Hammer Feature Requests

This page is for posting feature requests for the Hammer level editor. Please don't report bugs here, use Source SDK Bugs/Hammer bugs instead.

Features

Selection

• A "remove from selection" modifier would be very handy (i.e. the opposite of ctrl-left click [add to selection]). I use this feature all the time in modeling packages; it helps increase workflow and it's a simple feature to add. My suggested default combination for this feature would be Alt-left click.

Brush Construction

• Add 3-point clipping like in Radiant (speeds upo cutting operations considerably)
• Add a "pivot" point for rotation, like UED.
  • There is a way to do this, but I don't remember how. --TomEdwards 02:34, 30 Oct 2005 (PST)
• Ability to move tool handles in the 3D view. In particular, resize brushes, move entities, etc. (Maybe with axis constraints, to deal with 2D => 3D spatial translation? [Perhaps something similar to the gizmo-style handles in 3dsmax?])
  • This would be, IMO, one of the most helpful features. --ElecHeadMatt 12:50, 04 Dec 2005 (EST)
• A ruler feature to measure the distance (in units and real world units) and angle between two or more points.
  • A quick and dirty way to do this is use the block tool; you can use it with items selected without messing anything up -- Defrag
• This is more of a convenience feature: "Paste Flipped" or "Paste Rotated" for when you want to copy'n'paste a piece of architecture rotated and/or flipped without having to select it afterwards and choosing it from the menu.
  • You can try the "Paste Special" command to do this -- Defrag
• The preview in the arch create tool is not symmetric so the previewed arch looks a bit unround.

Displacements

• Implementation of controllable variable falloff on displacement tools. It'd be nice to have an option to switch between a logarithmic falloff and a linear falloff.
• Displacement vertices editable or viewable in orthographic views. This should be optional.
• Modal buttons for the displacement vector axis, rather than a drop down list. In the terrain menu, when painting geometry, buttons would be much easier than a drop down menu for choosing x,y or z. This requires less clicking and would especially make it easier to switch from x to y when moving things at an angle.
  • Hot keys for changing the current axis would also be nice.
  • Similarly, setting up a different axis for each mouse button would be great. So you could left click to paint along the X axis, right click to paint along the Y axis, and maybe even middle click to paint along the Z axis.
• The 'radius' slider shouldn't modify out-of-bounds 'distance' values, nor vice-versa. In the Displacement Paint Geometry window, if you have a non-integer or something greater than 256 in 'distance', you lose it if you touch the 'radius' slider. If you use out-of-bounds 'distance' or 'radius' values, this can be very annoying.
• Bug/Request - Ability to apply and keep luxel size on displacements. At the moment the complier dislikes some luxel sizes on displacements, and the texture app tool wont keep the luxel setting applied.
• In addition to single point and spatial selection, it would be useful to be able to select by column or row.
• Ability to select certain points on displacements like vertex points. Hilight first, then only modify selected points.
  • Ability to nudge displacement selected points with arrow keys.
• Automatic blending of textures based on slope of displacement. For example, with a rock and grass blend, steep sloped areas become rock.
• Generating displacement surface(s) form heightmaps
• BUG: Make scale function in transform scale the Z axis on displacements. Only scales X and Y.
• Ability to 'lock' displacement points, so you do things like sew displacements together without actually moving certain edges.
• Ability to snap displacement vertices to other vertices in the map (brush vertices, other displacement vertices, prop vertices, etc.)
• Ability to flatten displacements based on the initial vertex clicked on.
• Make distance setting affect smoothing (or have a new setting for smooth power), so minor smoothing can be done.
• Ability to blend multiple materials together (more than just 2 textures)
  • Also would be nice if we could blend translucent materials with non-translucent textures.
  • UnrealEd's terrain editing really does this well with its layers. Quick, someone just rip that off.
• Formula-made displacements, so perfectly curved sufaces can more easily be made (curved arches, curved tunnels, curved whatevers, etc.)
  • Implement patch meshes instead/as well?

