Overview Exporter

The Overview/Radar texture exporter allows you to export an overview texture straight from your Max scene.

Opening the Overview Exporter

You can access the overview exporter UI by clicking Wall Worm > Wall Worm Exporters > Export Overview Texture.

Using the Overview Exporter

When you open the Overview Exporter, the screen state will change to one viewport window that is in the top orthogonal view. You should remain in this view while using the exporter! Changing to any other view (front, bottom, perspective, etc) will invalidate all results. Upon closing the Overview Exporter UI, the viewport state will return to what it was before you opened the exporter.

  1. Enter the name of your map. This name must be the same as the final name of your map when exporting with the VMF exporter. Exclude any extensions.
  2. Choose the bitmap size of your overview texture.
  3. Toggle ON Safe Frame.
  4. Pan/Zoom until the viewport is aligned to the way you want to render the overview.
  5. Click Render. The texture will get rendered as a TGA and will get output to your materialsrc\materials\overviews folder. A text file will get written to your mod\resource\overviews folder that defines attributes about the overview.
  6. Click Compile to export the TGA into VTF if using a mod that wants VTFs. If your mod needs a DDS file (like CS:G) then click the save button in the render window and save the results as a DDS file.

Tips

  • To get the best render, you should set up proper lighting, experiment with exposure controls, environmental effects and show/hide in the layer manage.
  • Displacements are not welded together and can have visible seams. Moreover, the blending between the materials will not show up immediately because the alpha blending is using vertex alpha which does not extend to the render material blending. I am building a tool to address this in the future. As a workaround, you can open Anvil, select all displacemets and hit Sculpt, open the Channel Info (Tools > Channel Info) and copy the vertex alpha channel into a new channel like channel 5, etc. Then use a vertex color map as the map for the blend material applied to your displacements. In that map, set the channel to the same entered above.

Notes and Considerations

Thanks to Tony Sergio for providing some input on the solutions. I'm still, however, researching this tool.


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