How to properly apply Phong to my textures? (Source Engine)

Hello everybody!

Lately I've been making a desert map; to fulfill my idea I did some sand and canyon textures. To increase their realism and detail I tried to adding phong to simulate those glowing grains present in the sands. So I made a specular map for the grains and put in the alpha channel of my Bumpmap and added the Phong parameters to the VMT file. But whenever I try the whole texture gets shiny:

Without Phong

With Phong

Specular Map

As you can see, the whole texture is affected by phong and not just grains. How can I fix this? I believe that I confused myself in the VMT parameters but I'm not sure:

"WorldVertexTransition" { "$baseTexture" "tunisia/tun_sand_01" "$bumpmap" "tunisia/tun_sand_01_normal" "$surfaceprop" "sand" "$baseTexture2" "tunisia/tun_sand_02" "$bumpmap2" "tunisia/tun_sand_02_normal" "$surfaceprop2" "sand" "$blendmodulatetexture" "nature/blend_texture_01" "$blendmasktransform" "center .5 .5 scale 1 1 rotate 0 translate 0 0"

"$normalalphaenvmask" "1" "$envmap" "env_cubemap" "$phong" "1" "$phongExponentTexture" "252" }

Thank you in advice!

I'm going to test this right now. Thank you for your reply. I also would like to ask, is there any quality loss when converting TGA images to VTF and vice versa?

Hum I got it. I check here and my bumpmaps were in DXT. Now that I put them on BGR888 they have improved a lot. Thanks!

Quote from tomm

18 hours ago, tomm said: try to put your alpha in your base texture and add this parameter in your vmt

hope this helps

I did some more testing following your instructions but nothing has changed. The textures remain entirely bright, ignoring the specular map.

Here's the VMT

Quote

Quote "WorldVertexTransition" { "$baseTexture" "tunisia/tun_sand_01" "$bumpmap" "tunisia/tun_sand_01_normal" "$surfaceprop" "sand" "$baseTexture2" "tunisia/tun_sand_02" "$bumpmap2" "tunisia/tun_sand_02_normal" "$surfaceprop2" "sand" "$blendmodulatetexture" "nature/blend_texture_01" "$blendmasktransform" "center .5 .5 scale 1 1 rotate 0 translate 0 0"

"$envmap" "env_cubemap" "$phong" "1" "$BasemapAlphaPhongMask" "1" "$phongExponentTexture" "1" }

Quote from tomm

On 15/02/2017 at 5:17 AM, tomm said: That's strange, maybe it doesn't work with blend materials even though it should. I've only tried this on a regular VertexLitGeneric.

I thought the same thing, but I tested it as lightmapped generic and did not get good result. Sorry for the late reply

Quote from spa

On 15/02/2017 at 7:30 AM, spa said: Are you sure that the alpha is working correctly in the base textures ? It needs to be dxt5 or BGRA8888 (BGR888 doesn't have alpha)

You can view the channels in vtf edit.

It's very strange because I tried both alpha in the base texture and alpha in the bumpmap. I also tried both formats DXT5 for the base texture and BRGA8888 for bump. Probably Day of Infamy (game I'm mapping) do not support $phong.

Quote from WD

On 15/02/2017 at 7:56 AM, WD said: I think $phong is only supported on VertexLitGeneric shader with HL2 ep2 engine.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$phong

You're currently trying to apply $phong to a WorldVertexTransition shader so that's why there's errors. Wiki says $phong would work for WorldVertexTransition on the CS:GO engine though.

You could replace the ground with a model and it would shade correctly then.

Maybe I was mistaken a bit, I thought that Insurgency and Day of Infamy would be using the CSGO version of the source engine and with that $phong would works normally.