The general instructions for Wall Worm's material and texture exporters state that only TGA and PSD bitmaps can export as texture maps into Source. That limitation does not exist when using Wall Worm Pro. With Wall Worm Pro, any arbitrary texture map can be used (including procedural textures*) for VMT textures and to export as VTF files.

Texture Attributes

When Wall Worm Pro is installed you gain access to the Wall Worm Texture Properties rollout that can be applied to any texture map. This rollout belongs to a custom attribute that can be applied to textures to control the output path of the texture, compression type, VTF flags and more.

When exporting a BitmapTexture, this custom attribute is automatically applied at export time and derives its initial settings (such as dimension and output path) from the bitmap texture node.

Adding the WW Texture Properties to a Texture

To manually add a WW Texture Properties to your textures, select the object with the materials/textures and click Wall Worm > Wall Worm Materials > Give Obj Mats + Tex WW Materials . This will apply the Source Shader properties to the material and add the texture properties to the texture maps.

• If a texture is in the Bump or Displacement slot of the material, it's Normal flag will automatically be set.
• The Give WW to Selected Mats in Editor will also add a WW Texture to textures that are selected in Slate--except there is currently a bug in 3ds Max relating to this that causes this function to be sporadic. Autodesk knows of the bug and will hopefully fix it; until then, using the Give Obj Mats + Tex WW Materials is the most dependable method of giving textures the WW properties.

Exporting the Textures

Textures using the WW Texture Properties do not use the texture node name as the output path (although when created, that name is used to set the path). The actual output path is controlled by the VTF Path property.

You can export the texture in the UI by pressing the Export Texture as VTF. The standard exporter dialog also works on multiple textures at once with these textures.

Troubleshooting Procedural Textures

*Some procedural Textures (for example Perlin Marble) do not automatically render out at the correct scale. For these textures, you must right-click the texture node in Slate and click render map and render/save the texture manually as a TGA in your materialsrc folders.

• If you right-click the Render To TGA button in the texture UI. It will render the texture, display it and save it. You can use this method to preview the validity of the texture.

Advanced Texture Scaling on Brushes

When using the Wall Worm Texture custom attribute on a bitmap node, you may find that the scaling of the texture on brushes is incorrect. This happens when the bitmap's physical dimensions do not match the texture attribute's VTF Dimensions. This is because the VMF exporter defaults to using the bitmap's physical dimensions for calculating brush UVs. If you need to override this (and use the VTF dimensions) then check the Override Bitmaps checkbox in the VTF Dimensions group of settings in the Wall Worm Texture Properties of the texture node.

Gamma Correction

If your procedural textures output with incorrect gamma, you can try using the Use Gamma Correction with a gamma correction value corresponding to your neeeds/setup. These settings are in the Misc VTF group of the Wall Worm Texture Properties rollout of the texture.

Substance Maps

Wall Worm Pro uses Substance natively. The version of Substance that comes natively with Max is out-of-date. You should install the latest Substance plugin for Max.