ok, so I got my item set as a gold star, properly rigged, and texture is fine and all that jazz in the item preview.

except in the test map, the texture is completely black in-game but not in the preview.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=183450703

you can even see in the class icon that the item has the proper texture.

the root of this problem I think is because I used a duplicate of the heavy smd that I imported, removed unnessecary geometry and rerigged.

I ended up fiddling with vertex paint, and removing all the materials, the result is the same

the only explanation I can think of is either some kind of .QC error when importing, or something issue in blender. I am stumped and frustrated, because if I don't get this fixed, any full item set shots are unacceptable because of this error.

EDIT: I redid some tests, and it turns out that when the player dies, the texture becomes fine, but otherwise the error is still intact when they are alive.... what.