Does anyone know how we can make cubemaps at the moment? When I try buildcubemaps in game I get an error that it can't find vtex_dll.dll.

From my understanding I need some cubemaps to make things like the pistons and metal walls look nice and shiny.

yah. Do you compile your maps with HL2:DM?

When you finish making your map, just open it in hl2dm and type into the console: "buildcubemaps" and it'll compile it for you, then shoot it over to Portal.

That's what I've been doing. It just crashes in Portal because... Well, I dont know why, but it does just crash, so try it in HL2DM.

Are you familiar with "env_cubemap" entity?

when I used it, it seemed to work fine on my level.

That's the goofball message that I thought only I got.. "can't find vtex_dll.dll" showed up, so I just shot the whole thing into hl2dm where it could find hl2dm.. I probably initially did something wrong, and rather than fix it, i just worked around it.

Ralph, when you process it in Portal, does it screw up the controls really bad? like if you try to walk around, does it have you all restricted to where like one or two of the directional keys work and the mouse goes dead? That's what mine did when it got that error.. Almost scared me out of even working with the editor until the sdk got brought up, but i just kept fighting along.

Yes - the controls got screwed up.

I tried it in HL2, that didn't work because it didn't have the textures, so I finally did it in the portal 'mod' I created when setting up the SDK, this worked fine. Copied the BSP back and enjoyed ma cubemaps in portal.

You can build the cubemaps in any source game. I use sourceSDK_base, you just have to copy all the materials over from your portal mod to the sourcetest folder (or to whatever game you're using).

Take note that recompiling the map will delete the existing cubemaps, hence you should make building cubemaps the last thing you do before releasing the map.

I've been using HL:Ep1 to build my cubemaps. Portal maps seem to be a lot more forgiving than TF2 maps in terms of not crashing when you load it up in any given source mod.

SDK updated - supposedly buildcubemaps works in orange box games now.

Restart steam to update, and cross your fingers. :0)

Corion wrote:
SDK updated - supposedly buildcubemaps works in orange box games now.

Restart steam to update, and cross your fingers. :0)

Why did I have to read this at school.

Now I want to go home and try it out! If anyone else has any luck with this, post back. I'm interested in finding out, and I'll be back on later today in studyhall.

Oh, it absolutely works with the new SDK update. No more vtex_dll.dll errors, they build just fine in Portal. And the peasants rejoice!

yaaaay~

Korjagun wrote:
Oh, it absolutely works with the new SDK update. No more vtex_dll.dll errors, they build just fine in Portal. And the peasants rejoice!

yaaaay~

So no more of the crap where the game locks the mouse movement up and creates weird looking bloom effects where lights are?

No more. It works just like any other Source game, just like it ought.

mat_hdr_enabled seems to be broken, however. It took a little finagling to get the setting to toggle using the options menu.

Building cubemaps instantly made my level twice as nice.

[vort]The Mapper is one with the cubemap. Should one abuse the other, consequences will be dire but should a symbiotic relationship form, both will prosper[/vort]

Maybe (likely) I'm just an utter noob, but the cubemaps have a tendency to end up having the purple checkerboard texture for me a lot of the time. Now, of course this means that when I go into Portal to regenerate the cubemaps, the existing, garish cubemap ends up getting "baked into" the new ones. What am I doing wrong?

delete the bsp, recompile, and then buildcubemaps only before final release
subsequent buildcubemaps will actually be included into the existing bsp
making the file even larger... I gleaned this info from the Valve Developer Wiki
a week ago, so I don't know the actual link, although looking up
Cubemaps from the main page might help to explain it.

I'm not entirely sure that's the case anymore. I noticed last night that the file size for Accident Prone recompile before building cubemaps was about 14mb. After building the hdr cubemaps, the filesize was not changed. After building the non-hdr cubemaps, the filesize actually went down 500kb.

Curious, I compiled it again under a different name to be sure it would be fresh. I opened it up with pakrat and found that there were actually placeholder cubemaps sitting there in the bsp already.

Lastly, I found something I forgot to do the first time, so I compiled it again. Due to my previously mentioned problems with changing the HDR settings, I accidentally compiled the HDR cubemaps twice. This did not increase the filesize at all.

Shmitz wrote:
I opened it up with pakrat and found that there were actually placeholder cubemaps sitting there in the bsp already.

That makes no sense! Time to email Mike Durand.