light-emitting textures Created 15 years ago2009-02-13 22:40:33 UTC by Captain Terror

My ep2 maps were coming out much brighter than i expected, and i found that the vgui/achievemtnts/... textures emit light. I also had a room textured with Alyx Vance's face (don't ask) and noticed that it also emits light.

Is there a list or way to tell what textures emit light like this--it's not the lights.rad file, because none of these textures are in der. Also, is there a way to make them NOT emit light, in case a situation called for it?

[/incessant noob q's]

...VTF coding...? Copy the images and make a new texture, I guess. And because you mentioned it, Why did you have a room textured with Alyx's face? Just so you can gaze in awe at it?

LOL i was going to make a big mechanical mouth on her(like a cyborg) and make it so you walked through... = )

They don't necessarily emit light per se, the problem is that they are model/GUI textures, not intended for world surfaces, and they are using lighting methods defined in the VMT which are unsuitable for a compiled source engine map.

The solution is to not use textures that have /models, /vgui, /sprites, etc, in their pathnames. If you really need a world texure of Alyx's face, you can extract the appropriate VMT file from the HL2/Ep2 GCF to your game directory, open it in notepad, and change the header in the file from "VertexLitGeneric" to "LightmappedGeneric"; that will tell it to use world-based lightmapping methods instead of being vertex lit which is only suitable for model geometry.

Thanks Rabid! = )

Yeah i wish hammer 4 didn't clump all the model textures and sprites into the texture browser, and/or i wish i was smarter about using the texture browser filters, but meh. your suggestions help me in that area though so thanks. = )

If i do what you told me with renaming the header file, then i will have two "alyx head" textures when i browse, or will i be modifying the original?