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L4D: Hammer Interface Overview

May 21, 2009
Category: Left 4 Dead Mapping

Overview of the Hammer Source Editor.

This is an overview of the interface. The best way to learn is per need basis. So we go more into depth in later tutorials.

1. Side Tools

All of your main brush, texturing and entity functions are found here. You will be using these tools alot. It is good to learn shortcuts to them.

2. Top Shelf

1 - Grid Options.

2 - Load/Save Window State

3 - Undo/Redo

4 - Group/Ungrouping Objects

5 - VisGroups

6 - Cut/Paste

7 - Allows to compile only selected areas

8 - Various Texture Tools, such as lock textures and face alignment on/off

9 - Displacement Terrain Tools

10 - Compile Options. Pressing F9 gives you compile option window.

3. View Ports

4. Selection Tools and Texture Browser

Groups/Objects/Solids allows you toggle on/off what you see in the viewports.

Texture Browser allows to browse, select, apply textures onto your brush geometry.

5. VisGroups

VisGroups allow you to create layers and group objects and turn them off/on in order for you to clear up your viewports for easier workflow.

6. Entity Tools

Entities include props, lights, gameplay elements such as player starts and weapons.

Comments are Closed. Please Join & Discuss this post in the World of Level Design Forums Comments ryan 26 Dec 2009, 13:36 i need help on makeing a level for left 4 dead i just cant seem to do it AlexG 28 Oct 2009, 21:39 It will work. Hammer hangs for few minutes when it starts. Its normal. Give it a few minutes. Ian 28 Oct 2009, 20:56 Hey, I downloaded everything and I pressed the Hammer thing ,but nothing happened it finally popped up and said "not responding" is it because I have windows vista? AlexG 24 Jun 2009, 13:03 Thanks Sanpou, Everything you said was awesome. Thanks for the props and the feedback. Anything that I did well and what I can do to improve is huge to in order to bring more higher quality of content. I apprecaite it Sanpou. I am glad it inspired you to map for Hammer again. Keep in touch Sanpou. Let me know what you are workin on and how its coming along. Join the forums too. Sanpou 24 Jun 2009, 12:32 I was moderately intrested creating maps on hammer to l4d, until stumbled i just to your tutorials and just started watching your videos on quick look. I got soon interested to mapping since you just made it look so easy even on hammer. I had tried experimenting with hammer earlier years without reference, but interface isn´t really newcommer friendly. This is clearly the best video tutorial series in terms of presentation and overall integrity. You speak clearly and at normal pace and i didn´t miss the critical points ever so that i would have had to re-watch some parts. Also your cursor doesn´t fly around the screen hysterically like in some tutorials. Process steps and additional text information is also superb. There could be more additional info, though. Workflows are very good and give just right pace beacause there isn´t any new techinical info. And they focus on why and "how" to do rather than what to do. I haven´t noticed any workflows on any other "amauter"-tutorial creator so big props for you. Hammer basics part is the best part in series currently, since it´s map progress with you and different steps aren´t shown in various maps. Though now that i know little more about mapping i think you should have used vertex tool(more) and clipping tool. After basics part most of integrity is lost; Map is shown from different stages and there are like three displacement videos with practically same content. I also dislike that for example skybox workflow is before actual skybox introduction in mapping category. Maybe you could re-arrange main category a bit. But nevertheless videos are infomative and easy to understand. I understand this is still working process and tutorials are coming so no big deal. Hope you can bear with my lousy spelled english. Thank you. AlexG 11 Jun 2009, 18:32 Thanks Geck0. I really appreaciate it. It means a lot to me. Geck0 11 Jun 2009, 18:20 First off I would like to thank you sir. Your time and effort put into this. you are a nice person for sharing this with me and the world. enough asskissin thx dude Powered by Scriptsmill Comments Script