Hey guys, i just started working on my map yesterday for about 6 straight hours of constant changing and the like, and i think i need a few tips. Things like texturing, smoothing out edges, and blandness are all things that plague my map. (although i am seriously JUST getting started, and i have gone through several of editlife.net's tutorials, which rock by the way) If anyone can give me some pointers on the above mentioned things and how to do them, I'd be very grateful. Thanks!

We are not the only mapping community out there. I would recommend going to interlopers.net for some pointers.

thanks fuzion, I'll check em out after testing today =/ ehhhhhhhh....lol

If you want rounded corners. (I just thought of this in my head). Put two walls connecting at an intersection, then pull them back by 1 so the two corners arn't connecting. Then add a cylinder with some faces, like 16 (I like 16) so that the corner section that you just made with nothing in it is 1/4 of the total cylinder . I can't really type it out too well even thought I just did think of it in my head.
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BMW R1100R

For a simple bevel on edges you can select the brush and use the clipping tool (it's the picture of a cube with one beveled corner) which is pretty simple to use. Once you select the brush (with the selection tool) and select the clipping tool, you just drag a line accross. You'll notice that one-half will be outlined in white, while the other is not. The one outlined in white is what will remain. You can chnage this by cicking the tool again (after yo've drawn the line) generally clicking it once will switch the halves, and clicking it twice will make it so that both halves remain (clipping the brush into two).

To group several brushes, select them all (ctrl+click for multiple, works in windows explorer and most other applications as well for selecting multiple things) and push ctrl + g. to see the effect, click somewhere else, then click back onto any of the grouped faces, and they will all be selected. To ungroup, select a group and push ctrl + u, and to select individual items within a group without ungrouping the whole thing, push ctrl + w to toggle "group ignore" mode. All 3 of these functions can be achieved by using the buttons along the top horizontal bar, under the menu bar (the one with all the pictures). The fourth group has 3 buttons (one of them says "ig") the first is group, second is ungroup, third is "ignore group" mode. Both using the buttons and the kb shortcuts work. I prefer shortcuts but either way is ok.

To hide brushes that are getting in your way, select the brush or brushes that are in your way and click the button right next to the afformentioned "ignore group" mode button; it looks like a cube made of red dotted lines. This will bring up a window for visgroup configuration. You can pick any of the existing groups if you have made some, or you can type a new one into the box and push ok. Now that brush will be gone from your map, and the new group will come up in the visgroup window(on the right side under textures by default). To bring the brush back, just put a check next to the name of the group and hit apply[EDIT: it was only in older versions of hammer that you had to hit apply. The visgroups automatically update now. Just check or uncheck and they will show or hide, correspondingly]. You can toggle any other visgroups on and off by the same method (checking and unchecking). To put items into visgroups, new or existing without hiding them, just load up properties (select the object and push alt + enter) and go to the visgroup tab (it will be the only one unless it's tied to an ent). Note that only brushes have visgroup tabs, so this won't work for ents. Remember that anything visgrouped and hidden not only doen'st show up in hammer, but WILL NOT COMPILE INTO THE MAP. Remember to unhide anything you were hiding temporarily and/or hide things you don't want (such as reference geometry for a 3d skybox) before compiling.

One kool tip on ents (using the entity tool) is you don't always have to align them in the grid view for creation. You can click directly in the 3d view to create new ents and they will stick to the nearest face. For example if you pointed at the ground and clicked an ent would pop up touching against the floor where your pointer was. Make sure to get out of the ent tool (back to the selection tool) before you try to select objects however becasue you can quickly end up with 30 info_player_start's that you didn't want there!

For navigation, simply pushing z will put you in "free look" mode, which will lock your cursor to the center of the 3d view. Now it is just like being ingame wiht noclip, use the mouse to change your view, and the standard wasd movememnt controls to move around.

Push shift+z when using a view to make it full screen. Whatever view you last did something in (eg selected an object) will become full screen. This is especially handy when you are doing displacements. Since you don't need/can't use the grid views, simply click once inside the 3d view and hit shif+z to make it full screen for your displacing pleasure!! If you havn'et learned about displacements yet, don't worry, it's a little bit more advanced and you will get to it later. Push shift+z again to return to your last view.

If you are messing around and majorly screw up your views, ie lose windows or throw the proportions way off, and can't get it back, go to Tools->options and under the general tab uncheck "Use independent window configurations". Push OK and restart hammer.

If you are always looking for objects in the grid view that you have selected in the 3d view, you can go to tools -> options and under the "2d views" tab, check "center on camera after 3d movement". This will make the grid views automatically center where your 3d camera is after you move. Note that you have to stop moving for hte grid views to center. Also I dont' reccomend always keeping this on, because it can slow down hammer significantly and cause strange bugs.

