Need help with 3ds Max, Wall Worm and exporting a model with $phong

I believe @shawnolson is the man you're looking for

Phong settings from Max are controlled in the Material settings. Here is a basic overview of Phong settings you can control . I don't have time today to go into it deeply at the moment. But essentially, set the Standard Material's shader type to Phong. Then select your model and click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Materials > Give Obj Mats WW Materials. Now open your material in Slate and click the For Model checkbox and change the Source shader menu to VertexLitGeneric. Now there are some extra phong settings below. Re-export the material.

At this time, the Phongexponent texture is exported via the Specular Color map. The following video is about exporting a normal map with specular level, but some of the happenings might help you understand the process. Exporting a material with Phong is already lined up as the sequel to this video. But for the moment you'll have to take what you can from this video to understand the principles.

Quote from Psyrius

Do someone know if I can edit the .VMT file for the model, tweak the phong parameters there, save and it will work fine? Or is there something else I need to do to get it to work?

Yes, you can edit visual material properties later on. I model in Blender, but process should be similar. After you export and compile your model, you can change textures and materials and even update live while viewing the model in Hammer (not sure about model viewer). Simply edit the .vmt file, save it, compile your map (I use small map for fast compiles), see the model in-game, exit game, tweak the settings as you wish and repeat until you're happy with it.

Actually now I took a quick look at the tutorial posted above and my process is not really similar to this, so maybe something went wrong there with your model.

EDIT: Missed half of your post above xD Yes, it looked better before because of the sunlight, phong effect is very noticable when exposed to sunlight, little less when small lights are used

Quote from Psyrius

I think there's a command in game to reload materials. "mat_reloadallmaterials" is it? Does this work for the phong parameters too? Or do I have to recompile every time to see how it looks like?

Edit: "mat_reloadallmaterials" works. What a huge time saver! Finally I can make it look nice

And I was recompiling every single time... FailFish

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$phongMaskContrastBrightness

$phongAmount

These doesn't seem to work for models? What a shame... Because I think it was those parameters that helped me get a nice result before without the model. A normal brush surface being hit by the env_light.

I think these should work. If not, you can use specular map to control the amount of reflection. For this you have to either bake it in 3ds max or paint it manually in Photoshop. It is stored in normal map's alpha channel, a simple way to make reflections look better and it's easy to tweak.

You have to edit you bump map's alpha channel, which makes it a bit complicated, but once you understand how it works it will be easy.

In Source bump (normal) maps consist of three channels: red, green and blue (more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_(digital_image) ). For this to work we need one more: alpha channel (the one that controls transparency, but in CSGO it's used to control the amount of reflection). I use Gimp for this: I decompose channels and each one of them becomes a separate layer: red, green, blue, alpha. Then I edit only the alpha channel (basically you paint with black, white and gray - black is completely non-reflective, white completely reflective), recompose those layers back in one single layer (image), pack the image as .VMF and test in-game (similar to .VMT testing).

Here's one example. If you look closely you'll see that the amount of reflection in screenshot corresponds to amount of black/white in texture's specular map (black and white part on the right). This is a brush texture, but it also works on model textures:

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[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/EcaqbL9.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/yicBNLK.jpg]

EDIT: I think that video is pretty good, another method but works very well.

No, the game recognizes it automatically

Quote from Pivac

No, the game recognizes it automatically

?? Are you sure ?

I'm pretty sure you have to add "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 to force the game to use the specular mask saved in the normalmap's alpha channel, or at least that's what i'm doing.

If you don't set any custom exponent texture (i don't really know how to use it actually), it will automatically use the specular mask, that is also used for the cubemap reflections.

Quote from Psyrius

Any idea why this would be working on one side: https://gyazo.com/be75dba206c68afce52870e0f6b018a9

But not on another: https://gyazo.com/077bc04e94acb3e26c490a0122f8788d

The reflection kind of cuts off at certain points.

That's because you have a limited amount of lights that can be taken into account for the phong shader. I remember one time where it only accepted 1 but it should work with 3 or 4 light entities.

Quote from leplubodeslapin

?? Are you sure ?

I'm pretty sure you have to add "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" 1 to force the game to use the specular mask saved in the normalmap's alpha channel, or at least that's what i'm doing.

If you don't set any custom exponent texture (i don't really know how to use it actually), it will automatically use the specular mask, that is also used for the cubemap reflections.

Actually you're right, I completely forgot about that line because I had used it right from the start and later on was just mindlessly copy/pasting and tweaking only the values.