How to fully compile Cube Maps!

This is something I rarely see new mappers do, but it should be done in ALL maps.  Cubemaps are entities which tell the game engine how reflections should be mapped to world textures and props.  Without them, you will see pink checkerboard overlays over all reflective materials and the lighting may seem a bit "off".  However, simply placing cubemaps in your level won't always do the trick.  To get high-quality reflective surfaces, you must compile them into your .bsp.  This is quite simple, really, but may take some time if you have a lot of cubemaps and/or a slower machine.

Just follow these steps:

1) Create a server and open your map in TF2.
2) Go into the console and type: mat_specular 0
3) Console: buildcubemaps
4) End the server to disconnect, and in the console, type: mat_hdr_level 0
5) Recreate the server and open your map.
6) Console: buildcubemaps
7) Disconnect again.
8) Console: mat_hdr_level 2
9) Console: mat_specular 1

When you see "Console: xxxxx" that means type what follows the semi-colon in the console.  After you complete all these steps, you will notice a lot of differences in your map in terms of texture and lighting.  Chrome textures will now kick off a high-gloss reflection and some textures/props will have improved lighting.  Visually, everything will look better!

I suggest doing this before all released versions, even if they are alpha or beta maps.

ooh, thanks for the info! I'll be sure to do that.

FYI, if you build cubemaps in your .bsp and then make changes in your map, it's a pain to remove the cubemaps. Better to just change the name of the map to the next version (b2 to b3, etc).

I tried to follow the step-by-step, but I (maybe) ran into some problems.

When you say "end the server to disconnect" I assume this means I should be at the opening TF2 screen where I have options to join a server, create a server, etc? If that's the case, when I put mat_hdr_level 0 into the consol it returns "Not playing a local game". Maybe that's supposed to happen, but it caught me off guard. That being said, I'm not entirely sure what all I did, but eventually I got it to work. Though at one point I ended up with this:




Anyway, I did manage to stumble through though, and now my floors are nice and shiny! Thanks!

Ha, yeah, you probably took that screenshot when you had the settings changed.  You need to change them back to normal which is what the last 2 steps are for.  And yes, it will alert you that you aren't in a game... that's normal.

Glad to hear you got it working!

Just a few more things that might help, I've stumbled on them before.

After step (9) it is good to load a new map

console
 map arena_lumberyard

then reload your map. I didn't do this last time and my hdr cubes didn't save.
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Also, even though the map you are working on is in the sdk source folder, the map is saved in the team fortress/tf/maps folder when cubemaps are built. So if you grab the wrong one to zip up it will be smaller file size and won't have cubemaps.

hey,

so i've compiled maybe 3 iterations of my map tonight i can't seem to get the cubemaps to work with those directions. usually i get to step nine and everything's still blue, then i mess around some more (i forget what i do to get it to work, but i keep turning hdr off and on and rebuilding maps, usually turning hdr with the server open). So, just throwing that out there, that maybe there's a missing step?

You need to turn back on hdr when the server is closed.

Okay, more cubemap woes.

I'm trying to compile them for my beta 2, but with little avail. I can see it going through and creating all the maps, but it doesn't seem to be saving them (they don't appear to be there and the filesize isn't increasing).

Also, I'm getting this error in the console:


*** Error: Skybox vtf files for sky_hydro_01 weren't compiled with the same size texture and/or same flags!
Can't load skybox file sky_hydro_01 to build the default cubemap!


Any suggestions?

hey, so apparently that error had nothing to do with it. I did a new compile (without changing anything) and it's fine now. Go fig.

Still have a question though. During normal play, what are the correct settings? I assume mat_specular 1, but what about mat_hdr_level?

Should this be set to 2 or 1? I ask because when I set it to 2, as suggested by all tutorials, everything's all "negaverse" (see picture up above). But when I set mat_hdr_level 1 everything is fine with cubemaps working correctly. Is this proper or am I still screwing something up?