The Big Bad Hammer FAQ

Berry

resident homo
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Dec 27, 2012
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WIP, sorry :(

This isn't that big yet, but I'm gonna slowly add stuff here until it's a gigantic list that don't get no bigger. Reserved two posts below just in case I run outta space too, that's how big I wanna do this thing.

Firstly, I wanna suggest if you're trying to make your first test map, use this guide instead. This is for singular things, rather than a whole basic map.

Contents
  • 1. The Toolbar
  • 2. Rotating Solids
    - Precise Rotating
    - Manual Rotating
  • 3. Rotating Textures
  • 4. The Vertex Tool ("Making Funky Brush Shapes")

1. The Toolbar
7Pvy2SR.png

There's a lot of stuff on this toolbar here, and a lot of it isn't even needed, or is made useless by other features of hammer (ie #15)

  • 1. The grid: This shows/hides the grid on the 2D views. Recommended to leave enabled.
  • 2. 3D Grid: Brushes/solids you have close have a grid on them in the 3D view. Useful for some things. Personally, I leave it disabled.
  • 3. Grid sizes: These change the size of the grid (duh). Shortcuts are left square bracket (smaller), right square bracket (bigger)
  • 4. Window state: I have no idea what the hell this does. Clicking it did junk with the hammer windows, so you probably won't ever need this junk.
  • 5. Undo / Redo: Self-explanatory. Undoes and redoes changes. Shortcuts are ctrl+z to undo, ctrl+y to redo
  • 6. Carve: Woahwoahwoah, back away from this unless you're putting a rectangle solid through another. While usually this just splits solids around the brush you selected, sometimes this can mess up your map MAJORLY. Not recommended to use. Instead, use the vertex or clipping tool (both to be covered at a later)
  • 7. Group / Ungroup: Useful if you have a bunch of brushes, props, spawns.. Anything but faces you wanna group together. Especially recommended with displacements (makes hammer act like they're all one big thing when you select them, but doesn't compile as one big thing) Shortcuts: Ctrl + G to group, Ctrl + U to ungroup
  • 8. Toggle group ignore: Makes it so hammer ignores groups, treats them as their own entities again.
  • 9. You don't need any of these except the first, I doubt. Not even sure what the others do. The first one creates a new visgroup. Visgroups will be covered better later.
  • 10. Cut: Cuts out what you have selected. You can paste it back in after though so it's not like it's gone forever. Shortcuts: Ctrl + X
  • 11. Copy: Puts a copy of what you have selected into the clipboard. You can paste this copy in. Shortcuts: Ctrl + C
  • 12. Paste: Pastes in whatever's in the clipboard last (from cut or copy). Shortcuts: Ctrl + V
  • 13. Toggle cordon state: Toggles cordon state, which creates a non-solid, invisible box. Everything inside here will be rendered, and everything outside will not be rendered. (thanks Aly!)
  • 14. Edit cordon bounds: Allows you to resize a special cube/cuboid. Everything inside this will be rendered. Can be moved to different areas too. (thanks Aly!)
  • 15. Radius culling: Culls the map to only render in a specific radius. Only compiles the area shown, can lag hammer a nice chunk on slower machines too. Not recommended to be used.
  • 16. Toggle select by handles: Basically, when you drag over a solid in the 2D view, this changes the area which it'll select things. Having this off means you can drag over any of a solid and it'll select. Having this on means you have to drag over the X in the centre to select it.
  • 17. Toggle auto-selection: Having this off means when you drag out, it doesn't select things; but instead makes a neat little box which does crap all. Recommended to have one: necessary for you to be able to select things with the cursor tool.
  • 18. Texture lock, scaling texture lock: Texture lock makes it so when you move a brush, the texture doesn't change at all based on how you're moving it (so if you moved a brush above another, it'd fit provided they were both with the same x/y texture coords). Scaling texture lock keeps your brush's texture exactly the same on each face when you scale it. So if you set a face to an overlay texture (don't!) with scaling texture lock on and fitted it, then scaled the brush up it'd still fit on the face; where otherwise it wouldn't fit anymore.
  • 19. Toggle face alignment: Haven't a clue what this actually does. Leave it on though, sounds important.
  • 20. Displacement mask solid: So this makes your displacements solid, as opposed to (I assume) the actual brush's dimensions being solid. Leave this on.
  • 21. Disp draw 3D: Tells hammer whether or not it should be showing displacements in the 3D view.
  • 22. Disp mask walkable: Makes portions of your displacements yellow if they're unwalkable. Useful. (thanks Crash!)
  • 23. Disp Edge Collapse: Who the hell knows. Hasn't done anything wrong for me having it off, so who cares.
  • 24. Compile your map!: Superduper important, you're gonna want this when you're ready to test. I'll go over compiling later (specifically the advanced compile).
  • 25. Toggle helpers: Toggles radiuses on specific entities, light cones, and origins mainly. Recommended to be left on. (thanks Crash and Aly!)
  • 26. Toggle models in 2D: Toggles models and displacements in the 2D views, pretty cool to have on or off depending on what you're doing. Can get clusterduck having it on in a finished or semi-detailed map.
  • 27. Toggle model fade preview: Models set to fade will also fade in with 3D view. (thanks Aly!)
  • 28. Show collision model wireframe: Shows collision models for your models. Useful if you wanna check where players can abuse model collisions and stuff. Leave this off mostly, though.
  • 29. Show detail models/sprites on materials: Exactly what it says, shows sprites on your displacements mostly. Leave this on unless you're on a toaster.
  • 30. Show nodraw faces: Hides any faces with tools/toolsnodraw on them. Never needed this, personally.

