I have to admit, this step kicked my butt. To help others not make the same mistake as me, here’s a brief tutorial on how to compile a texture properly for .vtf and .vmt. I will not be going into the reason why you need the .vmt etc, its just something we got to have to make the texture show correctly.
This tutorial assumes the following…
you are making a mod, not modding an existing game
1) Navigate to c:\MyMod (change MyMod, to your mod name)
2) Create the following directory…
c:\MyMod\materialsrc\models\prop
3) Create a texture and save as box.tga into the newly created folder above.
4) Navigate to c:\program files\steam\steamapps\<your steam id>\sourcesdk\bin\orangebox\bin.
5) Right click on vtex.exe and click the “send to” menu, then desktop. You should now have a shortcut to the vtex.exe on you desktop.
6) Drag and drop the box.tga in the c:\MyMod\materialsrc\models\prop directory to the vtex.exe shortcut you just created. If it compiled correctly, it should say the following…
input file c:/MyMod/materialsrc/models/prop/box
output directory c:/program files/steam/steamapps/SourceMods/My>Mod/materia
ls/models/prop
no config file for c:/MyMod/materialsrc/models/prop/box.tga
Hit a key to continue
If you see the above message, move on to create the .vmt below, if not walk back through the steps above. This might take a few tries to get the directories in the right place etc.
6) Navigate to c:\program files\steam\steamapps\SourceMods\MyMod\materials\prop
7) Right click and click new from the menu, then click Text Document.
8 ) Rename the new text document to box.vmt. Make sure the name of the file isn’t box.vmt.txt. If you aren’t sure the name is correct, check your folder options has the “hide extensions for known file types” is turned off.
How to turn off on file extensions in XP
How to turn off on file extensions in Vista/Win7
9) Open the box.vmt file in notepad.
10) Add the following lines to the file and save it…
"VertexLitGeneric"
{
"$baseTexture" "models\prop/box"
}
11) You have successfully manually created a .vmt and compiled the .vtf.
If you have problems, or need help email me josh@procrastinationgames.com.