Something new for CS:GO SDK

Woohoo Source goes next-gen

and it only took 7 years!

Quote from Pampers

and it only took 7 years!

Probably because I still can't see myself using it

If only they allowed it on regular brushes too..

It doesn't look like it supports bump mapping and specular though. (i guess i have a reason to test this)

It supports envmaps. Why it doesn't support a 3rd or 4th bumpmap is beyond me. They are only using 9-10 texture samples total. In the shader you still have room for 3 more texture samples before you hit the sample read limit. Thanks Volvo.

It's a great shader. Im using it on Insertion. Was using $Multiblend before. But it wasn't supported so the CSM lighting didnt work on it and for Mac users it showed as just a white texture.

A really nice programmer at Valve took time and helped me. I thought he was just gonna fix $multiblend. Really cool that he made a new and improved one.

I tested it yesterday and I think it will be really useful ! Thanks man !

The new shader is derived from LightmappedGeneric which is used for regular brushes and for displacements with 2 texture blending (WorldVertexTransition). I did this so that you could take an existing material and upgrade it into a 4WayBlend material more easily. Since most of the stuff just works, you can often take an existing VMT change it from LightmappedGeneric/WorldVertexTransition to LightMapped_4WayBlend and then add in the parameters for the additional layers.

It's useful to use this shader even if you don't use all 4 layers, because you have more control over the blending to give interesting results (instead of just being a linear gradient). It can give similar results to what you get with the $blendmodulatetexture feature of WorldVertexTransition stuff without requiring another texture per layer.

Also, multiblend should not be used in CS:GO, the version in our branch is incomplete. It was an early test version of something done for DOTA2. It should have been cleaned up before shipping, but wasn't. We may remove it in the future. There is a final version of multiblend in DOTA2, but it's incompatible with the CS:GO branch of the rendering engine.

Quote from Oskmos

It's a great shader. Im using it on Insertion. Was using $Multiblend before. But it wasn't supported so the CSM lighting didnt work on it and for Mac users it showed as just a white texture.

A really nice programmer at Valve took time and helped me. I thought he was just gonna fix $multiblend. Really cool that he made a new and improved one.

Can you post some screenshots of the shader in action for us?

also say hi to reltham guys! (second valve employee to ever post on Mapcore?)

There is a sample screenshot on the documentation page linked above. Here is a direct link to that image: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/w/images/8/83/…Of4WayBlend.jpg

I don't have anything more at the moment. When I have more I'll share them.

Maybe Oskmos will have some shots of his updated terrain using it soon?

Hi reltham! Welcome to the core. I see you joined like 5 minute sago. What made you join?

Skjalg,

I have been here off an on just looking, but I joined so I could post on this thread about the shader, since I worked on it and want to see it get used.

I wish we had this when I was working on Insurgency. One of the maps I worked on is about 75% displacements

Quote from reltham

Skjalg,

I have been here off an on just looking, but I joined so I could post on this thread about the shader, since I worked on it and want to see it get used.

Does that mean you guys are working on the Dota2 SDK? I can't tell you how much I would want to get my hands on that. I'd love to be able to create some single player maps and boss fights in dota.

I haven't really utilized the blending that much on Insertion, textures weren't made with that in mind but Im definitely going to use the shader in a smarter way in the future. The ability to blend 4 textures though is why its SO NICE on a huge terrain. Im using 18 different VTFs on 20 VMTs and setting that up with ordinary 2-blends would have been... yeah, not so nice

Some Hammer pics:

[Blocked Image: http://puu.sh/6N1zT.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://puu.sh/6N1ZE.jpg]

Oskmos,

The textures I used in the samples for the docs pages were not made with the shader in mind either. That's why some of the parameters to the shader exist. They let you tune things to work pretty well. It might be worth spending a little time playing with the parameters a bit to get more interesting blends.

I tweaked them until I was happy with the way they looked I just meant that they arent really screenshot friendly when trying to show of the new blend stuff.

Oh and thank you so much for taking the time to make this shader!