okay, since the latest update in the HLMV, it will NOT show normal maps. I click on the check box. It immediately resets the view and unchecks the box. There is no help or answer in the official Steam forum for this

http://www.chatbear.com/board.plm?a=viewthread&b=4986&t=198,1155630193,20607&s=0&id=1001188#2

items of note:
- adding "-dxlevel 80" to the shortcut does not fix
- video card is perfectly capable of normal maps in-game
- &%$@*!!! HLMV was showing normal maps BEFORE the update

I am posting out of desperation. Does anyone have a NON-VALVE model viewer for Source? :p :p :p LOL wish it existed. Seriously though, does/has anyone figured out a way to cheat past all of Valve's screw-ups and make the SDK run like it's supposed to?

Cause right now I've just plain stopped sknning the new player skins I was working on. Trying to make a Phong shader blindly was bad enough but now I have to stop my work and actually start up a game, join a server and go spectator JUST to find out if I did a little detail on the normal map correctly. This is too much work and time for something so simple.

Does anybody have an outdated version of the HLMV.exe? If so PLEASE send it to me!

I love the DOD team, but I truly am beginning to hate Valve.

well, think I may have the answer (to why it won't work)

Full Change History:
[-] August 04, 2006 (current release)
Changes/Additions

* Half-Life 2: Episode One enhancements
* NPC behavior enhancements
* Uses the latest shipping version of the Source Engine (HL2: Episode One) Cute. They decided to update it with an entirely new engine that probably doesn't like old cards. Olny problem is, I bought a different game, called HL2 and it's associated SDK, and my system met all the required specs. I want an SDK for the games I bought. This is why I hate automatic updates. I even had selected "do not update" and it updated anyway. If these were downloadable updates we could always re-install the older version.

Speaking of which, once again, does anyone have the older "outdated" version of the hlmv.exe? If so, please contact me!!

i'm not sure if an old hlmv.exe will be of any use. can you manually start it with steam not running?
if not, steam will most likely autoupdate that hlmv.exe on startup.

The HLMV.EXE can be run from outside the folders. This method does actually work, another person has already done it. I have asked them for their version, but have not heard back.

BOOYA! (http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=45)

Never actually used this but I would think it has normal maps working.

Originally posted by MeleeMe!
BOOYA! (http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=45)

Never actually used this but I would think it has normal maps working. HO

LY

CRAP!

Did Nem just make this??? Date on the posting is Aug 7th, but I don't know if it has been up longer. I don't ever recall seeing this before! Hope this is the answer to my problems until I can get a new vidcard. Anyway, thanks for pointing it out!

Lol yeah its been out for ages. He even sent me part of the source to make a 3DS Max MDL importer.

Can't say about old versions of HLMV working as they tend to link into the current materials system so if the engine updated I don't think HLMV will work.

Only thing I can think of is to copy your models/textures to the HL2 folder and set that as your mod. HL2 uses the old pre-EP1 engine so you might see them then.

So did that work for you and was it a worthy download? I guess im too lazy to test it myself but I was thinking about trying it out sometime.

I get the same problem to.

Originally posted by MeleeMe!
So did that work for you and was it a worthy download? I guess im too lazy to test it myself but I was thinking about trying it out sometime. It did not. It does not show normal maps or phong shaders. Just the skin.

So is it fixed already???????????
Hm so it's a common problem, it is very annoying that it doesn't work, come on valve give us a solution!!

Anyone tried a reinstall of SDK?

Well I can tell you the issues been discussed quite a lot on the SDK coders list.

I'll submit it as a bug in the SDK bugzilla.

What ever became of this? As of right now it is STILL broken.

I'm not sure if this is mentioned already but when I load v_thompson the normal maps show, but when I load v_garand (i think) it does not.

So it seems that not all models have the problem.

But what about future support for animated textures etc?

Originally posted by Wile E Coyote
What ever became of this? As of right now it is STILL broken.

I can confirm that the bug is logged and still an open issue in the SDK Bugzilla tracking database so it's been reported and looked into.

Incidentally, I know it's catching me out because sometimes HLMV will show a normal map, sometimes it wont - there doesn't seem to be a definate situation that causes it. :(