The joy of manually compiling models

Automedic

Hi Polycount!

I've been lurking around these forums for quite some time but I recently stumbled across an issue I can't solve myself.

I've tried manually compiling an item and testing it ingame. The whole compilation process worked perfectly fine but the shaders/textures are causing me quite a lot of trouble.

Once I compile the model and preview it ingame it shows up entirely white in the pedestal preview...



...and entirely invisible ingame. The strange part is, though, that the geometry and animations seem to be perfectly good - just the textures are invisible. Once I hover the mouse over the spot where the item is supposed to be the green outline shows the silhouette:



So apparently I got a certain problem with shaders here. This is the .vmt file I am using to specify the textures:

"CustomHero"

{
    
"$baseTexture"        "models\items\juggernaut\lotus_ward_2_color"
    
"$normalmap"        "models\items\juggernaut\lotus_ward_2_normal"
    
"$SPECULAREXPONENT"    "13"
    
"$SPECULARSCALE"        "1"
    
"$RIMLIGHTSCALE"        "1"
    
"$maskmap1"        "models\items\juggernaut\lotus_ward_2_mask1"
    
"$maskmap2"        "models\items\juggernaut\lotus_ward_2_mask2"
}

All .vtfs are named correctly and in the same folder as the .vmt. Has anyone here ever encountered a similar issue or got any leads I might follow?

Zipfinator

I had the same issue when trying to compile a gyrocopter missile to replace the stock one when the skill is active. I didn't find a way to fix it but I didn't put that much time into it.

Plant

Not sure if exact issue but I've run into this before, what I have to do is name the texture to the correct path before exporting to a .smd, even if its just flat grey / untextured.

Automedic

Plant wrote: »

Not sure if exact issue but I've run into this before, what I have to do is name the texture to the correct path before exporting to a .smd, even if its just flat grey / untextured.

Hmmm thank you, that's something I haven't tried yet. Unfortunately I only own Blender. I've tried renaming the material I assigned to the .smd to the name of the .vmt but that alone didn't fix it. Do you know if there is any equivalent in Blender where I can define the path name?

Plant

I don't know blender at all, when you import one of valves decompiled .smd's is there a texture assigned? That's basically how I figured out my bug, just saw the texture named the filepath and did that before I export.