VMT Editor - fast and simple editor for vmt files

[Yanzl]

LATEST UPDATE: Version 1.3.10 on Mar 27th, 2018

LATEST RELEASE

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

DOCUMENTATION

Hey Mapcore!

This is an open source vmt editor that aims to improve the tedious experience of editing text files with an easy to use UI and fast workflow.

Dima Butemann did most of the heavy lifting involving the programming while I took care of the UI and bothered him about updating it.

It has texture previews, can convert jpgs, pngs or tgas to vtfs (and move them to proper directories), verify vmts, features a batch vmt creation and has support for (most of) new parameters introduced in Nuke CS:GO update. 

Version 1.3.10 with all the required files can be found here: DOWNLOAD

Alternatively, if any of you know Qt and C++ and would like to help with the project, you can check out our git repo at https://github.com/Gira-X/VMT-Editor

Here is a quick video to demonstrate how fast making vmt files is:

And converting textures to vtf:

https://streamable.com/zlwed

 

If it doesn't find any games you have to manually add them in the Manage games dialog:

And browse to the main game directory:

Also a shoutout to the creators of VTFLib (http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/) that provides the texture converting and preview functionality. 

 

Edited April 22, 2019 by Yanzl

[FMPONE]

Nice! Spotlighted for visibility

[Guest]

Wow, this will save loads of time. Awesome!

[Skybex]

Excellent tool for getting your vmt's done quickly without having to search the wiki or though valves files for the correct parameters. 

[Yanzl]

Here's a quick explanation for some of the parameters:

Shader select:

Here you select the shader, depending on the use of your material. Most of the time this would be either LightmappedGeneric for brush textures and decals, WorldVertexTransition for displacement blend materials or VertexLitGeneric for model materials.

 

This is the toolbar that contains shortcuts for the most used parameter groups, I use only these in 95% of cases. Other groups can be found under Add... menu item, or you can add any missing parameters under the Additional parameters tab.

Top-to-bottom these groups are: Transparency, Detail, Color, Other, Reflection, Self Illumination, Specular and Misc.

Transparency group:

Opacity controls the overall opacity of material, transparent and alpha test use diffuse alpha channel. Transparency is smooth but has sorting issues that alpha test solves, but has hard edges - used for foliage and such. You can control the cutoff point with threshold. Additive doesn't need an alpha channel, black is see through and white is solid (like Photoshop). Check Decal if you plan to use the material as decal or overlay.

Detail group:

Should be pretty self explanatory, adds a detail texture over the whole material, scales higher than 1 mean smaller than diffuse and lower than 1 mean larger than diffuse. Note that non-uniform scale is not implemented yet. Default detail blend mode is similar to overlay, meaning neutral gray has no effect.

Color group:

Tints the whole material. Color is for LightmappedGeneric and color 2 for VertexLitGeneric. Blend tint by base alpha uses diffuse alpha channel as color tint mask (works only on models in CS:GO).

Other group:

Here you can add a lightwarp texture, control reflectivity of the material or use seamless scale for displacements. Seamless scale doesn't work with normal maps, only ssbump.

Reflection group:

This if for cubemap reflections, you can use auto generated cubemaps with the Use cubemap checkbox or specify your own custom cubemap in the Reflection: line. For the reflection mask you can also specify separate texture in the mask line (only works with no bump map) or use either diffuse (base) or normal map alpha channel.

Tint controls the intensity of the reflection with the slider or its color with the pick color dialog. For saturation 1 is default and 0 is black and white, for contrast 0 is default and 1 is most contrast. Fresnel controls the visibility of reflection depending on the angle; 1 means default behavior, 0 is no reflection when looking perpendicular and full when looking horizontal.

Light influence and Anisotropy are new parameters introduced in Nuke update, explained here: http://blog.counter-strike.net/workshop/maps.php#anisotropic

Self-Illumination group:

For glowing textures, uses diffuse alpha channel by default. You can control the power with the tint slider.

