crazy specular!

I've managed to successfully import both a new character model and some new props into Hammer. However, the character model's texture is showing up extremely shiny, like the specular is cranked. The props are showing up completely silver chrome, with no regard to their actual texture. It's probably something stupid, but I haven't been able to find anything about this. Any ideas?

did you place cubemaps in the level, run the 'buildcubemaps' command in the console when you first loaded the level, and then re-load the level to see how it looked?

anything with a specular mask will look very shiny until you do that^.

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i eat paint

Ok, I just tried buildcubemaps and then reloaded the level. Still nothing. In the level, there is no actual color to the texture, it's just a really shiny chrome. In the model viewer however, the texture does show up, but it's still really shiny.

Post the material script please (VMT or VTF, I always confuse... the one that's only a few KB in size).

Maybe some values aren't right. Or you forgot a "" in the pathnames or something.

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Why snark works.

"vertexlitgeneric" //tells you that this is going to be used on an imported model, not a hammer brush.
{
"$basetexture" "models/props/earth/monkey_bars" //MODIFY - tells hammer where in the "materials" folder your texture is located and what it's name is
// "$bumpmap" "models/props/earth/none" //ONLY USE IF a normal map or a bump map is used with texture. Needs separate vtf. Must remove // 's at beginning of line to activate.
"$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 //DON'T TOUCH - tells it to use the normal map alpha to mask the environment map.
"$envmap" "env_cubemap" //DON'T TOUCH - tells it to use the nearest cube map for reflections. don't touch.
"$surfaceprop" "metal" //MODIFY - defines general characteristics of material
//"$alphatest" 1 //DON'T TOUCH
}

<OK, I'm not sure if this will help diagnose the problem, but if I turn on mat_fullbright, my textures show up fine. Also, if I don't put any cubemap it works. Diagnosis...?

Try adding "$model" 1

For anyone who wants it, here's the meat of his .vmt

"vertexlitgeneric"
{
"$basetexture" "models/props/earth/monkey_bars"
"$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1
"$envmap" "env_cubemap"
"$surfaceprop" "metal"
}

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Have you tried the "$envmaptint" "[.1 .1 .1]" parameter? That actually has some effect on how "shiny" a texture may be. here is a good explanation on what settings would fit you best.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

"$envmap" "env_cubemap" tells the engine to reflect the cubemap data from this texture. This will always be very shiny, so it needs to have a mask that will reduce the reflection ammount.

"$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 tells the engine that the required mask is to be found in the alpha layer of the bumpmap texture. As there is no bumpmap being used here, the mask can't be found, so everything stays shiny.

If there's no bumpmap or specular mask for the texture, just edit both of those lines from the vmt, and it should look ok.

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i eat paint

I think Riven is right. You need to add $envmaptint values (they're for red, green and blue) and turn all three to below 1 (like 0.1 or 0.5; 0.8 depending on how shiny you want them - the higher the shinier).

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Why snark works.