Buildcubemap confusion
Ok, so I have reflective surfaces.
I build my map with full settings.
I go into my map and run buildcubemaps from the console. Reflections look fine.
But everytime I rebuild the map I lose the reflections.
Does this mean if I release a map I must rebuild cubemaps without saving again from Hammer if I want my reflections to look right when I release?
And is there any way to rebuild cubemaps from outside HL2/Portal? Something I could set up in a batch file?
Thanks.
Yes; each time your compile, you lose previously built cubemaps.
No; cubemaps must be built in-game.
Everytime you compile, you loose the cubemaps.
Cubemaps are like included in the BSP. Watch its size, it grows up when building cubemaps.
If you change a map directory wich have been already compiled cubemaps, the cubemaps won't work on this direcotry (BUT the cubemaps wont be lost!). That means if the cubemaps are built again, the BSP will grow even more.
Also, if you play in windowed mode, and you compile, play the map, buildcubemaps, and compile again without closing the game, when you start the map, the cubemaps will still be active BUT IT'S AN ILLUSION, because your cubemaps have already been cached in the game. You still have to rebuild the cubemaps.
I think that's all I can say about cubemaps.
Author of Minecraft mods (MAtmos, Minaptics, NoteSlider) and Garry's Mod addons (Gunstrumental, SharpeYe, GarryWare, DepthHUD).
firstly thanks for the info Hurricaaane, i've always wondered about cubemaps and that pretty much sums it up.
2ndly... cubemaps are retarded (sounding) i mean. if its a function of the bsp or anything. hammer should do it. thats llame, it should (in theory) be able to build/compile/release a map. without EVER running hl2.exe *shrug*
stupid cubemaps.
It does, but it gives a very poor result.
(because Hammer uses the sky as a reference for every cubemap. not really useful in Portal)
In order to build cubemaps that give reflections of how the map looks in-game, the map has to be rendered as it would be in-game. That means that a compiled map must be loaded in a renderer of some kind, so why not in the game?
Yes, thanks for the answers. This is very useful information.
So does that mean I can rename a map and it won't grow the file with additional cubemaps? It's only moving the file into a new directory that does that?
Renaming and moving files is exactly the same thing 
So if I rename my file I get cubemap bloat? Is there a way to purge cubemap info from a map?
Yes, you can open your BSP file with Pakrat and delete every cubemap in it.
But I can't garantee the result because cubemaps must have a reflection. You could end up with black and purple checkerboard reflections.