Specular group:

Phong reflections on materials. This one is different depending on selected shader. This is for LightmappedGeneric, only works in CS:GO. http://blog.counter-strike.net/workshop/maps.php#phong With amount you can control the color as well as power of the specular reflection. Since it doesn't take the color of the light environment into account, it looks best if you use the color of the sun. Last value should generally be left alone as it brightens and darkens the whole material. Glossiness controls the size of the highlight, smaller values mean bigger highlight. 

Brush specular also uses diffuse luminosity for mask as default, you can control the contrast and brightness with the next set of sliders. You can switch the mask to base alpha or normal alpha mask (uses same parameter as reflection, you can only use one).

VertexLitGeneric specular group:

Fresnel controls the visibility of the highlight at certain angles. X is looking 90° at the material Y means 45° and Z is 0°. Better explained here https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Phong_materials#Phong_Fresnel_ranges  I find a good value to start with is 0.5 0.8 1. Tint works the same as in Reflection group, you can also use diffuse color to tint the whole phong highlight. Unlike brush specular, it takes into account the light color, so it's best to leave it white/grey unless you want a special effect like colored metal. 

Glossiness controls the size of the highlight the same way as in brush specular with the exception that you can provide your own glossiness texture. You can make the highlight brighter with the boost slider. 

By default, specular uses the normal map alpha channel as mask, but you can also use diffuse (base) alpha or its luminosity as masks.

Misc. group:

Contains tool texture and keywords lines, as well as other parameters that you may find useful in certain circumstances. Model checkbox only needs to be use on materials other than VertexLitGeneric. Vertex alpha and Vertex color make the surface derive its alpha and color values from per-vertex data provided by the engine. No decals means no impact, blood or other such decals can show up on the surface of this material, useful for chain link fences. Ignore Z ignores the engine object sorting and displays material in front of everything. No fullbright and No lod are used in UI textures (such as L4D posters). No fog means the material is not affected by the environment fog.

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There's no set values for any of these parameters so it's best to test yourself and see how it looks in game. Use the mat_reloadallmaterials command to quickly see changes after you save.

Hopefully that covers the basics, if you have any questions feel free to post them here.

Edited December 19, 2016 by Yanzl

[Tomato]

This looks awesome, gonna try this out.

[Gale]

On 5/9/2016 at 4:51 PM, Yanzl said:

Hey Mapcore!

This is an open source vmt editor that aims to improve the tedious experience of editing text files with an easy to use UI and fast workflow.

Dima Butemann did most of the heavy lifting involving the programming while I took care of the UI and bothered him about updating it.

It has texture previews, can convert jpgs, pngs or tgas to vtfs (and move them to proper directories), verify vmts, features a batch vmt creation and has support for (most of) new parameters introduced in Nuke CS:GO update. 

Version 0.9 can be found here: DOWNLOAD

Alternatively, if any of you know Qt and C++ and would like to help with the project, you can check out our git repo at https://gitlab.com/Gira/VMT-Editor

Here is a quick video to demonstrate how fast making vmt files is:

If it doesn't find any games you have to manually add them in the Manage games dialog:

And browse to the main game directory:

Please keep in mind that it is still in beta so some bugs may occur. Some parameters may not parse properly so refresh the vmt preview before saving to see if there were any issues. If you find any bugs you can post them here.

Also a shoutout to the creators of VTFLib (http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/) that provides the texture converting and preview functionality. 

Thank you!

[jackophant]

22 hours ago, Gale said:

Thank you!

Please don't quote an entire post like that just to say thank you. It's a complete waste of space.

Great job @Yanzl I can't wait to give this a try when I'm back

[Dosentti]

What's the difference between this and vtfedit?

Does it not support DXT5 compressed vtfs?

Edited May 23, 2016 by Dosentti

[Yanzl]

This editor is focused towards creating vmts, not vtfs. Using VTFEdit for creating vmts is more or less like using a text editor, and you have to remember or search for all the parameters. In VMT Editor you can just tweak sliders and checkboxes to get your desired material look, no parameter memorization necessary. As for DXT5 compression, they both support it.

