Amateur Modeller Needs Advice and Pointers

turpinator

Hi, I'm pretty new to modelling and somewhat newer to modelling for TF2. I have my model and basic colours down for a model I've been working on as a hat. The model is going to be a helmet with gems in it. I've been looking at many tutorials, but for one reason or another said tutorials can't help me with my inquiries. What I basically need advice with is the following:

• Reflective surfaces - I want to make the helmet slightly shiny while the gem is as shiny as I can get it.
• Glowing parts - The gem also glows in dark places
• Paintable - Now I know how to make the helmet paintable, but what I need is to make only SOME of the parts paintable, not all of them.

That's about it, the tools I'm using to make models and textures are Blender and G.I.M.P.. Any and all advice on how to produce what I need for the helmet would be helpful, thanks!

circle of friends

To make it shiny you need a specular map. In tf2 the game uses the alpha channel of the diffuse or normal map as your specular if you tell it to. Try it out, black areas are dull, white are very shiny. As for paintable you need again to use the alpha channel of a map, most people use the diffuse alpha. Again black is non painted, white is painted. As for an emissive map I believe it will be another map or alpha channel but I haven't made one of those in tf2 yet. As your attorney might I also seriously suggest you getting photoshop, it is very affordable with a monthly sub and has way better features.

turpinator

I can't afford PS, I'm afraid... I have learned to make due with GIMP, and for most part haven't come across anything PS does that GIMP can't do. Anyways, yes, I know about the Alpha channel stuff, most of the walkthoughs mentioned this.

What I seem to be having issues at the moment with is that the Beta Importer seems to ignore the files I give it for those effects. Or are they just not normally visible on the previewer it has? If so, even my alpha channel for paint is being ignored.

EmAr

Paint feature is working in the item importer. AFAIK, jiggle bones is the only feature that doesn't work in the importer.

turpinator

Then something about me exporting images from GIMP is the problem...

circle of friends

You have to toggle the paintable bit for it to work, and then use the alpha channel as the mask. Have you checked the checkbox?

Also what file format are you using, TGA?

circle of friends

I think I'm going to do a So You Want To Make A Hat And Submit It youtube tutorial, what would you like to see in it?

turpinator

Yes, I followed all these steps and submitted it in this fashion before making the thread. What ends up happening is I can make the helmet team colours and keep the gems uncoloured, but when I try to test paint, it just paints everything. I slotted in the Reflective and glowing with alphas as well and they fail to appear for some reason.

turpinator

Alright, so I (for the most part) fixed my problems. The only one I have left is the reflective surfaces. There's something about my map that the Beta Loader just doesn't like. It ends up making the surface I want reflective just fine, but then slaps this really odd white film across about half of the helmet's surface. I'm not sure how to proceed to fix this issue.

EDIT: Oh right, these are my settings if that helps: gyazo.com/8444e08f72257c0129fb8476753d3708

turpinator

....and got it. Apparently everything didn't want to play together nicely until I loaded the textures in a specific order. (don't ask me what it is, I was pretty exasperated from finally figurng it out that I dumbly saved it and closed out of the importer)