2. Rotating Solids

There're currently two ways to rotate solids. For the purpose of this, I'll refer to them as precise and manual.

Precise Rotating

So you made some respawn room or something, or anything like that. You plant down your info_player_teamspawn (spawns players!).. But it faces the wrong way.

Select what you're gonna be rotating, then hit ctrl+m up in this thing.
Y2GGqw4.png


Then, this magical window pops up.
eE9xyTO.png

This is in degrees, so naturally we wanna put in 90. I'll go over the Scale and Move options later.

o11HkgO.png

Taadaaaaa! Looks like it rotated properly to me. Now, when you spawn you're facing the exit door.

Alternatively, you can hit alt+enter after selecting what you want, then go to the angles box. It should by default have 0 0 0 in it. The first number is rotation on the X axis, the second the Y axis and the third the Z axis. You could change the second number to 90 and it would have the same effect.

Manual Rotating
Firstly, select what you want to rotate. For this example, we're gonna use a crate prop; because that's a perfect example of what you'd use this for (it makes it look more natural than being at a perfect angle). Click the box around what you're rotating (this works fine for brushes too, and many other things I'll just say), and the 8 boxes should change to 4 circles.
7ygmE8H.png


Select any of the little circles, and drag them about. It'll rotate it like magic. Let go when you're done.

2QDhWYu.png


3. Rotating Textures
~FYI~ This isn't for rotating decals. If you wish to rotate decals, use the methods in Section 2.

Someone came in chat earlier (can't for the life of me remember their name) and asked how to swivvel up these textures. Firstly, you wanna select your brush (although this isn't too necessary, so long as you select the face you wanna rotate once you have the face edit sheet [the crazy colour box window] open). So hit the crazy colour box [open the face edit sheet]
i7v5ZvH.png

Then you should have something like this:
ocw9njw.png

Change the 0 to a 90, or whatever number you want (this is nice for making slanted computer walls and stuff around stairs and etc. too)

As with in the previous section, it's in degrees. 90 is a quarter turn, 180 flips it around half a full turn, and 360 returns it to where it started. Decimals and random numbers like 69 will work a-okay here too.

You might have to slap enter too or click off, but after that, your face should be rotated properly like so:
MGnWEmS.png


4. The Vertex Tool ("Making Funky Brush Shapes")
This has came in handy plenty of times for me. If you want something to be a little less square - maybe you got some ledge where you want the outsides to be a little more inward so there's less weight to be held - then you wanna be using the vertex tool. Select your brush, and get ready for it.. Select the vertex tool!
YlJvqR0.png

RluPnU5.png

Now we've got some cool things to click. The whites one are seperate corners, the yellow ones move their neighbored corners while still keeping the distance between them the same.
7GNhUPf.png

Move 'em here and there, make whatever the fudge shape you wanna make with them. I don't care. Just don't make a penis or something dumb like that.

~FYI~ If you slap two corners together, it'll ask you if you wanna merge 'em. That's pretty useful if you wanna make quick wedges (sadly not the food type).
QdteStb.png

As soon as you're bored of making penis shaped brushes and stuff (even though you'd need a couple cuboid brushes to do that, or you'd have to merge down the corners of a cylinder or something, anyway..) then you click off, and taadaa, should be done just like that. You didn't even need to shout an adult, congrats.
 
