Transcript

Hello and welcome to lesson 3.5 VTFEdit: Importing and Saving Files from MLPTF2Mods.com. It is time to take the TGA file we modified in the last lesson and put it back into VTF format. To get started, open up VTFEdit and use the import function. Navigating into our finished folder, we will select our modified texture file. Before it completes the import action, it needs to confirm a bit of information with us.

Most of what we have to worry about is located here on the general tab. First thing is image format. Regarding the normal format field, it doesn’t seem to function. So we are just going to leave it as DXT1. If you recall in lesson 3.3, we observed the original texture’s format was DXT5. This is one of the most common image formats for textures in the game due to their compressed nature and support for alpha layers. Hence we will select DXT5 for this field. As for texture type we need animated texture selected.

Everything else will remain pretty much as is. For mipmaps we definitely want them to make the weapon look and run it’s best at various levels of detail. If your imported image isn’t already sized to a power of two, you can make the import tool do it for you automatically and even stipulate its maximum size. The normal map function can be used to generate normals maps which manipulates how light interacts with the material. Things on the advanced and resources pages should be kept as their defaults. Only once you come to greater understanding of the Source engine may you find the need to play with these features.

Once everything is set, we can finish importing the image. Everything is just as we left it. On the left hand side, the only flags that should be flagged is Eight Bit Alpha. When we check on the alpha we can see it still remains intact. Since everything looks good, all we have to do is save it. Once again I am going to save it in the finished folder to keep it separate from the original files. Give it the name c_shogun_kunai and hit save.

Now all that is left is to do is install it and test it out in Team Fortress 2. See you in the next lesson.