Diffuse terrain texture- what am I missing here?

[DocOctavius]

I'll describe exactly what I did and see if anyone can point out where I've gone wrong.

In 3dsmax, I have a multi material called redfeather terrain/sky with the submaterials named redfeather_ground and +sky applied to my ground and sky, respectively.
In my data\levels\test\redfeather\bitmaps folder I have my 512x512 tif called redfeather_ground.tif
I export using Blitzkrieg, saving redfeather.jms in my data\levels\test\redfeather\models folder.
I run structure levels\test\redfeather redfeather with tool.exe
I open my tags\levels\test\redfeather\redfeather.scenario in Geurilla and select the bloodgulch sky, and make it a mp map instead of whatever it's on by default, and save.
Then I run radiosity with either tool.exe or sapien.
Opening it in Sapien reveals no texture- only the white/gray lightmap.

One thing I tried that I thought would work is using tool.exe to convert the tif to a .bitmap (which by the tutorial seems to be taken care of automatically, but in reality is not the case) - it created my redfeather_ground.bitmap in the test folder. I tried running radiosity again, and no luck. So, I moved the .bitmap file to tags\levels\test\redfeather\bitmaps (mimicking the structure of the tutorial directory) and tried again. No worky.
I've tried re-converting the bitmap, I've tried re-exporting the jms with the .bitmap already in the tags folder, (actually about 3 different places) and nothing seems to work. Is there some setting I have to manually apply to my scenario to get it to look for the texture? What in the hell is missing from this process? This is exactly how the tutorial describes it, right?
I can open it up and play it in Halo, but I need textures to be able to see the terrain well enough to refine and perfect it...
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!! I promise my final map will be worth the trouble.

[CrispySpartan]

You are missing one final step in your process.

The thing that actually gets applied to your geometry is the .shader
The .shader can reference multiple .bitmaps (base, detail, micro detail, bump, reflection etc)

If you've managed to get your .bitmap compiled, you just need to create a .shader with the name of the relevant 3ds material.

You could create a new material in geurilla, but it's probably safer to copy a similar .shader from one of the other maps, rename it and open it in geurilla. Then go through the various options and find where the base .bitmap is referenced, and change the path to you new .bitmap.

Here's another tip for ground type shaders. You can have two different detail maps in a shader (eg dirt and grass) - to distinguish between them, add an alpha channel to your texture. Black areas in theis channel will use detail 1, while white areas use detail 2. Safe as a tif, making sure 'alpha channels' is turned on.

However, when you compile this tif to a .bitmap with tool, you get a warning saying that the alpha has been changed to 1bit depth (not what you want). So, open up the offending .bitmap in geurilla and change the type to 'compressed with expicit alpha'. Now recompile the .tif to a .bitmap with tool, and it will use the correct encoding. If you copy and edit an existing 'ground' .shader you can see how there are two different detail .bitmaps. replace the existing base .bitmap with yours, and you should get a nice dual-detail ground texture.

Let me know if you still have issues.

[DocOctavius]

thanks a ton man. I really really appreciate it. I'll let you know if I can do it when I get home.