Hey guys, I'm a new member, my name is John and I wanna get into Halo CE modding. I've been modding Half-Life and it's sequels for a few years now and am an avid fan of both Half-Life and Halo. Since I've become proficient at modding the Half-Life games I guess it's about time I move on to modding my second favorite franchise. :P

For the record, I'm not a noob. I'm proficient at texturing, basic 3d modeling and UV mapping and to some extent I can map also. I'm the lead texture artist on the source mod "For Hire" and I also do modeling and texturing for my own projects.

I've downloaded the OpenSauce Halo CE SDK Update #2 (RC) and I've been experimenting with some of the included tools but have a few questions about the engine.

- Can bump maps/normal maps and specular maps be used on weapon models? Most of the weapons I've seen in custom maps don't have any trace of a bump map on them, I think I've seen some kind of specular on them though.

- Can the sun be made to be a dynamic light source? I want all the bump maps in my upcoming project to react to the sun the same way bumpmaps react to the flashlight in default maps.

- How does the engine handle diffuse, normal and spec maps? Is it like source where sometimes the specular map in contained in the alpha channel of the normal map? I want tons of details on stuff like that. I also want to know how to manipulate the shaders on certain materials in similar ways to how you can manipulate them with commands contained in a .vmt file in source.

If you guys have any answers or would be kind enough to point me in the direction of a few thorough tutorials that would be great. Thanks.