Patch Meshes

• It would be great if we could make patch meshes in Hammer/Source.
  • Maybe just enhance displacements, though...a lot?
  • Coulple of really cool examples of Prey patch meshes made by KungFuSquirrel and shown in a MapCore WIP thread: example 1 and example 2. Very cool stuff.

Texturing and Materials

• This would be cool if it was possible to make a texture generate something else than prop_details.. because prop_details are non-solid, and if you want to make a very large terrain with random rocks, plants and trees, it could be really useful..
  • Is this strictly to do with Hammer? It sounds to me like it'd be more of a change in the Source engine. `zozart ^.chat
  • Sounds more like just a vbsp modification...I think they'll be releasing a code update for it soon?—ts2do 20:38, 23 Jan 2006 (PST)
• Ability to Copy material name and path from Texture browser.
• Repair the "Apply All" function in the Face Edit sheet; it currently won't apply scale or rotation values.
• Icon in Texture browser to indicate custom material.
  • Possibly an icon to differentiate between the location of the material, either in a GCF or in the game folders?
    • Maybe a small game icon from the Steam Games menu next to all materials that are being referenced from the GCF files, and which GCF in particular (HL2 icon for default Source GCFs, CS:S for Counter-strike: Source, etc.).
• Proper material folder filtering exclusion.
• Ability to view the different channels of a material separately. (Red, Green, Blue, Alpha, it's normal/bump, and specular map)
• You can now change the texture scale and rotation by .0001 and it saves to vmf and works in-game, but when you reselect the face, Hammer only reports the scale and rotation to .01. Have Hammer report it to .0001. This would allow scrolling the x or y of a texture after choosing to "fit."
  • Also, now if you touch any of the texture scale or texture shift values, you lose any "hidden precision" you might have had in any of the other values, with no easy way to get it back.
  • Higher precision displays are really a "must" when texturing skybox objects as the scale should be 1/16th of normal, or (if my math is correct) 0.25/16 = 0.015625. I'll take 0.016! —BJ^(talk) 22:33, 24 May 2006 (PDT)
• Ability to rescale the lightmap grid size of all faces in the map by a relative multiplier.
  • Also to set the lightmap grid size for all faces in the map to a specified value.
• When scaling a texture, have it lock at a pixel determined from previous texture shift and justifying. For example, if you had previously justified left, then shifted it over 10, the pixel that was then on the left side would be locked, and stay in that position if you then did a texture rescale.
• Now the mousewheel changes the texture scale by .10. Make it change it by .01, and ctrl + mousewheel change it by .10. ...or at least have some way to change the texture scale by .01 other than by manually typing it in.
• In the justify section of the material tab, have <fit> and ^fitv for when you want to fit the texture in one dimension but not the other.
• texture rotation tools:
  • An "align to edge" button: When you press it, your pointer turns to the "pick" pointer, and the edges of the selected face are highlighted. When you select an edge, the texture automatically aligns to it.
  • A "rotate 90 degrees clockwise" button.
• Decals and overlays should show up under the used textures list. This feature is seriously necessary for optimizations, for watching how much texture memory you have in use.
• And on that note, a readout of the current texture memory used right on the texture browser window would also be useful.
• Hammer incorrectly displays texture scaling in the viewport on blended materials using 1024x1024 textures, but the texture scale is correct in-game.
  

  Blend Test by X^18
• add the possibility of more than 2 blend textures on a displacement surface (unreal style)

Models and Props

Model Browser

• A model browser similiar to the material browser. Would include a search feature as well as a filter feature, like the material browser. This would avoid needing to know what folder a model is in to find it. The jpg's would need to be rendered when the model was processed rather than the modeller having to create and save a jpg. Dimensions of the model, polycount, and texture size would be helpful.
• Model browser should remember the last used directory and the last selected model.
• There really aught to be a way to tell whether or not a model needs to be places as a prop_physics or not without compiling the map to see if it gets deleted for being static or tracking down the model QC.
• A "Search" button that initiates the search. At the present time, typing anything into the model browser's search box results in the model browser constantly updating the search which is slow and annoying. E.g., typing in "roof" will result in the model browser searching for r, then ro, then roo, then finally roof. This is sluggish and irritating to use, moreso when one makes a spelling error. Creating a "search" button would allow the user to type in "roof" and then press the search button instead of having to suffer this current behaviour. -- Defrag

