Importing Textures

I don't like the HL2 texture set that much, and I wanted to be able to use the CS:S textures as well since some of them are more tightly themed. I can't seem to find any tutorials on how to do this, though.

Suggestions? Links?

Thanks.

ps: yes I am still alive. :wink:

Those materials are stored in the .gcf files, get a program like
GCFScape to extract them. Then just place them in your Half-Life 2
materials folder. Use WinBSP to include them in the .bsp and voila.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

k. sounds like I'll have to set up custom compile tools, but I needed to get around to doing that anyway.

thanks, I'll try this as soon as I have time.

Keep the file structure intact as well. Say that stone wall is in
[CS:Sroot]/materials/stone/stonewall002.vtf, you have to copy the exact
file structure over into the HL2 materials.

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Posting And You

Use WinBSP to include them in the .bsp and voila.

uh isn't that the program for decompiling HL1 maps? do you just mean the bsp compile program? how do I set that up... I'm using Nem's Tools... is it similar to the -wadinclude stuff from HL1?

also, is there a Source equivalent of -nowadtextures? that way I could simply load whatever CS textures packs I want, and all would be automatically included in the bsp. I don't plan on using more than a few default textures, and trying to browse the CS textures with GCFScape and VTEdit gets old real quick.

Jinx, if you use photoshop, then there's a plugin that will make it easier to browse your textures.

there's a few other handy bits and pieces to be found there too.

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i eat paint

I saw that... I will try it, but both Photoshop and VTFEdit are editing programs, not casual browsing programs. I dont' so much need to edit the textures as be able to sort through them conveniently. lol is there something that batch-convertes vtf's back to jpg format so I could look through them in windows?

this should be a little closer to what you're after then. :smile:

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i eat paint

ah, that's perfect fishy! :biggrin:

I still have a couple questions unanswered up there, so I'm going to wait to credit answers. If I don't get any replies about them by the time I get home tonight, maybe I'll credit you guys on this one and start a different thread for the other ?'s

If you're curious, not sure if you know about it or not. But you should take a look at xwad (located at: %steamuserdir%\sourcesdk\bin). It has no Window interface, it's command line only, but it's made to convert WADS to Source materials.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Xwad

It's not the most easy program to use, but it is useful. (It also uses other programs like Vtex through 'the line')

Just another tool to help you out. But if you wanted the more high resolution textures, this wouldn't help as much.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

this should be a little closer to what you're after then.

It was working great, until I started browsing larger folders. My pc started getting sluggish so I checked and found this:



I experimented a little bit, and it turned out that when I went to a folder with the valve textures, more ram would get used... but when I left that folder, the ram would -still be in use-. So, as I browsed the textures, it just kept filling up my ram with them until very little was left for anything else.

System Mechanic seems to be able to free up the ram later on, I'm not sure why it's keeping those in memory though. Bug in the program, maybe? :/

the same thing was happening with me, even when i was browsing through the textures in hammer. with every texture that i scrolled past, my system would groan a little more, until it was almost at a standstill.

2 gigs of ram (up from 512mb) seems to have fixed that, for the moment at least.

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i eat paint

I noticed Hammer taking up to 300-400mb of ram while browsing textures, but if you have 1GB+ it's no big deal. Also, if you close Hammer, or don't browse them for a while, I believe you system gets the ram back. No such luck with this stuff unfortunately.

Hmm, I could use this as an excuse to go up to 2GB from 1.5GB bwahaha

That's odd, it's suppose to release the ram once the texture browser is closed. It does for me, anyway. (meaning, WHILE the texture browser is open, ram usage can go upwards of 400MB, but once I close it, it goes back down as it's deallocated)

Something that could be part of the problem is Windows allocation. I've noticed it doesn't always deallocate properly (which isn't surprising, based on how often it crashes) But, it would seem that this is part of the problem, since explorer is using a gig of ram in that picture.

Also ... those are some funky programs ... are you running them all? (Most of the time, small funky programs tend to be something specific to the computer, like some driver that you're using, and not something harmful, but I thought I'd ask, just in case)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

yeah, I just don't know how to fix it. tbh I don't -think- it was doing that at first... maybe I'll try redoing it or something.

boom.exe is for a media remote I have; psp is paint shop pro; there are others for my printer, anti-virus, etc. Don't think there's any spyware, I am pretty careful about my surfing and I run scans frequently. I think my system can handle a bit more background stuff going on at this point heh.

Well, let's see:

You can kill "ctfmon.exe", since, unless you're running Office or using translations you don't need it. (Unless you know you're specifically using it for whatever input device) If you're wondering, it opens whenever you open anything 'office' related. It also stays in the background, might be in your start up and/or services.

E_S4I2H1.exe, is a status monitor for your printer, which you don't need. (obviously)

Type32.exe is for MS office programmable keyboards, so I'm guessing you have some extra buttons defined. In which case, you may need ctfmon running.

X10net is video streaming...

So, I guess the only thing I could suggest is getting something like trillion to replace msn and aim, if you commonly run them together. Not to mention, the msn servers are a cesspool. (I believe they were the main distributing center of the msblast virus, way back) ... not that getting trillion would change that, I just don't trust MS products if there's actually something else out there with the same ability. (Unless I've seen results that show benefit to the other product of course)

I've personally noticed that AIM is a freakin' power hog. It'll just take up ram for no apparent reason, I've seen it get up to 80MB! However, something to really cut the resources is to put an away message up, wait for the usage to go down and remove the message. But it's still incredibly annoying.

On the not of media remotes, though, I have a question. Does anyone know of a program that can use IR hookups through ANY port, like if it were based on an IRQ or something like that. I found one, and, it only supports COM ports :sad: The one place I don't have an IR connection. (I have a PSX Game adapter, and a PS2 IR connector with remote, so I could use that if I got a USB controlling program. The other I have is hooked through my TV Card, which I don't much prefer. As it stands it's limited in support. I just recently got my stuff off of the trash Intervideo puts out as software.)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.