You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out of grid views (and move forward and back in the 3d views). Also you can use the number keys along the top of your keyboard (1-0) to go to predifned zoom levels on grids. Use [ and ] to increase and decrease your grid size. This is essential when you need to change the size of a brush preciesly or align a brush to another object.

Try to avoid using 1 unit thick walls as it can cause a lot of distress later on when moving objects.

If you try to move or resize and object, and find it just draws a dotted rectangle instead of making the changes you needed, than you have just run into one of the most annoying feautures of hammer. It is trying to draw a "selection rectangle" which is just like creating a brush, except instead of creating a brush the size of the rectangle you draw, it simply selects everything inside. This came come in handy but is most of the time a nuisance. Click somewhere vacant on the graph or push enter and deselect anything that became selected to clear this rectangle. Then attempt to resize or move your object again.



Holy crap that is a ton of stuff. Props if you actually read all of that. I'm wiped after all that typing. I'll add anymore stuff I can think of. This might be a good thread to sticky so other new mappers can get in on these hints.

Hope this helps you ChaosBringer!! :lol:

I learned all i know about mapping from interlopers.

Yes, I did read all that, and I knew quite a lot of the stuff you said already. But thanks! It would be a great idea for young mapmakers to know that stuff, and who wants your typing to go to waste eh? =). Anyways, I went with Fuzion's thing and looked up some stuff at interlopers.net (and let me tell you, it certainly is not noob-friendly, but I understood most of it) and got some info on things like displacement which I knew how to do, but I got REALLY jagged hills and they just looked like big triangles, which is not what I want. Another thing I would like to get to know is the blend texture thing. I'm not to sure how to create a .vmt file like all the tutorials say, and it really annoys me that they don't go through the process of saying how you would go about doing that. I started working on a small project called sf_castles which is pretty much two "castles" with building materials, lights in the warehouses, rain, ambience, and a big hill with some water in the center with bridges running over it (I can't seem to get the water to work, which extremely pisses me off, it must have to do with my displacement, or something because I don't see any water, but when I shoot it, the splashes happen. Also, I was using a water_lod_control entity which maybe should not be in there, but I'll see.) Another thing I would like to get to understand better is the Load Pointfile feature in Hammer. Basically, I don't get the whole red line thing. Do I look around the red line for a leak? Another thing that might be helpful for other noobie mappers is how to add cool things like trees, bushes, grass, and the like to your map. I have got some cattails in the back of my map, but the trees and bushes show up as big red "Errors" when I run my map.....it says something about vert_unlit or something. If anyone can help me with some of these questions, or maybe build on these to create a noob-friendly guide to mapmaking, I would gladly assist, being a noob myself, i could know one. Thanks guys for a great mod and the oppurtunity to expand my small knowledge of mapping.

-ChaosBringer577

alright man well it's too late right now, but check this out: tommorrow night when I get home I'll break down your post piece by piece and answer all of your questions.

Alright well I'm actually in spanish right now but I will try to do this anyways.

Ok to use blend textures, first you have to use a blend texture. Select your brush and in the browser filter for "blend". There are plenty of blend textures, just pick the one you want. Create a displacement on the topmost face of the brush you want to use for your texture blending. After you create the displacement, open up the texture editing tool and under the displacement tab pick "Paint alpha". Now you can use this tool in the 3d view the same way you creat displacement. Left-clicking fades toward one texture, while right-clicking fades toward the other. This can make a really kool effect espcially when you have a coast or water.

Note that you have to run vis when you compile for the alpha blending to work.

To create new texture file, first you need to conver the picture you want to use to a .tga file. After converting this file, browse to sdk_cntent/hl2mp (orwhatever game you are using/materialsrc/. Create a folder for the texture you want to use (optional but reccomended) and place the tga inside. Keep this folder open and open up your sourcesdk bin folder and find vtex.exe. Drag the tga file onto vtex to convert it to a .vtf. Based on the directory your tga is in, vtex should automatically place it under that games directory. Go to your steamapps folder and check to make sure. If you are doing this for sf, just use hl2dm and move the files when you're done. After the vtf is created, you need to create a vmt. Look under the materials folder at existing vmt files and find the one closest to yours. Open it up in wordpad (or notepad) and copy everything inside. Go back to your folder with the vtf and create a next text document. Rename it with the same name as the picture .vmt. Open it up and paste in the other vmt. I won't go into the details of what is inside as that would take a long time, but you can check the documentation if you want to learn how to edit specific aspects of the vmt file. After your vtf and vmt file are both there, if you are doing this for sf copy them over. Restart hammer and open up the texture browser. Your material should now be there!!

OK my class is ending right now, so I will submit this much and finish it tonight.

OK, i understood everything about the blend texture part except for this:

What do you mean by that?

Also, when you explained about the .vmf files, I got pretty lost, but the way you were saying it lead me to believe that making a .vmt is for making new textures from pictures or similar correct? Cuz if that whole .vmt thing is just for making new textures, I'm not really all that concerned about it right now...