I'm porting starships from Star Trek: Legacy and it's specular(phong) masks are half the resolution of it's bumpmaps. In order to place the phong mask in the bumpmap's alpha for the source engine, I am forced to upscale phong mask's resolution - which is irritatingly inefficient since it literally quadruples the mask's filesize. (512x512 to 1024x1024)
The only 'workaround' I've discovered is to place the phong mask in the basetexture's alpha, since they are the same resolution, and then use '$basemapalphaphongmask 1' in the .vmt.
This works fine when there is no $bumpmap as the various phong intensities are obvious in-game. However, enable $bumpmap [I]with[/I] $basemapalphaphongmask and neither effect works.
Basically, $basemapalphaphongmask and $bumpmap are in major conflict for no apparent reason. The only theory I've come up with is that Valve has only considered 1 reason [I]not[/I] to use the bumpmap's alpha channel for phong - and that reason is that you dont actually have a bumpmap but still want phong. Ergo, who cares if they aren't compatible due to some obscure bug?
Well, me, because my bumpmaps and phong masks are [I]different [/I] resolutions. If it's a matter of Valve's 'rigid standards to complicate porting copyrighted content', then this is stupid too since a phong mask performs such a simple function that more often than not, it [I]should[/I] be half (or less) the bumpmap's resolution.
/rant
[B]Question:[/B] Is there any other possible way to get a 512x512 phong effect working with a 1024x1024 bumpmap? - without creating a useless texture or resizing anything?
[B]
Another Question I don't really expect to be answered, but if you can, great:[/B] Why doesnt Valve allow standalone phong masks as they do selfillum and envmap? Why does it [I]have[/I] to be in another texture's alpha channel??
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