Category:Material System

Introduction

In the Source Material System, the visible Surface of a Brush, Model, Sprite, etc. is defined by it's Valve Material Type (VMT) file. The VMT is mapped onto the object's Geometry to specify the appearance of its Polygonal Surfaces. Other Physical Properties (which are not limited to the object's Surface) are handled by the Physics System(s). For example: Breakable objects derive some additional "material" properties from their propdata configuration.

• Each VMT or Valve Material Type file defines which Shader and Shader Parameters to use to render the textures, which VTF textures to use to 'paint the polygons', and a number of surface collision effects such as the sounds and decals to use when bullet hits the surface. VMT files are uncompiled scripts that can be tweaked and edited with any text editor.

• Each VTF or Valve Texture Format file, is basically a rasta image file or pixel-map. Most material surfaces will use more than one VTF; eg in addition to the ($basetexture) colormap or diffusemap , a normalmap, specularmap, etc. Specialist types of VTF include Animated Textures, Normalmaps, Heightmaps etc. VTFs must be decompiled before they can be edited with an image editor.

Generally a Brush Material refers to a VMT designed for use with World Brushes (stored in game_dir/materials/), and a Skin is a VMT designed to be mapped onto a particular Model (stored in game_dir/materials/models). A Texture is a VTF file, used by either a Brush Material or a Skin - but rarely both. Usually VTFs are stored in the same folder as the VMTs that use them.

• See also UV Mapping

Basics

• Creating a Texture using VTFEdit - The basics of VTF creation.
• Materials for Models - These are slightly different to Brush Materials.
• Materials for Brush Displacements - These are slightly different to ordinary Brush Materials.
• Materials for Sprites - Slightly different again.
• Decals - How to make decal and overlay materials.
• Skybox (2D) - How to use and make the cubic materials used for the sky.

Advanced topics

• Material Proxies - Advanced materials that can vary based on changing data.
• Water Shader - Description of the special water shader.
• Half-Life 2 Shader Fallbacks - Fallback settings of Half-Life 2 shaders on different platforms.
• DirectX Versions - How shaders are rendered on different versions of DirectX.

Useful applications

• See Category:Tools and Category:Third Party Tools