SFM/Working with the Element Viewer

Warning:The Element Viewer is very powerful, and has very few safeguards. If you use it incorrectly, you can irretrievably corrupt your scene and crash the SFM. It's a good idea to stay out of it until you are sure you understand what you're doing. Here be dragons.

Working with multiple maps

Although your sequence has one sequence map, you can use a different map in individual shots if you want to. However, every time your playback crosses the boundary into a shot with a different map, the current map will unload and the new map will load, which can take some time.

To use a different map in a shot:

1. Open the shot in the Element Viewer.
2. Click the browse button () next to mapname.
3. Choose the map you want to use in that shot, and click Open.

Instead of using different maps in different shots and dealing with the load times, you have a couple of options. You can use the Hammer Editor to build a single map out of the pieces of the maps you want to use. That way, different shots can look like they're using different maps, even when they're not.

Alternatively, you can use a single map and, in different locations on that map, build "sets" out of props and models, basically turning them into level geometry. You do this by adding animation sets for them as you would for any other object. If you do this, however, you will probably want to make those animation sets unselectable and hidden by right-clicking the animation sets in the Animation Set Editor and selecting those options. Otherwise, if you try to lasso-select an object in the viewport, you may end up inadvertently selecting background elements too.