Talk:VTF Shell Extensions

Hammer browse tool replacement

Hypothetically, could the extension be modified to read from and generate thumbnails for VMT files instead, then from there allow Explorer to replace the Hammer texture search dialogue? --TomEdwards 11:52, 20 Aug 2007 (PDT)

How do you mean? Just literally show the text content of the VMT file? That's certainly possible although I don't know how useful that would be for searching? In Vista you could certainly implement a preview pane handler that would show the contents of the VMT file and for Vista/XP you could write a detail columns handler that would say add columns for shader type (UnlitGeneric, VertexlitGeneric, etc.), base texture or index the keywords (that start with %) in VMTs. That way you could search/sort against those attributes --Wunderboy 14:30, 20 Aug 2007 (PDT)

I mean image thumbnails of $basetexture. --TomEdwards 23:34, 20 Aug 2007 (PDT)

Well that wouldn't be hard but considering that the VMT and VTF often exist in the same folder you'd end up seeing the same thumbnail twice.--Wunderboy 02:53, 21 Aug 2007 (PDT)

What I'm getting at here is the feasibility of replacing Hammer's built-in texture search, so that's not so much of an issue. :-) --TomEdwards 11:26, 21 Aug 2007 (PDT)