Re: Source Sdk Tools Texture Pack
Sheron Norsworthy
Anyone can make their very own tool texture, by utilizing available Material Map Compile Flags, such as %compilenonsolid 1, %compileDetail 1 and %compilenodraw 1 for a tool texture which is not solid, does not cut visleafs and is invisible.
A %tooltexture may also be set, which is only to be seen in Hammer's texture browser, while the $basetexture is seen in-game; however, the self made tool textures must be shipped with the map, else they might not work.
These tool textures are available in every Source engine game.
Some of these textures have special function in some games. These special functions are noted by having the game's icon listed in the description. Such as ,,,, ect.
This texture is often used for brushes that are far away and they are dark. It cannot be lit by any type of light, but is affected by fog color.
An example of its use is in the "space" backgrounds during the G-Man monologues in Half-Life 2 or for crude buildings in the 3D Skybox.
Uses UnlitGeneric in:
Uses LightmappedGeneric in:
While in most games, the different shader has no impact, it might have a different function in other games. In that case, you may want to use vgui/black instead or make your own tool texture.
If you want to block grenades or other thrown objects, create a trigger_multiple, using a filter_activator_model to filter for the grenade model, with the outputs "OnStartTouch - !Activator - Kill". If the game has multiple thrown objects use a filter_activator_model for each model and a filter_multi.
Use blockbullets_cs variant, which correctly stops bullets even with 1 unit thickness.
Solid to everything, including throwable items, Boomer vomit, Smoker tongues, Spitter spit and Tank rocks.
These tool textures are available in every source engine game.
Some of these textures have special function in some games. These special functions are noted by having the game's icon listed in the description (such as ,,, etc.).
These tool textures are available in every Source engine game.
Some of these textures have special function in some games. These special functions are noted by having the game's icon listed in the description (such as ,,, ect.).
Used in conjunction with multiple env_fog_controllers to change fog colours and densities in a level.
Fog inside its volume will not appear to have different atributes when viewed from outside its volume, as it globally changes the appearance of all fog across the map when entered.
Despite being in the Materials/Tools folder, this is not a tool texture. It has no abilities. It is simply an invisible texture used for displacement clipping, where you make an invisible displacement instead of a clip brush because making intricate clip brushes is difficult.
Uses $decal 1 and $surfaceprop "dirt".
Used with func_brush to make it non-solid and fade away when approached.
It being UnlitGeneric makes it seems as if it were glowing in a warm color, but is not listed in lights.rad, so it won't actually emit any light for VRAD to compile.
Only used in C8M2_Subway behind the three windows to the right of the entrance of the end map saferoom building, to simulate glowing light in a room.
Only visible to Infected players.
No campaign uses this tool texture anymore. See L4D Level Design: Blocking the Infected Team for more info.
Used especially for the Wingman game mode. It has the same properties as WrongWay Timer.
When working with booleans that have a material with a texture applied, sometimes after doing a trim or add or subtract etc, the texture coordinates are changed / moved a bit.
This can result in having to redo them again (and again and again if you need to apply more boolean operations later in the process).
Textures on faces with no locally specified positioning are positioned according to the local axes. The native solid tools draw their output to a new group, created from scratch, with the origin in the lower front left corner, without caring about the original axes location.
My own solid tool extension keeps the the axes of the solid that is regarded the target (the one being edited), which would avoid the materials jumping on one of the original solids. To also avoid the material on the other jumping around, you could make sure from the start their axes line up. This is btw a great way to make sure textures match where objects meet.
Christina, could I ask you a question regarding your solid tools extension? Is there an easy way to call some methods from my own script? I had a look at your code but its beyond my knowledge of ruby.
I'm wondering if there's a converter for DDS textures after they've been created. We don't have access to the original source images and we would like to avoid changing our shaders, as I'm told it's less efficient to flip them during runtime. Also we don't want the added load time of flipping them. Does anything like that exist? I couldn't find it if there is...
EDIT: the only downside to this is that it tends to increase the size of textures unnecessarily, changing some from DXT1 to DXT5, and there doesn't seem to be a way to match the output texture type to the input texture type. So it looks like I might have to write a tool to read the type and pass that through the command line...
