Editing Tips
Interlopers Editing Tips
We've collated some useful tips for you to read and learn from. Whether you're a complete novice or an advanced level designer - you should find something here to interest you.
To contribute your own useful tips please visit this thread and read the first post for instructions.
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Tips statistics
In total there are 50 tips
The users who submitted the most tips are:
- Blink ( 12 )
- Duke Nukem ( 2 )
- Phott ( 2 )
- Lord Ned ( 2 )
- Olympus04 ( 2 )
The users with the highest rated tips are:
- forty-nin3 ( 3.00 )
- Penney ( 3.00 )
- YokaI ( 2.00 )
- goldendeed ( 2.00 )
- marnamai ( 2.00 )
Texture Flipping
Tip Rating: 0.00
You can flip textures by using negative values in the texture scale section on the face edit sheet tool. Put a negative X value to flip the texture horizontally, and a negative Y value to flip it vertically. For example, if you have a 'fake' brush door using the door textures, the handle will appear on opposite sides of the door. Making the texture scale of the X value on one side negative will correct this.
Category: Textures
Wildcard Texture Searching
Tip Rating: 0.00
Use a semi-colon as a wildcard when searching for textures. Consider that you want to find the the generic, tileable dev textures. They are called 'dev/dev_measuregeneric01' and 'dev/dev_measuregeneric01b'. You know they're in the dev/ folder and end in generic, but nothing else. Use the code:
dev/;generic
and there you go! All textures in the dev folder that end in generic. Or perhaps you're looking for the tools skybox texture, called tools/toolsskybox. Type
tools/;box
and it'll show up.
Category: Textures
Realism vs. Suspense of Disbelief
Tip Rating: 1.00
When a player starts up a game, they already know it isn't real. The point here is that any environment must therefore attempt to remove that idea from the player. That means just because you have seen a 200 foot long brick wall in real life, does not mean it will look good in-game. It is therefore important to get others opinions on your level to keep in check the Suspense of Disbelief you have attempted to create.
Category: Miscellaneous
Scaling Vertices
Tip Rating: 2.00
If you press Alt + E while in Vertex Edit Mode, you can scale your vertices. You can change where they scale from too. (Make sure you have some selected first)
Category: Hammer
Easy random entity rotation
Tip Rating: 0.00
Have you ever had a model such as a tree which you need to rotate each time you add it? Here is a simple way.
1) Open a new file in hammer.
2) Create your entity/model and place it just below the map origin as shown in the picture below:
3) Go to the right hand bar and click the tick-box to give it a random yaw (rotation). This means that each time you place the prefab, it will rotate from above randomly.
4) Click 'Create Prefab'.
5) Save the file with any name you wish in sourcesdk/bin/<engineName>/bin/prefabs
where <engineName> is either ep1 or orangebox depending on which game you are mapping for.
6) To use your prefab, select the entity tool, then in the same box as 'Create Prefab' click the 'Categories' drop-down list and select prefab. Then in the 'Objects' drop-down list select the prefab you just made. Place like a normal entity.
Enjoy <!-- s:D --><img src="https://www.interlopers.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->Category: Hammer
Re: Flexible rotation
Tip Rating: -1.00
" "Do you think it's annoying when you can't rotate things 180 with exact precision? Well have you tried ticking the "15 degree rotation" box in the "2D view"-settings? Do that and it shouldn't be a problem. What? You need stepless rotation again? Well, just hold the shift button and rotate." - lillerik
Or...
Press Ctrl+M and type in 180 in "X" and press OK." - Phott
Sorry, should me "Y" and not "X" :SCategory: Hammer
Re: Flexible rotation
Tip Rating: -1.00
"Do you think it's annoying when you can't rotate things 180 with exact precision? Well have you tried ticking the "15 degree rotation" box in the "2D view"-settings? Do that and it shouldn't be a problem. What? You need stepless rotation again? Well, just hold the shift button and rotate." - lillerik
Or...
Press Ctrl+M and type in 180 in "X" and press OK.Category: Hammer
Flexible rotation
Tip Rating: 2.00
Do you think it's annoying when you can't rotate things 180 with exact precision? Well have you tried ticking the "15 degree rotation" box in the "2D view"-settings? Do that and it shouldn't be a problem. What? You need stepless rotation again? Well, just hold the shift button and rotate.
Category: Hammer
Creating displacements the easy way
Tip Rating: -1.00
Right after turning a brush into a displacement, deselect the sides of the displacement you want to stay by CTRL+Left click and hit Destroy.
Now you have no unnecessary sides which probably would have confused you when painting the geometry.
This will also increase performance and the decrease the time of the compiling process.Category: Hammer
Re: Tips Submission Thread
Tip Rating: 0.00
Don't turn off building mipmaps. EVER. Even for UI textures. You can disable it in the texture's flags but build them when importing to VTFedit anyway. Why?
It screws up in-game. Without mipmaps it can't figure out how to show the texture in hammer's broswer. Plus if used ingame it only becomes visible up close, standing maybe 4 feet away causes it to turn into y-linear noise.Category: Textures
Re: Tips Submission Thread
Tip Rating: 0.00
This is something that I use occasionally and most people don't know of.
When exporting a model for source if you don't need animation you can use the .obj format. I normally use this for complex collision model where the source exporter can throw an error and crash max.
Also if you do use this remeber to un-tick flip y-z axis (if you have the option to).Category: Modelling
Don't release your first map
Tip Rating: -1.00
Even you know your first map isnt going to be a work of art. Because of this fact, you shouldn't release a first map. Use your first map to practice various techniques, or try something crazy just to see if it will work. If you really feel inclined to, you should only release a version of your first map to some close friends, to test it and give you constructive criticism.
Category: Miscellaneous
Splitting Vertices
Tip Rating: 2.00
Splitting Vertices can be useful in many situations. For example, if you make a curved corner you don't want to have long thin pieces so you can split a edge and make it have larger pieces.
Like this:
- Select a face
- Press CTRL+F while you have selected a Yellow square
- Move the newly created vertices
Category: Hammer
Spice up vents
Tip Rating: 1.00
You can make normal model vents look a bit more interesting by adding a smaller vent to the side at varying intervals. Adding models/props_vents/vent_medium_grill001.mdl as an add-on to normal vents will compliment it nicely and break up the monotony of long vent systems.
Category: Hammer
Shortcuts
Tip Rating: 1.00
Get to know the shortcuts! You'll save yourself a few seconds each time you use one, and that'll build up to minutes and hours as you continue mapping.
Every action that will be used relatively often will have a shortcut; take the time to check what they are, and memorise them by using them.
Most of the common tool shortcuts are accessed through the SHIFT key and use the lower left side of the keyboard for easy access.
Use shortcuts! They aren't called shortcuts for nothing.Category: Hammer