Talk:Hammer Overlay Tool

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I haven't found this anywhere, so it might be worth mentioning here. When vbsp divides faces, if an overlay happens to exist on more than 64 faces that way, it won't compile. It'll give the error "Overlay touching too many faces (touching XX, max 64) Overlay texturename at X Y Z" Where XX is the amount of faces its on, texturename is the name of the offending overlay's texture, and XYZ are coordinates to a piece of the texture. Pretty annoying, I had to work this out with someone to figure out the problem. --Irish Taxi Driver 21:47, 9 Feb 2008 (PST)

Sometimes hammer lies about "overlay touching too many faces" and the map won't compile. Fix: Just make the brush a "func_detail" and re-apply the overlays to it and compile the map again. --gtamike_TSGK 03:54, 16 December 2012 (PST)


I still need to add the images for the new sections. --JeffLane 19:49, 22 Jul 2005 (PDT)


Do decals have any advantages at all over overlays? --TomEdwards 01:48, 23 Jul 2005 (PDT)

Good question. Yes, they do. decals are less expensive in most cases, for one. They also can be enabled, so you can make things like blood or blast marks appear after a game event. Decals can also be projected onto models, though level designers cannot place those -- they're created by game code. --JeffLane 11:42, 23 Jul 2005 (PDT)

Hi, I am from Germany so I hope you all can understand me. My problem is, that some of the overlays flicker, when I apply them on brushes. How to fix this? Another problem is, that I can't create a crossing between 2 textures, to let it look more realistic. I thought, I was able to do it with the overlay tool, but I don't know how. Please help me.

Greetings --TimoBiLe

Back when I was mapping for Quake 3, I heard about a problem called Z-fighting. If you have two brushes intersecting and two surfaces occupy the same area of the same plane, the textures on those surfaces will "fight" to be on top. Are you just seeing it in Hammer or is it in-game too? I see it in Hammer. If I understand this overlay stuff, it's done differently in-game, so just ignore it.
On the second problem... can you make the third texture yourself? I just learned how to use layer masks in GIMP2. If you make one layer for each texture and paint both layer masks with 50% grey, that should start you off. --Fatman UK 20:16, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

@Irish Taxi Driver: Had this same problem, turned out to be related to the Lightmap Scale of the brush faces that the overlays were projecting on. When I increased it, it eventually stopped the error. --RTF

But is it a good idea to do that? I'm not really certain of the impact that it would have on the area compared to other methods of dealing with it (like turning brushes into func_details) --Irish Taxi Driver

Overlays on glass

I'm trying to place a crack overlay on a glass surface but it doesn't render in game. I can't use a decal because the decal is about 10x the correct size. Do overlays not work on glass? Thelonesoldier 03:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)