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Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
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Displacement mask walkable turns displacements yellow where it's too steep to walk up. This is super useful for eliminating any clipping issues in your map.

Toggle helpers toggles the prop fade radius bubbles, sound range bubbles, etc, as well as origin point spheres. I'm sure there's more than that, too. Helpers are helpful.
 

Berry

resident homo
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Dec 27, 2012
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Displacement mask walkable turns displacements yellow where it's too steep to walk up. This is super useful for eliminating any clipping issues in your map.

Toggle helpers toggles the prop fade radius bubbles, sound range bubbles, etc, as well as origin point spheres. I'm sure there's more than that, too. Helpers are helpful.

Thank you for that, I'll change those so that they're right.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
That displacement button with DR is explained on the valve wiki: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Hammer_Map_Operations_Toolbar

It shows the vertices which are merged when sewing displacements but dont have a matching point on the other displacement. And its description should have been 'Displacement Edge Collapse' as the wiki describes.

And this is how it looks:
displacement_sewing.png
 
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henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
Note that the draw nodraw button is different from the automatic nodraw visgroup. The later operates on solids. Or was it entities/groups? Either way, the toolbar button operates on a per face basis.

Also, note that the ig button is kinda redundant with the three state selection panel that does the same thing.

The hide buttons sound very useful, especially with busy maps. I should learn the shortcuts for the quick hiding...

The non automatic selection can be useful if you need to edit the third dimension of the selection box before selecting. Hit enter to preform the selection.
 

Bludeck

L1: Registered
Mar 7, 2014
15
9
Thanks, I didn't know what some of those toolbar buttons do until I read this.
Looking forward to see this guide complete.

6. Carve: Woahwoahwoah, back away from this unless you're putting a rectangle solid through another. While usually this just splits solids around the brush you selected, sometimes this can mess up your map MAJORLY. Not recommended to use. Instead, use the vertex or clipping tool (both to be covered at a later)
*coughcough*cp_amaranth*coughcough*
jALbQoD.png
 

Berry

resident homo
aa
Dec 27, 2012
1,056
1,898
Thanks, I didn't know what some of those toolbar buttons do until I read this.
Looking forward to see this guide complete.

*coughcough*cp_amaranth*coughcough*
jALbQoD.png

I don't really know as though I'll ever complete it as such, unless I run out of space in the 3 posts I've got. I'll probably just add a couple things in every day or two until it amounts up big.
 

Bludeck

L1: Registered
Mar 7, 2014
15
9
Hmm, I see...
Then I'm looking forward to the day when you finally give up and never touch this ever again.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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9. You don't need any of these except the first, I doubt. Not even sure what the others do. The first one creates a new visgroup. Visgroups will be covered better later.

lololololololol you're doing it seriously wrong.
They temporarily hide stuff.
Want brush entities on, but have an annoying trigger getting in the way of the one you want to work on? Select it, hide it.
Want to cordon an area but the box is just the wrong shape and leaves a bunch of extra stuff in? Select it, hide it.

In order, everything labeled 9 is:
-Move selected to new visgroup
-Move unselected to new visgroup
-Hide selected
-Hide unselected
-Unhideall

4. Window state: I have no idea what the hell this does. Clicking it did junk with the hammer windows, so you probably won't ever need this junk.

Forgivable, but it means you're using hammer 'wrong' too :p
They're how I get my hammer set up to look beautiful like this:
instances.jpg

In the options somewhere you can set Hammer to use indipendant window layouts, that separates the four viewports. Then you can add as many or as few as you like. Once you've arranged them, save the window state :savewinstate:. Then every time you load hammer you'll have to load the window state with :loadwinstate:
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
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I wouldn't say "wrong," just differently. I have a dual monitor setup but prefer to just stretch the standard layout. Works for my purposes, as I'm not constantly working with instances.

I rarely feel the need to hide anything beyond the basic visgroups.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
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I have a 16:10 monitor and it shows the 3d map in such small window fine. And size isnt an issue to me aswell since i used to play tf2 on 19:6 monitor with a vertical resolution of 786 before and i even mapped at that time giving a wider view there (although the low resolution wasnt realy ideal).
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
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Yeah that's horrible. I could manage about a 10 minutes of that before I'd want to pull hammer back onto one screen to get each view to being a sensible shape.
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
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Using it squished to normal rations seem so tiny and limited to me now. Like I'm looking at the map through a cardboard tube.

Just how I did it starting out and I guess I'm used to it, even though it's abnormal.