Metallic texture for my model?

[JT_Stephens]

Hey folks. Pretty new to modding, so this is probably a stupid question, but here goes.

I've made some giant soda cans for my mod [both static and physics props, if it matters], and I'd like to apply a metallic-looking texture to them. How do I go about doing that? Is it a shader setting in VTFEdit, or the QC file?

Thanks!

 

[tschumann]

I don't think it's either. For Source I think you need to make a texture that looks metallic.

 

[JT_Stephens]

Do you mean just how I make the texture in Photoshop? Because there's nothing I can do in PS that will effect how light reflects off the surface in-game, is there?

 

[Stormy]

You can tell it to use a cube map but to be honest its not worth it. They are such tiny objects that you will happily get away with just using a spec map. Cube maps don't look that great in source and also are expensive in terms of rendering and memory.

 

[tschumann]

Do you mean just how I make the texture in Photoshop? Because there's nothing I can do in PS that will effect how light reflects off the surface in-game, is there?

I think it should look okay just as long as you use the right shader in your .vmt (VertexLitGeneric is the usual for models), but as Stormy says, you can play with some of the shader settings if you want (details about VertexLitGeneric shader parameters here: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/VertexLitGeneric).

 

[Vegeta897]

Why would you even care about anything when you have an avatar like that?