L4D1 Common Infected Coloring

SFM is a very old program and it being updated will probably never come, but that's besides the point. To those who use Left 4 Dead 1 common infected models, the clothing of the infected can be colored to any color you want for extra variety. This is a step by step tutorial on how to give them the colorization options you want.

(This is for those who are either new to SFM or weren't aware of this)

Why is this possible?

You are probably wondering why you can do this. When L4D1 came out, the common infected used an alpha channel to change the colors for the clothing. L4D2 does not use this method of colorization for their commons.

Starting Point

Step 1: Open up SFM, load a session, load a map, and load in the model: common_male01.

The Steps

Once the model is loaded in, right-click the model and click on "Add Override Materials"

Once you've done that, right-click on the model again and hover over "Show in Element Viewer" and click "Model".

In the Element Viewer, find the texture "common_male_upper_01" and right-click on it and hover over "Add Attribute" and click on "color".

After that, a menu will pop up, where it says "newAttribute" type "$color" then press enter.

The End

You are now able to make your zombies more colorful, in clothing, of course.

Just a reminder: Not all of the common infected models have this colorization cause some are meant to just have a static texture. And this colorization technique can be used on Team Fortress 2 cosmetics and other models that are able to be colored.

The models and their bodygroup clothing are:
common_male01: both upper bodygroups and the two extras textures
common_female01: both the casual and suit upper bodygroups can be colored, the skirt can also be colored
common_male_rural01: the jacket can be colored and the shirt bodygroup can be colored
common_female_rural01: can be colored
common_male_suit01: the first bodygroup texture can be colored but not the second bodygroup texture

If you are confused about what texture to add the coloring to, look for the key words: upper and/or lower for the exception for the common_female01's skirt.

I hope this helped you in some way, shape, or form.

[Zecore]

@Vinnie help its not working the infected still white

[Vegetable]

Yes it does work thank you for your help

[Vinnie]

Seems like a shader/phong issue. Find a VMT named "common_infected_shared" and add "//" to the beginning of $phong, $phongboost, and $phongexponent, let me know if that fixes it

[Vegetable]

They should but they are not. Only included in the dlc are newly introduced infected by l4d2.
Those are the l4d1 infected wich are in the first game.
I tried to extract them but they appear all silver idk whats wrong.
https://postlmg.cc/34YH7kg9

[Vinnie]

@Vegetable
They should be included in the Left 4 Dead DLC for SFM

[Vegetable]

where did you get those models in the first place? I cant find them anywhere

[The]

yo you think i could do this but for gmod if so could u message meh

[20Flames1]

nice

[Aronima]

great but isnt funny

[Spongebob]

this will come handy