General

• Optional ability to see prop wireframes in the 2D views, rather than just bounding boxes.
• Allow the sequence(integer) keyvalue to be set by a dropdown...this would be useful for ragdoll initial position...it'd also be useful to have the first frame of the sequence show up for ragdolls.
• Ability to have models with a set animation in the editor, which would show even if the editor is restarted (example: in the model tab for npc_alyx, scroll through the list to Idle01, restart the editor, and she's still in Idle01)

General Functionality

• Models should preview a bodygroup configuration defined by the "body" key, much like the "skin" key is previewed
• Ability to insert a .jpg or other simple image-file-type onto the 2D views for creation of levels from blueprints/plans
• Map different gridvalues to the numeric numpad, like in Radiant, for quick access to different values, like 1, 2,4, 8, 16, 32, 64 etc. --Hipshot 04:09, 26 Jan 2006 (PST)
• Respect origin brush as center of rotation for brush group.
• When in rotate mode, make possible dragging of "X" symbol to adjust center of rotatiton for brushes and groups
• When holding middle mouse button & dragging mouse pan any 2D view.
• Drag and drop of map files onto Hammer, to open
• Ability to 'play' the map while in hammer.
• Ability to see func_monitor previews.
• This goes into the 'going beyond hammer' but make hammer more like UED, in that hammer could be turned into more of an IDE than just a level editor.
• Windows Scripting Host support with Hammer functions and objects addressable. Macro menu to host shortcuts to script files.
• Simple lighting preview in 3D view
• Run the compile tools in separate processes or threads than the hammer GUI, and add a "Cancel" button to cancel the compilation process.
  • Yes, on an X2 or another multi-cored system this would be EXCELLENT —Pon ^(talk) 04:31, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)
    • You guys do realize you can always close Hammer while compiles are running and use a manual batch file or batch compiler instead? --RabidMonkey 00:29, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)
• Bookmarks bound to keys (e.g. numberpad) to jump to different areas of a map.
• Have shift+z maximize the viewport that the pointer is over, not the "current viewport".
• All tools in Hammer should be capable of remembering their state. Quite a few tools are missing this functionality at present:
  • Option for compile window to retain last known screen position and size.
  • Autosew does not remember and display it's state correctly
• The 3D camera moves much too fast for working on very small displacements, even with it's "forward speed" turned all the way down in options.
  • Implement a "slow camera movement mode" with a quick way to change between normal camera movement and slow camera movement.
• In the properties window, when text is selected or the cursor is active in a text field, moving the mouse off the window shouldn't deselect the text field.
• Hammer and the Compile tools can be accessed without logging into Steam
• The ability to select/deselect in the 3D window while in clip mode.
• Hitting 'escape' key should cancel out of dialog boxes.

Entities

• A graphical view of entities and their I/O connections as a flowchart could be helpful for debugging...
• ...or a database-like view of entities, allowing the user to view and edit many entities at once.
• Categorize entities, so instead of browsing from a single list of all entities, instead have a dropdown list of categories (or perhaps a filter, like the material browser) and then show a list of entities matching the filter or category.
• Cubemap entities whose range can be specified by a volume so that one cubmap can be used in a wide room and avoid conflict with cubemaps in rooms above or below.
  • Could be done by automatically "selecting" the faces the cubemap is for by selecting all the faces inside the volume. No engine modification needed.
    • The problem isn't with brush faces, it's with models, especially the characters and view models. A small, dark area really needs its own cubemap but then you need another cubemap entity on all sides and sometimes above and below. Tunnels and hallways can also be an issue.
• Make light_spot entities use either no model or a model with integer value dimensions instead of floating point dimensions, to improve ease of use while dragging multiple light_spot entities.
• The option to manually enter values into an info_lighting.
  • To manually enter what values? The lighting values to light the model with? I don't think that's possible. The lighting for a model seems to be lit with a psuedo GI effect, by raytracing several light values from nearby patches.

