Help needed with custom hats

Since Valve broke the extensions which resulted in the custom hats not working anymore Voogru has come up with an extension patch that enabled us to use them again. Only one problem remains and that is that some models which are NOT hat models like the soldiers cape and pad they turn black once the player walks into a shady area of the map. I asked in the forum for the equipment manager (the plugin we use) and the answer was that it is related to the bone to which the model is set to.

https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?p=1202190#post1202190

This seems rather not logical to me because;

1.The problem occurred after Valve brok stuff, worked fine before
2.It only happens with non-hats. Can you even set those to a head bone?

I don't have any experience with 3D modelling, i was hoping maybe Adam, Siphex or Pneu can shed light on this?

I found this: http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/$illumposition

If you want to know more what happened recently, some background info:

http://forum.pulpfortress.com/news-f1/petition-against-valve-change-custom-hats-disabled-t720.htm
http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?p=1166964

Anyone that can help me on this one? Also have another question:

Should a .vmt file always point to a .vtf files. I've got some models that seem to point to locations where there aren't any .vtf files. Like this:

"VertexlitGeneric"
{
"$baseTexture" "models\player\items\all_class/all_halloween_hat"
"$bumpmap" "models\effects\flat_normal"
"$detail" "effects/tiledfire/fireLayeredSlowTiled512.vtf"

the bone must be compiled into the model at creation, you can't specify it afterward.

that's been the only part keeping me from making hats, the program i use (cinema 4d) uses it's own protocol for bones that is incompatible with the source engine.

as to the second issue, i'm pretty sure the the source engine uses the other slash as a sort of wild-card character. so the path "...ms\all_class/all_halloween_hat" would the the source equivilent of the unix path "...ms\all_class\all_halloween_hat*"

So editing the .qc file is not going to work? Then we are screwed.

Even if the / is a wildcard, which seems very likely indeed then i still don't understand where the vmt is pointing to because there aren't any .vtf files in that directory.

yeah there is, it's in the GCF.

ahaaaa. right thanks. next time i will use gcfscape to extract them. this will help me fixing gibbo's jaratehat perhaps.

ok i got some more info, i'm pasting this for my own reference here so i can test it later. I will try to fix Greezy's cap with this first.

Eraserhead Does anyone else here use equipment manager and have problems with models showing in black?
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13:17 Eraserhead no one?
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13:17 psychonic ur
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13:24 asherkin Eraserhead: everyone
13:24 asherkin :p
13:24 asherkin voogru insists his fix isn't the cause, but was looking into it anyway
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13:43 Eraserhead oh i will ask voogru again then
13:44 Eraserhead damizean said it was related to illumposition of the models themself
13:44 voogru yeah im not sure why thats happening
13:44 Eraserhead but my question is why then didn't this happen before
13:44 voogru I use the same exact code on my server
13:44 Eraserhead hey there
13:44 Eraserhead you have the same problems voogru?
13:44 voogru nope
13:45 Damizean but not the same models
13:45 voogru if its illumination then I would try changeing the origin
13:45 voogru teleport entity/set origin
13:45 voogru to the player
13:45 voogru see if that does anything
13:45 Eraserhead im not a 3D modeler, so i don't understand everything here
13:45 Eraserhead all i know is that dami is in the right direction
13:45 asherkin if the origin is in the player model it will cause this issue
13:46 Eraserhead because i see models changing from colored to black when they are standing in a shadow
13:47 Damizean voogru, any progress on the issue of changing the team skin and the flags?
13:48 voogru nope
13:48 voogru im stumpted
13:48 voogru I dont touch anything related to that
13:48 psychonic hax
13:49 Eraserhead Dami, what did you mean by changing the illumposistion, is this something i can try/test myself? How would i do that?
13:49 asherkin is it possible your fix needs 'reactivating' if they are changed voogru?
13:49 Damizean you need to recompile the model
13:49 voogru is the attachment ext still working btw
13:50 voogru I dont think any of the vtable things changed on me
13:50 voogru but the mem offsets could have
13:50 Eraserhead just by editing the illumposition in the qc file? to what value should i change it?
13:50 Damizean change it to the head bone
13:50 asherkin only one or two vtable offsets changed for me
13:50 Damizean $illumposition bip_head
13:50 Eraserhead what value is head bone?
13:50 Damizean IIRC
13:50 Eraserhead oh
13:51 Damizean that's how I do all my hat models and they seem to work
13:52 Eraserhead so this: $illumposition 0.008 -0.214 -0.068 would become this: $illumposition bip_head ?
13:52 asherkin voogru: need me to check the sendprops?
13:52 voogru go for it
13:52 voogru but if its still working
13:52 voogru then nothing changed
13:52 voogru it goes apeshit if stuff is wrong
13:53 Damizean yes
13:53 asherkin some people reported crashing, which points to the vtable
13:53 Eraserhead ok i will test
13:53 asherkin voogru: http://static.lifetimeblood.info/coding/tf2_CTFPlayer_engieupdate.txt

if anyone knows a fix it's those two guys.

YAY WOOT AND DOUBLE YAY!

I found a way to fix the hats that display in black. After the illumposition the bone should be specified that was used in the hbox value.

I already fixed Greezies cape and Gibbo's toiletpaper hat. Please report here if any custom hat users have problem with a hat displayed in black!

Sweet!

Awesome! My cape shall shine again! Thanks eraser