There textures seem a bit more on the flat side… I’m not 100% sure if they do use bump maps/normal maps at all actually. The other side of that aesthetic is the textures are most of the time or exclusively taken from the real world, photographs, etc that bring a very realistic look, even if slightly incorrect when you inspect the textures very closely (shadows/highlight don’t match light source angles)… although bump maps should help with this a bit. Of course, with static lighting I could achieve that look much more easily, so if anyone has tips on weather it’s possible to have baked global illumination without baked lightmaps or shadows that would be awesome. This does cause problems for very thin meshes and skinned meshes. I’ve tried to bring this aesthetic to UE4 and fully dynamic light techniques and found that the only way to do this is with Distance Field lighting for the soft shadows on all lights. What do you think?Īlso it seems like static light baking with very soft shadows and plenty of GI baked into the scene also helps with that look. And most of the time, really dialling up the roughness of the materials (they mostly look matte) and not overdoing their specular maps. To me it seems like they use simple materials with Albedo + Normal/Bump + Specular. Really enjoyed Precursor.Hello Unreal community, I’m trying to get some opinions on what you think makes the best techniques for achieving that late-90’s / early 2000’s Half Life 2 texture/aesthetic. I just tried this with Missing Information and Precursor, and it works perfectly.
![invisible textures on half life 1 models invisible textures on half life 1 models](https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/36/35397/20200430185412_1.jpg)
I presume the same steps can be taken for Half Life 2 and HL2:Episode 1 based mods, but I must confess, I haven't tried. It's really just about getting that step 5 in, so that you're not wasting disk space by copying the whole EP2 into every single mod. Justification: After you've done this, new mods only require the bottom two steps. How: Go into %ProgramFiles(x86)%\steam\steamapps\sourcemods\*YOUR MODS FOLDER* and open gameinfo.txt, go to the line that reads, "Game |gameinfo_path|." Copy this line underneath, and change it to, "Game |gameinfo_path|.\ep2_pak_dir". (5) Go into the directory of your mod and change gameinfo.txt to include the directory we've just made. Justification: Standard steam folder for mods.
![invisible textures on half life 1 models invisible textures on half life 1 models](https://media.indiedb.com/images/downloads/1/189/188809/lolz.jpg)
How: Extract your mod into %ProgramFiles(x86)%\steam\steamapps\sourcemods (4) Put the latest (and patched, if necessary), version of your mod into the sourcemods folder. Justification: We don't have gcf files for EP2, and mods just don't seem to access vpk files, even when you tell them to. Now move the folder into %ProgramFiles(x86)%\steam\steamapps\sourcemods\ Select all files and folders in GCFScape.exe and drag them into the directory. Make a folder on your desktop called ep2_pak_dir.
![invisible textures on half life 1 models invisible textures on half life 1 models](https://twhl.info/uploads/vault/large/4359.png)
How: Open GCFScape.exe > Open > Choose %ProgramFiles(x86)%\steam\steamapps\common\half-life 2\ep2\ep2_pak_dir.vpk. (3) Extract all the content of Episode 2's vpk files. Justification: It will make sure all your files are intact, and might ask you to convert them to a more efficient format (vpk). (2) Play Half Life 2, Episode 1 and Episode 2 One after the other, just so that the first level comes up. Justification: Make sure everything is updated, corrected, converted. How: Library > Right Click on Half Life 2 > Properties > Local Files tab > Verify integrity of game files. (1) Force update Half life 2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Source SDK 2007. I've justified each step, so you can form a new theory, in case this doesn't work for you. I bought Episode 2, late last year when it was on offer, and hence I have only the vpk files. I thought I got an amazing deal in Game (haha now defunct) in the UK, whereby it was the holiday 2006 edition, which included Half Life 2, Episode 1, Half Life Source! Now I've been getting a lot of problems running mods, even recent ones, and I think it might be that I am missing the gcf files for Episode 2. I bought Half Life 2 about 2 weeks before orange box was released. Problem: Checkered patterns and Error appearing in mods, and other miscellaneous errors, in-game.