Tool Textures

If you type tools/ into your texture browser, a good number of special textures will show up. Let's look into their functions in alphabetic order.

toolsareaportal

The toolsareaportal texture has no special properties. It's designed to be used on func_areaportal entities to make them easily distinguished from other brushes. If you use it on a normal brush, nothing special will happen.

toolsblack

The toolsblack texture has no special properties. It's a normal texture in all respects, to the point that it cuts up VIS leaves and world geometry.

Interestingly, the toolsblack texture makes a wood-like sound if you shoot it.

toolsblock_los

[with errors corrected after being pointed out by wisemx - many thanks, observant citizen]

Toolsblock_los has special properties, like other tooltextures. However, unlike most other tooltextures, the properties remain even if there are other textures on the brush (see toolsnodraw for another example of such a material). The special properties are such:

- the brush becomes nonsolid, and the face invisible;
- the brush doesn't cut up VIS leaves or world geometry;
- the brush blocks light unless it is a non-light-blocking entity;
- the brush blocks most NPCs' line of sight. It can even be applied to an entity to make a LOS blocker that can be turned on and off.

It is notable that some NPCs (especially manhacks, but also zombies and antlions) continue to pursue a player even after he hides behind a toolsblock_los brush. Even if the player moves around, the NPC may continue to track the player's movements.

toolsblockbullets

The toolsblockbullets texture, predictably enough, prevents bullets, arrows, rockets, and grenades from passing through it. A brush covered in this texture retains its solidity, though it will be invisible. Furthermore, a brush covered in this texture will cut up VIS leaves and world geometry unless it is used on an entity.

Interestingly, the toolsblockbullets texture makes a wood-like sound if you shoot it.

toolsblocklight

The toolsblocklight texture, predictably enough, prevents light from passing through it. A brush covered in this texture will be nonsolid and invisible, and it will not cut up VIS leaves or world geometry. However, if even one face of the blocklight block has a normal material on it, then the entire object will act as a normal brush: solid, cuts up VIS leaves, etc. The toolsblocklight texture cannot be used on an entity.

toolsclip

The toolsclip texture is invisible, does not cut up VIS leaves or world geometry, and can safely be used on entities. A brush covered in the toolsclip material will be solid to players and NPCs while allowing bullets and physics objects to pass through it. As with toolsblocklight, if a face of a clip brush (a brush covered in the clip texture) uses a normal material, then the entire brush is solid, cuts up VIS leaves and geometry, etc.

toolscontrolclip

The toolscontrolclip material seems to come from a bunch of code that wasn't used in HL2. Ignore; useless.

toolsdotted

The toolsdotted texture has very few special effects. As with a normal texture, a brush textured with toolsdotted cuts up world geometry and VIS leaves. However, the toolsdotted texture is rendered over all brush geometry as long as the player is standing in a leaf that can see the toolsdotted face. Furthermore, a brush with toolsdotted on any face will not block visibility nor cull any face that it touches, meaning that any area enclosed in a toolsdotted-textured brush will not be removed from the map in any way.

toolsfog

The toolsfog material seems to come from a bunch of code that wasn't used in HL2. Its intended purpose was volumetric fog, similar to a func_smokevolume entity. However, it looks and acts just like a normal material. Ignore; useless.

toolshint

The toolshint material is unique among tool textures in that it is nonsolid, invisible, and does not cut up geometry, but does cut VIS leaves. It is particularly useful in map optimization, because you can cut up VIS leaves however you like. The intended use of the toolshint material is such: make a block, texturing one face of it with toolshint and the other faces with toolsskip. The face with toolshint on it will be used as the plane along which to cut all VIS leaves nearby instead of using normal world faces.

If toolshint is used on a brush along with a material besides toolshint, this effect is ruined, as with most other special-effect tooltextures. Toolshint does not work on entities.

toolsinvisible

The toolsinvisible texture is rather self-explanatory: it's invisible! Toolsinvisible is a normal material in all respects (it cuts up geometry and VIS leaves, it's solid, it can be used on entities, it can be used in conjunction with other materials), except that it's completely invisible. Useful as an invisible wall that blocks everything.

In CS:S, there is a special case of the toolsinvisible material called invismetal. Invismetal is the same as toolsinvisible, except it makes a metallic sound when a player walks on it.

toolsinvisibleladder

The toolsinvisibleladder texture has all the properties of toolsinvisible, above, except that in some mods, a brush covered in this material acts as a climbable ladder. This is an alternative to creating a func_ladder entity; the obvious benefit is that ladders made with toolsinvisibleladder can have parents, be turned on an off, etc., whereas the obvious drawback is that ladders made with toolsinvisibleladder are invisible.

If toolsinvisibleladder is used on a brush that also uses another material, then it acts exactly like toolsinvisible, with the brush losing its climbable property. Toolsinvisibleladder does not have any effect in HL2 and HL2DM.

toolsnodraw

Toolsnodraw is a very useful material. A face textured with toolsnodraw is outright removed by VBSP, meaning it takes no power to render (since it won't be rendered at all, since it doesn't exist!). Toolsnodraw can be used on any face, with any other material, and on any entity.

Toolsnodraw does not override any properties of the brushes to which it is applied. World brushes will still cut up VIS leaves and geometry, and all solid objects will retain their solidity. Toolsnodraw makes a great optimization tool since it can be applied to faces which will never be seen and thus should not be rendered or even included in the map.

In CS:S, there is a special case of toolsnodraw called toolsnodraw_roof. There is no difference between these two materials.

toolsnpcclip

Toolsnpcclip is a variant of clip that blocks only NPCs, not players.

toolsoccluder

Toolsoccluder, like toolsareaportal, is used only to make func_occluder entities distinguishable from other brushes. It has no special properties.

toolsorigin

Toolsorigin is a remnant of the old (that is, HL1) method of specifying a brush entity's origin: the entity would include a brush textured entirely in ORIGIN. The center of this origin brush was considered the origin of the entity. Source mappers can specify an entity's origin in its properties, making this material obsolete.

toolsplayerclip

Toolsplayerclip is a variant of clip that blocks only players, not NPCs.

toolsskip

Toolsskip is a material specifically for use on the sides of a hint brush (see toolshint) not textured with toolshint. That is, toolsskip is used to prevent the entire block from cutting up VIS leaves. It is invisible, nonsolid, and doesn't cut up VIS leaves or world geometry.

toolsskybox

An extremely useful material. Any face textured with toolsskybox will be rendered as sky in-game, with the sky to display determined by the worldspawn's "skyname" property. Toolsskybox also emits light based on the settings of the light_environment entity in a map. Other than that, toolsskybox is exactly like a normal material: visible, solid, and cuts up VIS leaves and world geometry.

See also Placing a Sky In Your Map.

toolskyfog

No mention of this material at all in the mod source code. Presumably, its intended purpose was to create a volumetric fog (see toolsfog).

toolstrigger

A translucent material which, like toolsareaportal, is meant only to make trigger volumes (such as trigger_multiple and, in CS:S, func_buyzone) easily distinguished from other brushes in the editor.