Custom models are a pain in the ass.
I spent 2 hours tonight going through DonPunch's XSI modeling tutorial and everything worked, save for the textures.
Come to find out .png's don't work. (yeah im an idiot) So i booted up vtf edit and all those and i tried making a texture from a targa and putting it in my proper folder and making the .qc file and making the vtf, vmf, all those.. included $vertexlitgeneric, blah blah blah.
well I went through about 40+ iterations of different combinations/ file locations across the span of 4 hours... Then I gave up. Model materials have defeated me. [HELP!]
BUT
In the process, i learned how to make custom textures for use in source, NOT ON A MODEL, and i also scored a free plugin for paint.net that makes it SUPER easy to create bumpmaps from any picture..
I made a nice grungy rusted metal texture and bumpmapped it myself:
I'm so proud of myself.
But i still cant get the freaking model texture to show up. The model is there, but its all checkered and junk.
Also that texture is just a random picture my g/f took and left on my desktop. It was just pure laziness that it was right next to the VTF edit shortcut so i could just click+drag over and it automatically trimmed/re sized it.
Yeah. so anyone know how to make model textures? I'm baffled.