Material Files

Originally written by Fingernail & greebo on forums.thedarkmod.com

What the Heck is a Material File?

The material files (.mtr) contain lists of 'material definitions' that tell the engine where to find the source files for the specified textures and what features it should have. All material files should be located in the darkmod/materials folder and have the extension .mtr.

In fact, it's the material (=shader) which gets applied to surfaces of brushes, patches and models, not the actual TGA/DDS texture image. A TGA file cannot be applied to surfaces, it's the shader name which gets used.

Polygons ==> Shader ==> Image(s) + Processing => Appearance

Material definitions apply to a single 'texture', though it may be made up of multiple texture files blended together. A simple material definition looks like this:

textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar
{
   qer_editorimage  textures/darkmod/custom/redbrick_ed
   diffusemap       textures/darkmod/custom/redbrick     
   bumpmap          textures/darkmod/custom/redbrick_local  
   specularmap      textures/darkmod/custom/redbrick_s     
}

If you're using the material called textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar in your map, TDM looks up the name in the material definition and loads the according image files (as specified by the Map Expressions). Note that you don't need to specify the file extension, the engine is automatically adding it (depending on your quality setting) and finds the according texture file. You also don't need to include the dds/ prefix in the path, this is also added automatically.

A single material file contains lots of material definitions. This is useful as textures that logically belong to each other are summarized in one material file (e.g. materials/tdm_stone_brick.mtr)

The .mtr files are read upon launching TDM - changing your material file therefore requires either restarting TDM or typing reloadDecls in the console.

Create a new Texture Definition

Provided you already saved your texture source file (the .tga or .dds) in the appropriate folder, you can go on and create your texture definition. You cannot use your textures without this step.

Open up or create your personal material file with a text editor. There are existing guidelines for where texture definitions should go, for the sake of organization, but the engine doesn't care what the filename is as long as it's in the materials folder and has a .mtr extension.

First, specify the name of your new material. If it is not a model texture, then the name should include the path to the texture files used. Example:

textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar

Note: Do not use special characters for your shader name or The Dark Mod parser might complain (e.g. no "&" (ampersand) or "-" (dash) characters, etc.)

Then, open up a squiggly bracket ({), and start to fill in the texture paths as below, changing the paths and names for your texture.

textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar
{
    qer_editorimage  textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar_ed      // editor image
    diffusemap       textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar         // diffuse map
    bumpmap           textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar_local  // normal map
    specularmap      textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar_s       // specular map
}

Close the definition with a close squiggly bracket (}).

Save the file. Now you can load your new texture in DarkRadiant provided you did it all correctly.

Alternatively you can also have a look a the existing material files and learn from them.

Full example

Here is the full example with the final material definition:

textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar
 {
    // Use on of the predefined surface types like:
    // none, metal, stone, flesh, glass, wood
    stone

    // Or use "surftype15" and add the surface type as the first (or only) word of the description,
    // the following are possible:
    // tile, carpet, dirt, gravle, grass, rock, twigs, foliage, sand, mud, brokeglass, snow, ice, squeakboard,
    // puddle, moss, cloth, ceramic, slate, straw, armor_leath, armor_chain, armor_plate, climbable, paper, hardwood

    //surftype15
    //description "carpet This is a carpet texture."

    qer_editorimage  textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar_ed
    bumpmap          textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar_local
    diffusemap       textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar
    specularmap      textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar_s
 }

In the above example the surface type is defined as well.

Special Keywords

There are also some special keywords you can use:

• noshadows - surface does not cast a shadow
• noselfshadows - casts shadows, but not on itself
• translucent - for things like glass
• twosided - the surface will be duplicated and flipped, this causes it to be rendered twice. Useful for half-transparent things that should be visible from both sides. Normally surfaces are only visible from the front side (see note below)
• noFog - do not render fog on this surface
• Discrete - Dmap will not merge brushes with this material applied
• NoFragment - Dmap will not split brushes with the material applied
• nopicmip - The image_downsize settings will not affect this texture. Use sparingly, as low-end users need to use image_downsize to load larger maps.

Note:

https://iddevnet.dhewm3.org/doom3/materials.html

twoSided Draw the front and back. Implies no-shadows, because the shadow volume would be coplanar with the surface, giving depth fighting

Use a nodraw surface with forceShadows to address this.

Optional: Customizing frob-highlight

As of TDM 2.11 the default frob highlight is done automatically by the engine. It's also possible to customize this.

Also we added new syntax for customizing frob-highlight in simple cases.

First of all, you can set frob-highlight with custom texture (e.g. it can be specular map) and arbitrary coefficients:

   frobstage_texture textures/darkmod/sfx/whiteglass2 0.25 0.5

Since diffuse texture is used in most materials, here is a shortcut for it:

   frobstage_diffuse 0.1 0.35

The first number is the multiplier applied to texture, and the second number is the amount of white color added.
You can also make non-white multiplier or addition by putting three numbers in parentheses, e.g.:

   frobstage_diffuse (0.15 0.35 0.15) 0.4

Of course, the most recommended approach is to not write any frob text, in which case frobstages are added implicitly as "frobstage_diffuse 0.15 0.4".
The implicit frobstages are added only if there are no frobstages specified explicitly.

If you want to suppress implicit generation of frob stages (not recommended), you can write:

   frobstage_none

Finally, if you want to make something special and customizations listed above are not enough, then you can just write frobstages the old way via parm11 parameter.
The old frob-highlight stages should continue to work properly.
If you write frob stages manually, please follow the rules (or you'll get warnings):

1. Start every frob stage exactly with if (parm11 > 0) condition.
2. Do not mention parm11 outside frob stages.

For additional info see this forum post.

See also

• Texture Guidelines
• How to add Textures to The Dark Mod
• Texture Creation - Basic Tutorial
• Youtube video: Getting textures into Dark Radiant and The Dark Mod – a short tutorial (ignore the part about ambient stage)

Deprecated stages

As of TDM 2.08, none of the ambient stages are needed.

        // TDM Ambient Method Related
        {
                if (global5 == 1)
                blend add
                map                             <mappath/name>
                scale                   1, 1
                red                             global2
                green                   global3
                blue                    global4
        }   

{
                if (global5 == 2)
                blend add
                program ambientEnvironment.vfp
                vertexParm              0               1, 1, 1, 1              // UV Scales for Diffuse and Bump
                vertexParm              1               1, 1, 1, 1              // (X,Y) UV Scale for specular
                vertexParm              2               global2, global3, global4, 1

                fragmentMap             0               cubeMap env/gen1
                fragmentMap             1               textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar_local                  // Bump
                fragmentMap             2               textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar                        // Diffuse
                fragmentMap             3               _black                  // Specular
        }

Ambient rendering has its own dedicated function in the renderer now, and it doesn't use textures for it.
The option is no longer in the game menu, but you can check it in the game console by typing tdm_ambient_method. It should be set to 0.
As of 2.09, there is no longer any tdm_ambient_method cvar.

As of TDM 2.11, none of the frob stages are needed.

    // This is the code required for frob highlighting this texture
    {
        if ( parm11 > 0 )
        blend       gl_dst_color, gl_one
        map         _white.tga
        rgb         0.40 * parm11
    }
    {
        if ( parm11 > 0 )
        blend       add
        map         textures/darkmod/stone/brick/redbrick_with_mortar
        rgb         0.15 * parm11
    }   
 }

See also: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/21629-211-frobstages-automatic-generation-and-customization/

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