The 'TextureProcessor.exe' tool converts image files into a Redshift renderable format. It can be executed automatically during rendering, or used off-line to batch pre-convert textures. It is particularly useful to pre-convert textures off-line when you have a lot of them and you have a shared texture source folder over a network, in which caseautomatic local machine texture conversion can be slower than the actual rendering!
The off-line tool converts textures so that the result is stored side-by-side with the source, having the same name and the extension replaced with ".rs***bin".
When pre-converting textures, the converted textured must remain side-by-side with the source texture or it will not be found by Redshift. If Redshift does not find a converted texture side-by-side with a source texture, the source texture will be automatically converted during rendering.
When auto-converting textures at render time, certain information is baked into the converted files based on how the texture is used. For example, the color space of the texture (e.g. sRGB) is used to correctly compute mip maps. When using TextureProcessor to manually pre-convert textures, the usage may need to be specified explicitly since TextureProcessor has no way to determine how the texture is used in your scene. The following command-line options are available to specify usage:
By default when Redshift finds a pre-converted texture during rendering, it will copy it into the local texture cache folder and subsequently reference it from there. The assumption is that the local texture cache folder has better IO performance than the source texture folder, which is common for example when source textures are stored on slower network drives or when the local texture cache folder is on an SSD drive while the source texture folder is on a mechanical drive. In such cases, this is an important optimization as it ensures the best performance for out-of-core texture streaming.
In situations where the assumption of differences in IO performance between the local texture cache folder and the source texture folder does not hold, this optimization will actually hurt performance. For example, if the texture cache folder is on a slower network drive or if the texture cache folder and source texture folder are located on the same drive or drives of equal performance. In these cases, the optimization can be disabled by turning OFF theCopy Pre-Converted Textures to Cache Folder option on the Optimizations tab of the Redshift render options.
To use a tool texture, simply texture a brush with it. You don't need to tie the brush to a brush entity for the tool texture to work. Many, but not all, tool textures will only function correctly if all sides of a brush have the same tool texture. Tool brushes, despite being invisible, will count towards your brush limit of 8,192 brushes in a single map.
Imagine going outside and seeing that the sky is actually six faces of a cube surrounding you, never moving to give the appearance of infinity. The tools/toolsskybox texture acts as a window into seeing that cube. This box doesn't actually exist in Hammer, and it's horrible practice to make an actual box of tools/toolsskybox around your map. Don't confuse yourself; tools/toolsskybox lets you see the sky.
To use the skybox texture, simply make a skybox roof over any "outside" areas of the level. If you need them taller, draw skybox brushes on top of your walls and roof them off with another skybox brush.
The skybox texture will not only seal the map, but it will also block visibility. Parts of the level that can be seen behind a skybox brush will render improperly. The skybox texture will block physics objects, players, NPCs, and bullets from passing through. If a light_environment entity is placed in the map, not only will it itself give off light, but its ambient lighting value will emit from every single skybox brush.
There is an additional skybox texture, tools/tools2dskybox, but if you don't know what it does, you don't need it. It's not necessary for 2D skyboxes, and if you mix it and the normal skybox texture improperly, it can create rendering errors.
Along with the skybox texture, the tools/toolsclip texture is the oldest of the tool textures, dating back to the Quake engine. It's an invisible texture that prevents the player or NPCs from passing through it. The normal red clip texture will not block physics objects, bullets, cast shadows, block visibility, or block NPCs from seeing through it.
The clip texture is best used around pillars and places where the player can get caught up on tiny details, such as fuse boxes, pipes, or cave walls. Other, more specific clip textures are available depending on the game. tools/toolsnpcclip will block only NPCs from passing through it, but no more; tools/toolsplayerclip blocks only players, but no more; Counter-Strike: Global Offensive mappers also have a special grenade clip available to them. Though this isn't usually called a clip texture, the tools/toolsblockbullets texture will block most enemy projectiles, as well as bullets, NPCs, players, and physics objects.
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