Hammer Instancing Menu

The Instancing menu contains various functions to manage Instances on one hand, and to manage so-called Manifests on the other hand. Manifest functions are part of the Instancing menu because Hammer accomplishes manifests by way of instancing selected parts of a map.

Note:Instancing is only supported by Left 4 Dead 2 and later (including the 2013 Multiplayer SDK)

Create New Instance From Selection

Bug:Apparently, this function is supposed to open a dialog from which to create a new instance from the selected objects. However, there seems to be no way to activate this function which renders it useless.  [todo tested in ?]

Note:A workaround is to create a new VMF file in the instances/ folder

Collapse

Collapses instances either by selection or all into the main map

Note:The Collapse function should be handled with care. Collapsing does not perform all of the operations that the BSP process does for instancing and, thus, may result in issues with the map. Therefore, upon calling this command you will be asked to confirm.

View Instances

Hide

If checked, hides all instances on the map.

Show Tinted

If checked, shows and highlights all instances on the map.

Show Normal

If checked, shows all instances on the map untintedly and without highlighting.

Note:When opening a map View Instances will always be reset to Show Tinted.

Windows

Not to be confused with the View Instances command. Windows opens and closes a window each for every instance on the map with the corresponding VMF file.

Hide All Instances

Closes all instances windows.

Show All Instances

Opens an instance window for each instance on the map.

Create Manifest

Creates a Manifest file in the VMM format from the current map. All objects of the map will be moved into a so-called SubMap. For more information see Manifest.

Version Control

Bug:It seems as if the submenu commands of Version Control cannot be activated which renders it useless.  [todo tested in ?]

Todo: Explanation needed

View Manifests

Bug:It seems as if the submenu commands of View Manifests cannot be activated which renders it useless.  [todo tested in ?]

Todo: Explanation needed

Note:The Visibility of SubMaps can be controlled with Manifest Control. Besides, View Instances (see above) also has a visibility effect on the SubMaps and Instances of a Manifest.

See Also

• L4D2 Level Design/VMF Instances- A Valve tutorial on how to use instances in Left 4 Dead 2.
• Working with instances- A tutorial on how to use instances in Portal 2.