or it dosnt look right tho

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$detailblendmode

check this page for a list of detail blend modes, im pretty sure the default mode is 1 (additive) which means its adding the detail map to the base texture

$detailblendmode

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 8:07 PM

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slow ermine nothing there should conflict, you might have to use a different detail blend mo...

I looked at this because the texture doesn't look right, but I don't understand anything I see

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I made a VTF and a VMT of the surface detail texture

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This is the VMT of the basetexture

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"VertexlitGeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "models/handmade_models/test_models/testmodel_2"
"$surfaceprop" "Plastic"
"$detail" "models/handmade_models/test_models/testmodel_2_detail"
}

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The VMT and VTF of the texture is called testmodel_2_detail

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I also tried $bumpmap

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It looks fine here

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But this is how it looks like in game

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 8:54 PM

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Wait..

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I think I'm onto something here...

teal root Mar 10, 2025, 9:51 PM

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slate kestrel

If the texture appears incorrect like this, then your model’s UV map is incorrect

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You need to adjust it to properly fit the texture, then reexport the model

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 9:51 PM

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It does fit the texture

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I'll show you

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But it's okay, I'm starting to learn how to bake it all into one texture instead of having multiple VMTs and VTFs for one model

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There is still an issue though, so I'll post that here

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So I've successfully ported the noise material and the base color onto one image texture

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But as you can see in the UV, the surface details are barely visible

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The detail is slightly visible in game, but still barely, like in the UV in Blender

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Any idea how I would make it more visible? How I could increase the contrast? I realize this is a Blender question, but still, I'm sure it's okay so long as I don't create a new post thing about it

stiff turtle Mar 10, 2025, 10:00 PM

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teal root If the texture appears incorrect like this, then your model’s UV map is incorrec...

or wrong $detailscale

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 10:00 PM

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I don't have that parameter in my VMT

stiff turtle Mar 10, 2025, 10:07 PM

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$detail will default to tiling 4x if $detailscale is absent

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 10:09 PM

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It doesn't look like the size was the issue

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:17 PM

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slate kestrel I made a VTF and a VMT of the surface detail texture

no no you only need to make 1 vmt for the entire model

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the file we reference in the vmt for the basetexture and detail and such is the vtf

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:19 PM

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slate kestrel

change the detailblendmode to 5

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additive is adding the detail maps colour to the base texture

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 10:19 PM

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What's detailblendmode? Is that a parameter in the VMT?

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:19 PM

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yes

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i explained it above

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:19 PM

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slow ermine nothing there should conflict, you might have to use a different detail blend mo...

here

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check this page for the list of blend modes and thier limitations

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 10:20 PM

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I did, but I don't understand anything

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:20 PM

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just play around with them till it looks right

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in game you can use mat_reloadallmaterials to see your changes without restarting

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 10:21 PM

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I don't know how to play around with this. I lack the knowledge to know what to even play around with and how

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Like if you asked a baby to play around with a computer until they figure out how to open a new Hammer editor file

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I don't mean to be blunt

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But I dont see another way to say it

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:22 PM

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just put $detailblendmode #
with the # being a number into the vmt

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and the page tells you what the numbers do

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 10:25 PM

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Alright

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I really can’t right now, I’m overwhelmed and tired from doing this for the past several hours

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I’ll get back to it later

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:31 PM

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its fine take your time

slate kestrel Mar 10, 2025, 10:32 PM

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slate kestrel

But there really isn’t any reason to play around with it because as I said here, I’ve already learned how to bake the noise texture onto the base color. Now I just need to figure out how to add contrast to the noise

slow ermine Mar 10, 2025, 10:32 PM

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alot of things are just trail and error

#How to Port This Texture?