VTF/VMF in builder.exe

ArchieArchie Antarctica Join Date: 2006-09-19 Member: 58028Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter
in Modding


@Max @Squeal_Like_A_Pig

Just wondering if i can get access to the VTF/VMF > dds/material file builder.xml ? i've tried to manually change the XML but it doesn't work, could you perhaps share with me? it's rather tedious having to manually convert them hand-hand with programs like crafty or vtex/vide(mass converter) would rather just use builder.
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  • BeigeAlertBeigeAlert Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
    VMF is a level file format, not a texture/material format.

    You can modify builder_setup.xml in your Natural Selection 2 directory to add "rules" to builder. Try installing my Blender compiler tool -- that modifies the XML, so you can see how it works.

    Builder itself doesn't really do any work, it's just reading the list of rules in the XML and calling the appropriate programs with a list of parameters specified in the rules.
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  • ArchieArchie Antarctica Join Date: 2006-09-19 Member: 58028Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter
    I meant VTF to be honest, as in the video it shows it compiling VTF/VMF just wondering why it doesn't accept them?
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  • BeigeAlertBeigeAlert Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
    Archie wrote: »
    I meant VTF to be honest, as in the video it shows it compiling VTF/VMF just wondering why it doesn't accept them?

    That video is over 7 years old. I wasn't around back then, but it seems like they used to use a different file format to store their material data in.
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  • ArchieArchie Antarctica Join Date: 2006-09-19 Member: 58028Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter, WC 2013 - Supporter
    which is why i originally named max/squeal :wink:
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  • InsaneInsane Anomaly Join Date: 2002-05-13 Member: 605Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts, Future Perfect Developer
    edited October 2016
    A couple of things to note here:

    First is that in the video it's not compiling VMF files, it's compiling VTF and VMT files. To the best of my knowledge however, the level editor still supports loading VMF files.

    Secondly, I don't know if we ever used a command line utility for converting VTF/VMT files to .dds/.material files. In the case of the DDS files it seems more likely that we would have rebuilt them from the source PSD files using nvcompress. I don't know what we did to convert VMT -> .material as I wasn't around then either, but the "compiling" you see in the video is just copying the VMT from the source folder to the output folder.

    Originally we were planning to use Valve's tools such as Hammer to build the game, which is why we were using their file formats. It turned out that it wasn't possible to license their tools, so we had to make our own and strip out all their tools from our process, which is why the default builder setup no longer compiles any of their formats.

    As Beige says though, any command line utility that converts VTF to DDS should be able to be used in Builder. Perhaps you could post your XML, maybe someone could help you out?
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