Normal maps should work for both opaque and alpha channeled materials.

It would be better to work on your normal map in a 2D editor and leave VTFEdit for the .vtf creation only. You can use Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro with the Nvidia normal map filter or the free GIMP as an alternative.

If you're not comfortable with using 2D editors, then there are couple of programs to generate normal maps

• CrazyBump
• SSBump Generator

Make sure that your normal map has the exact same dimensions of your diffuse texture, and that it has the exact alpha channel too. Once you finish editing the 2 textures, save them as . TGA with 32 bit to preserve the alpha channel. Use now VTFEdit to generate the corresponding .vtf.

The BGRA8888 format is usually used for the uncompressed texture with alpha channel, but I usually use compressed DXT format (it works fine with Orange box source but won't work with EP1 version)

Make sure to tick the normal map check-box in VTFEdit for the normal map before saving. And don't forget to modify the vmt which you already did.

To check if your normal map is working, apply your texture to a small test map, load it in-game, then enable cheats and type mat_bumpmap 0 to temporarily disable bumpmaps (mat_bumpmap 1 to restore them). You should immediately spot the difference between bump/nobump on your texture and this will be your proof that your texture is working fine.

For the sake of it, I just made a quick texture with alpha channel and its corresponding normal map using the method I mentioned above; then I tried it in a small map and the bump maps are working correctly :)

Hope this helps and good luck in your map

Will2k

You don't need:

"$normalmap" "MINE/CROFT/water/causticbumpmap"

in your .vmt. The "$bumpmap" is all you need. Your animation proxy is correct, but did you actually compile your normalmap as an animated texture?

You can simply use DXT1 compression for normal maps without nice filtering. If you are using the alpha channel of the bumpmap then use DXT5. Uncompressed textures are much larger and rarely necessary to use.

You are correct that the DIFFUSE image is the visible part of your material, 99% of the time the diffuse image is simply your basetexture. BUMP and NORMAL are the same thing in source and are created using either CrazyBump, nVidia NormalMapFilter or whatever gimps is called.

It actually doesnt really matter if the textures are the same size or not, smaller textures will be automatically "scaled" up so they are the same size as the larger ones.

Generally bumpmaps are not that often used on transparent textures, and depending what engine version you are using adding $transparent 1 to your .vmt may be stopping the bumpmap from working - I'm honestly not sure what works in which versions anymore.

The wiki is definitely a good source of information, but be careful sometimes as the engine undergoes updates and changes however the wikis arent always changed to keep up with the new info.

In the end I recomend you making 2 textures... the first is just you basetexture (diffuse) from your material using lightmappedgeneric or unlitgeneric. The second make into a refract texture using your normalmap as the animated refract. You can then simply create 2 surfaces, one over the other and put one texture on each.

*you replied while i was writing this so the info may be a little inconsistant with the last 2 posts, but ill leave it anyway.