Snarkpit Articles

Cameras

You saw them, you want to make them...
You saw those TV monitors in Half-life 2, and when you looked in the editor, you couldn?t work out how to make them. The help button wasn?t much help either as it describes how you need a property on a material that you cant find. Because of this, I have decided to write a tut on it.

The Entity Setup

First of all, we need three entities: a point_camera (point based), an info_camera_link (point based) and a func_wall (brush based).

Secondly, set up your scene. Dont worry about the TV texture yet, I'll get to that part. In my map, i have put the G-man as my scene:

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First of all, I need to set up the camera. Orientate the camera as you want, and input the following values into the point_camera:

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name : gman_cam

You can leave the rest as default.

Now our TV. A texture that supports cameras is dev_tvmonitor1a. apply this to your tv screen. The net step is to give the func_wall a name. this entity is purely a reference for the info_camera_link so it can display an image.

name : gman_tv

The last step is our info_camera_link.

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This will link the point_camera to the func_wall. fill this information into it:

Entity Whose Material Uses rt... : gman_tv
Camera name : gman_cam

you should end up with something like this:

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There is however one issue with this in singleplayer, you cannot see the player, to save polygons.

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ah, the map, you probably want the example map, here ya go:
Clicky

Discussion

Posted by amy on Sun May 4th 2008 at 8:34am

The link doesn't work (anymore)
Posted by FIDDLER on Mon Jun 25th 2007 at 6:52am

So...

The last post here was on 16th January 06... has anyone come up with any new details about working with camera's in HL2? Anything new or new tuts on how to accomplish amazing things with cameras?
Posted by sniper1418 on Mon Jan 16th 2006 at 8:52pm

Actually you can make a camera setup in hl2dm hammer and copy/paste it into your css map and it will work.
Posted by tunnelduck on Sun Jun 12th 2005 at 4:02am

To get it to work in cs:s you gotta use a fgd other than the default. i found this tutorial http://csm2.net/forum/index.php/topic,53.0.html which with the fgd suggested in that thread you simply have to change the tv from being func_wall to func_monitor. other than that i believe the rest is the same. The direct link to the fgd is http://www.editlife.net/files/customfgd.php . Hope that helps.
Posted by shibby on Thu May 5th 2005 at 10:41am

Sweet tutorial but no1 has answered how 2 get it working in CSS???
1 guy sed he did it but didnt explain how he did it... any help wud be mad guys.
shibby
Posted by Pureferret on Tue May 3rd 2005 at 9:18pm

Cool Tut, I like it. But is ther no way to see yourself on the monitor? I was tryinfg to set up a mirror but couldn't rig up the right stuff.
Posted by Storm on Sun Mar 13th 2005 at 9:03pm

Very good tut easy to understand and all. But i got 1 question. When im having more Cameras the TV's still show only what is seen with the firt camera. I renamed the TV's (Wall brushes) and used the info_camera the right way but i still can only see whats shown on camera 1.
Anyone know why?
Posted by iceman on Wed Jan 26th 2005 at 9:39pm

Is it posible to get the cameras to take a screen shot and place it on the monitor while it scrolles through updating other cameras and monitors?
Posted by ThisDealer on Thu Jan 20th 2005 at 10:57am

Your a star n1 man
Posted by LittleGetty on Thu Jan 20th 2005 at 1:15am

Great, that's awesome. thanks a bunch. I would have never figured that out.