Entity Properties for the problem entity can be accessed from the "Check for Problems" dialog

• Draw lines showing the total swing angle of a func_door_rotating so that the mapper can quickly tell if it will intersect with a wall or other object.
• Some way to turn off drawing env_sprite glows in the 3D view. A toggle like that for the helpers would be great. The sprites make it very difficult to see and select nearby light entities and models once the sprite has been placed and, since the origins are often very close together, it's not any easier to select in the 2D views.
• Hammer preview of moving entities. Some form of preview in hammer to indicate direction of movement and distance on rotating doors, sliding doors, rotating objects and other movable, non physics entities.

Groups and Visgroups

• Automatically hide and show items placed or deleted from and in VisGroups
• Ability to create your own "visgroup-groups" similar to the "Auto" group, but with custom visgroups "inside" it.
  • If I'm not mistaken you can do this by selecting a visgroup and dragging with RMB held down on top of another one. --RabidMonkey 00:32, 16 Oct 2005 (PDT)
• More intuative on-the-fly visgrouping. i.e. Ability to select multiple brushes and entities, right-click, select "Show only selected entities and brushes", then when you're done working, right-click again and select "Show all entities and brushes".
  • Maybe something on the lines of 3ds max's "Isolate" command?
• When undocked, it'd be nice if the visgroup window were resizeable, for working with multiple groups.
• Keep the current heirarchy state when adding/modifying visgroups. The dialog will lose which subgroups are minimized whenever they are modified.
• Ability to rename 'Auto' without Hammer automatically creating another 'Auto' visgroup on next load.

Miscellaneous

• Updated HL2 FGD (some entities that are used in the sample maps aren't in the HL2 FGD, info_light_relative for example)
• Depth cue for 2D views, based on the 3D camera's location
• Localization(UTF-8) support so that non English speaking users can create their language files.
• It's a long shot, but having the source code for Hammer in a setup like SourceForge would allow us to make the editor better ourselves.

Dialog redesign proposals

• 

  Model Dialog by Cryovat

I think thumbnails would still be good—ts2do ^(talk) 18:09, 12 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Me too, but they should be for every model then (I'm looking at CS:S and DOD here), or have a more automated process for taking them, as I suspect VALVe has. Any way to take shots automatically with MV in a batch file or something? --RabidMonkey 18:57, 12 Oct 2005 (PDT)

The thumbnails fail to give a fair representation of what the model looks like, or the scale. Some kind of integration with HLMV would seem to be the best proposal here. --PiMuRho 08:00, 13 Oct 2005 (PDT)

As stated, loading the models in their entirety would be too inefficient. Having a thumbnail combined with information on the model's unit size, materials, and default prop type (prop_static, prop_dynamic, etc) would be really helpful. --Bwmathis 14:24, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Loading the actual models would be even less efficient than the thumbnail system! Anything like it would have to be an option, not default. --TomEdwards 09:01, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

• 

  Model Dialog by Cryovat

Upon further consideration, the thumbnail view is nice and it's not something I'd want to lose. I made this alternative to marry my old proposal with it, applying a three-pane approach. Thank you for the feedback! --Cryovat 16:13, 13 Oct 2005 (GMT+1)

Yes...what's this skin size thing though?? a model can use multiple materials—ts2do ^(talk) 11:27, 13 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Well, I was rushing this one more than the last one, and just needed information to make the pane look more useful. Just didn't think of it at the time. ;) --Cryovat 01:47, 27 Oct 2005 (GMT+1)

See also

• Source SDK Bugs/Hammer bugs