How can I increase the resolution of textures rendered in the 3d view of Hammer? Because right now, it's far too low for me to position and scale the textures correctly, I can hardly make out details of them.

thanks

The default scale is 0.25, which is correct for (nearly?) all of hl2's textures. I don't understand why you could have difficulty seeing the details though, as it's something I've never had any problems with. I don't know how experienced you are with hammer either, but you do realise that you can navigate around the 3d view while the camera tool is selected, by the simple combination of holding a mouse button down while moving the mouse, don't you? You can position yourself at any angle or distance from what you want to look at.

Moving the mouse while holdning down the;-
-left button, changes the direction you are facing, but not your position
-right button, lets you move up or down
-both buttons, move forwards/backwards.

You can also use shift+Z to give you a full sized version of the last viewport that you were active in.

And if you're having problems getting textures on neighbouring brushes to line up, then there's a simple way to do it. First, select the texture tool. Then click on the brush that is textured correctly. Then, holding down the Alt key, right click on the neighbouring brush, and voila.
(or hold down the shift key and right click on the brush to texture all of it's faces.)

If you've tried these alread, and none of them work for you, then you need to either buy a bigger monitor, get glasses, or, you could be as lucky as me, and end up with both. :smile:

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i eat paint

fishy, I think he means the default "medium quality" textures (like the second highest option in HL2 video modes) in Hammer... like it doesn't display the maximum LOD model for props. I haven't found a workaround for this.

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<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting reaper47</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>fishy, I think he means the default "medium quality" textures (like the second highest option in HL2 video modes) in Hammer... like it doesn't display the maximum LOD model for props. I haven't found a workaround for this.</DIV></DIV>

i see. i didn't realize that hammer showed a reduced quality texture. i thought it only looked different due to the lack of compile, lighting, engine etc.

i've still never had any problems with it though. at least none that i've noticed.

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i eat paint

You want to maintain a 1/4 unit/pixel ratio for best results. This
means textures that are 512x512 (pixels) need to be scaled down to 0.25 to fit a
128x128 unit wall.

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Posting And You

I know all that stuff that fishy suggested (i've been using Hammer since mid 2002 when it was called Worldcraft). What i mean is that if you:

• Start up Hammer
• Create a 128x128xany thickness brush
• Texture the brush "dev/reflectivity_70" (it's a 512? texture with text on it) on the 128x128 face and align it properly
• Notice how the text "reflectivity 70%" is hard to make out

I think I remember Hammer rendering the textures at an acceptable res when HL2 came out. It might be an update thing, I don't know. I was wondering if there was a way to increase the res. Thanks for the responses so far though.

I know all that stuff that fishy suggested (i've been using
Hammer since mid 2002 when it was called Worldcraft). What i mean is
that if you:

• Start up Hammer
• Create a 128x128xany thickness brush
• Texture the brush "dev/reflectivity_70" (it's a 512? texture with text on it) on the 128x128 face and align it properly
• Notice how the text "reflectivity 70%" is hard to make out

I think I remember Hammer rendering the textures at an acceptable
res when HL2 came out. It might be an update thing, I don't know. I was
wondering if there was a way to increase the res. Thanks for the
responses so far though.

Getting to hop in hammer these days is getting to be somewhat of a
burden(giant load times because Im running like 10 mods ATM)...

I did what you said and I can read it just fine. At a distance of 256
units away from the wall is when it gets to where I cant read it. But
why would I want to? I can fly in close to the object and align it
that way. I now know what your talking about. There is no way to
incease the resolution of the 3D window. The only thing I can think
of is to go to tools->options->3D Window tab And check/uncheck
the "Filter Texture" box and see if that helps you (I did it and
didn't notice a thing).

If none of this is helping then please provide us with some info:

-Your graphics card

-Your resolution your running it at

-Your current monitor type

-Your vision circumstance (yes maybe you need glasses)

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Posting And You

Nah, I get the same thing too, in Hammer the textures are simply lower-res than in-game. I don't find it troublesome though, as I almost never see the need to scale textures differently, and if I do, I go for what looks right, and that usually means I'm not looking for every nitty gritty detail but rather, the overall look.

But perhaps that's just me. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Maybe there's some setting for this. In launch parameters or the registry. I looked for it a while ago and it seems like it's either hidden very well or impossible to do.

What I find more annoying are the low-detail props. They often look completely different.

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omegaslayer said:
If none of this is helping then please provide us with some info:
-Your graphics card
-Your resolution your running it at
-Your current monitor type
-Your vision circumstance (yes maybe you need glasses)

• I have an ATI Radeon 9600XT (Sapphire) 256Mb
• My desktop res runs at 1024x768 (I doubt this is the problem)
• I use a CRT monitor with a VGA connector (I've always had this VDU but remember the Hammer tex rendering to be clearer)
• What was that you said about glasses? I couldn't make that out?

It may in fact be the GFX card, I also disabled the ATI stuff in services.msc. The problem with unclear textures is that it's hard to properly scale, align, use only the parts that i want to use of textures for faces that are smaller than the textures themselves like texturing control panels, light switches and other small but important faces. I also tried the "filter texture" box already and no - it didn't work.

Hmm, I guess it would be very usefull if we could change texture scale and alignment in the 3D window, with some mouse sliding, rather than fiddling with numbers... just a random thought... :smile:

Anyway, I get your problem. Only thing I can think up on would be to use/create textures that would fit on such surfaces, but that's not always possible because of their proportions. A bit annoying. I guess you'll have to stick with in-game testing for now.

One 'hack' I can think up on though, is creating custom .vmt files that use the same texture, but tell the game (and hopefully Hammer as well) not to use mip-maps. Dunno if that's specifiable in the .vmt files or done when textures are compiled on top of my head, but that could be something to try out.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

My 3D view textures are (and always have been) full res and clear, can't say I've ever heard of this problem. Just a guess, but if you're running Hammer with -dxlevel 80, that could possibly have something to do with it. Beyond that I have no clue.

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o

Just a guess, but if you're running Hammer with -dxlevel 80, that could possibly have something to do with it. Beyond that I have no clue.

No, that's not it. At least not in the start parameters.

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Ok, I may have found the answer. I installed 2 Gb of RAM yesterday (compared to 256 Mb I had before) and I tried Hammer again just now and the textures are crystal clear. Hammer may have settings that automatically adjust to how well your system is coping.

Or, the video settings in HL2 have something to do with it, before the upgrade, the texture quality defaulted to "low" but now with the 2 gigs, it defaults to "high".

I will say though that after I gave up on Hammer and before I got the RAM I have been using the parameters, "-dxlevel 80" first to see what everything looked like ingame and "-dxlevel 90" to set it back and left that parameter in there. Note: I have a DirectX 9.0 capable GFX card.

My advice to anyone else who has this problem is to either install more RAM or free up system resources using CTRL + ALT + DEL with Windows XP and disabling active processes or you free up space on your Hard Drive which I think has something to do with Virtual Memory or something.

Thanks for everyones help and input

that makes sense. i remember when i used hammer 4 to start with. it ran not too bad, until i started scrolling through the texture browser, then it would bog right down. i think most people had the same problem, so this lower dx thing might be a result of the fix.

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i eat paint

Great, I have 1.5 GB ^^

But a good tip, I?ll look into that. Thanks.

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