[FMPONE]

5 hours ago, Yanzl said:

This editor is focused towards creating vmts, not vtfs. Using VTFEdit for creating vmts is more or less like using a text editor, and you have to remember or search for all the parameters. In VMT Editor you can just tweak sliders and checkboxes to get your desired material look, no parameter memorization necessary. As for DXT5 compression, they both support it.

Would you guys consider phasing out vtfedit entirely? It's bothersome that it never got 7.5 support, plus it would put everything under one roof.

[Dosentti]

12 hours ago, Yanzl said:

This editor is focused towards creating vmts, not vtfs. Using VTFEdit for creating vmts is more or less like using a text editor, and you have to remember or search for all the parameters. In VMT Editor you can just tweak sliders and checkboxes to get your desired material look, no parameter memorization necessary. As for DXT5 compression, they both support it.

I tried to create decal through it, but it didn't recognize an alpha channel at all. Through vtfedit it went very well. 

I find it annoying that browse button is disabled every time I start the program. It's not a big thing to add a game every time but it could remember the last used game. 

VMT Preview is great and program has very nice features too. I don't know where to use all those stuff so there could be those little question mark icons in the main screen after every property (Meaning headings like Other, Color, Specular...) that would stand shortly which button/slider does what. People will learn those eventually but this would make it easier to use as a new mapper/texturer.

FMPONE is right that since you have all the keys to create updated tool for this stuff, you should do it. All texture tools in one program.

 

[JSadones]

Any plans to support phong shading as one of the toolbars?

Awesome tool so far.

[Yanzl]

16 hours ago, FMPONE said:

Would you guys consider phasing out vtfedit entirely? It's bothersome that it never got 7.5 support, plus it would put everything under one roof.

I'm not really much of a coder, I can add new parameters and simple stuff like that, and to include all the functionality of VTFEdit it would take a lot more work. Dima (the main programmer) is also not really committed to the project anymore, so unless we get some new programmers it's probably not going to happen. Also, VTFEdit has 7.5 support, you just have to download 1.3.3 version not the 1.2.5.

7 hours ago, Dosentti said:

I tried to create decal through it, but it didn't recognize an alpha channel at all. Through vtfedit it went very well. 

I find it annoying that browse button is disabled every time I start the program. It's not a big thing to add a game every time but it could remember the last used game. 

VMT Preview is great and program has very nice features too. I don't know where to use all those stuff so there could be those little question mark icons in the main screen after every property (Meaning headings like Other, Color, Specular...) that would stand shortly which button/slider does what. People will learn those eventually but this would make it easier to use as a new mapper/texturer.

For the alpha to show you have to check either transparent or alpha test in transparency group. Seems there's bug with alpha test though, it only shows half the texture.

 

Remembering last game should work, can you check in options if Save last selected game is checked?

And adding tooltips is planned but not a priority, for now I hope the post explaining stuff above will do.

4 hours ago, JSadones said:

Any plans to support phong shading as one of the toolbars?

Awesome tool so far.

That's the Specular group.

[Dosentti]

On 5/24/2016 at 5:51 PM, Yanzl said:

For the alpha to show you have to check either transparent or alpha test in transparency group. Seems there's bug with alpha test though, it only shows half the texture.

 

Remembering last game should work, can you check in options if Save last selected game is checked?

And adding tooltips is planned but not a priority, for now I hope the post explaining stuff above will do.

Aight, I was just too dumb to realize that

I have checked the "save last selected game". Anyways it's not so big deal. 

One other thing that would be small but great thing is that program would automatically suggest the name for the .vmt file. It could be the same name as the base .vtf has.

Anyways, great work with the tool, I'll start learning how to make awesome textures with it. At least it's easier to know what is possible to do with the textures.

Does csgo support all the stuff that this tool is for or is there some stuff that work only other games?