How to view .vmt files?

I noticed that HL2 uses .vmt instead of .spr for the sprites. The browser in Hammer doesn't show me what the sprites look like until I actually pick one. Is there a way to look at them like with a program like sprview or something?

You can view the sprites in the texture browser, I believe. Just type "sprite" as a filter.

Oh, and .vmt stands for Valve Material or something, which is the same
extension as all the other materials/textures in HL2. I believe
this means that as far as HL2 is concerned sprites and textures are
identical (as far as the actual file goes); they're just used
differently.

The .vmt is actually a simple text file, by the way. You can open it up in notepad (if you extract it using GCF Scape, anyway).

Inside the file you can find a reference to the real (base) texture file, which has a .vtf extension.

Nanodeath your were 100% correct. Thats works perfect and is exactly what I needed. "Sprite" entered as the filter in the texture browser is what did it.

Thanks for the tip Rof but I do not want to edit them nor extract that large folder if I don't have to. Using the filter as described above works for what I wanted.