Character Textures and Materials

When you compile a model for the Source engine, the names of the texture files (.TGA files) are used to reference a material shader (.VMT) instead of the original image file. Here is an example of a simple .VMT file:

"VertexLitGeneric"
{
     "$basetexture" "models/Humans/Female/naomi_facemap"
}

This file simply specifies the shader type (VertexLitGeneric) and includes a link to the image source, which is in the compressed .VTF image format.

When using the XSI Mod Tool to produce models that will run in the Source engine, place your textures into the Source SDK directories provided when you installed the SDK. See SDK Directory Structure for more information on these directories.

Using this structure, you can refer to the .TGA files in the materialsrc/models tree when you texture the model in XSI. When you compile or load the model into the Source engine or tools, it will refer to the .VMT files in the materials/models tree.

You can use the utility vtex.exe to convert .TGA files to our compressed .VTF format. For more information on how to create textures and use Vtex, see Creating Materials.