Where is it? When I look at the extracted textures they all use the old "paint the lighting effect right on to the texture" approach. I know source engine has these capabilities so where are they. Can we make customs with these features? If so how?

There arent "_normal", "_spec" maps?? :O

You define them in the VMT - combine one or more textures together to create the material you want and put that on the model/surface.

The reason not everything has them is because it uses a lot of CPU/GPU cycles to use it so its often easier to "fake" it with a normal texture than use procedural type textures.

The only ones I ever used were Spec and Bump.

Specular:
Method 1- In your tga/psd working file that you want to create spec for, you can make a 2nd "Alpha Layer" where your spec texture can be placed. In this case, white is the least reflective, and black being the most reflective/shiney. In your VMT txt thing, you still have to put in the correct command lines to get your spec to appear, if you want to see what you have to add, check out the v_Mg42.

Method 2- On a seperate tga/psd/vtf you can have spec, where white is the most reflective/shiney and black is none reflective.

Personally I find Method 1 is the easiest to do, and gets the best results, however, I havn't used either very much so I could be wrong.

I concur - I've done method one on my submarine to make to add "wetness" to parts of the paint where the model sits in the water.

Originally posted by [DoD]Agent~0
The only ones I ever used were Spec and Bump.

Specular:
Method 1- In your tga/psd working file that you want to create spec for, you can make a 2nd "Alpha Layer" where your spec texture can be placed. In this case, white is the least reflective, and black being the most reflective/shiney. In your VMT txt thing, you still have to put in the correct command lines to get your spec to appear, if you want to see what you have to add, check out the v_Mg42.

Method 2- On a seperate tga/psd/vtf you can have spec, where white is the most reflective/shiney and black is none reflective.

Personally I find Method 1 is the easiest to do, and gets the best results, however, I haven’t used either very much so I could be wrong.
Are there any tutorials on making VMT files? Let’s say for example I wanted to make divots in the wood on the Garand using bump or normal maps. Assuming I have the all the texture files already, how do I put them together. Will simply editing the v_garand.vmt allow me to add these in? Or do I need to edit the model as well as you did in the original halflife models?

Everything you want to know about VMT:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_Materials

You can make them by hand of use VTFEdit to help you do it as it has a VMT creation module built in.

Be warned though - it seems that in many cases custom materials that have more than a base texture and bump map trip the consistency check and force the game to use the defaults from the GCF.

Originally posted by Trp. Jed
Everything you want to know about VMT:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_Materials

You can make them by hand of use VTFEdit to help you do it as it has a VMT creation module built in.

Be warned though - it seems that in many cases custom materials that have more than a base texture and bump map trip the consistency check and force the game to use the defaults from the GCF.
Would that happen if the default .vmt had the base and a couple of other materials and you added the bumpmap to it?

No idea. Easiest thing to do is to try it. I don't know if consistency checking just affects model textures or map + model.

Originally posted by Trp. Jed
No idea. Easiest thing to do is to try it. I don't know if consistency checking just affects model textures or map + model.
Still just tryin' to figure out my floors :)