Editing the ABS FGD, or, Using Bad Textures on Purpose

[Atasco]

So I —like most— am using the ABS FGD to vastly improve the experience of making maps for TF2. It solves a lot of problems, like not having appropriate icons for things, better accessibility, and also hiding textures that shouldn't be used as brush face textures. A lot of the "help, why my texture bad" posts on here are as a result of that person not using ABS, and thus, using a model or weapon texture on accident.

But… what if I wanted to use those "bad" textures? Since they're made into exceptions in the FGD, I can't even see them in hammer, nor am I able to tell hammer what not to except. With some googling and poking around, I've figured out the why, but not the how. TL;DR, If I wanted to try using those extra textures, for weird effects or just to experiment, how would I go about editing the FGD files?

 

[fubarFX]

You need to look into the tf.fgd and modify the very first section at the top

@MaterialExclusion
[
    // Names of the sub-directories we don't want to load materials from
    "ambulance"
    "backpack"
    "cable"
    "console"
    "cp_bloodstained"
    "customcubemaps"
    "detail"
    "debug"
    "effects"
    "engine"
    "environment maps"
    "halflife"
    "matsys_regressiontest"
    "hlmv"
    "hud"
    "logo"
    "maps"
    "models"
    "overviews"
    "particle"
    "particles"
    "perftest"
    "pl_halfacre"
    "pl_hoodoo"
    "scripted"
    "shadertest"
    "sprites"
    "sun"
    "vgui"
    "voice"
]

That's the list of excluded directories. You can remove any of them to explore that directory in Hammer.

If you do find textures you like tho, I encourage you to make a custom vmt with the appropriate shader. Like with LightmappedGeneric instead of vertexLitGeneric.

 

[Atasco]

Thank you!!
I'll comment some of those, and try them out <3 If I do find some textures that are good by themselves, I might update this thread with them.