Tool textures (Source)

Tool textures are used, mostly by the tools but sometimes by the engine, to perform special tasks. They can easily be found in Hammer by using "tools\" as a filter in the texture browser, but other tool textures may be located in different directory.
Anyone can make their very own tool texture, by utilizing available Material Map Compile Flags, such as , and for a tool texture which is not solid, does not cut visleafs and is invisible.
A may also be set, which is only to be seen in Hammer's texture browser, while the is seen in-game; however, the self made tool textures must be shipped with the map, else they might not work.
This page contains tool textures which can be found on any Source games (including description for third-party games which changes how the tool texture works or have different behavior). For third-party games specific tool textures, see third-party page.
== General ==
=== General — Common ===
These tool textures are available in every Source engine game.
Some of these textures have special function in some games. These special functions are noted by having the game's icon listed in the description (such as , , , , etc.).
Image	Filename	Visible if world brush	Casts shadows	Cuts VIS leaves	Blocks NPC LOS	Solid to NPCs	Solid to player(s)	Solid to physics	Solid to bullets	Usage / Notes
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
This texture is often used for brushes that are far away and they are dark. It cannot be lit by any type of light, but is affected by fog color.
An example of its use is in the "space" backgrounds during the G-Man monologues in or for crude buildings in the 3D Skybox.
Uses in: 
Uses in: 
While in most games, the different shader has no impact, it might have a different function in other games. In that case, you may want to use vgui/black instead or make your own tool texture.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
Identical to lights/white (which is available in all Source games), but doesn't cast any light by default. Using glass surfaceprop.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
 Use blockbullets_cs variant, which correctly stops bullets even with 1 unit thickness.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Solid to , projectiles, players, & NPCs. Not solid to bullets.
 Also solid to bullets.
 Smokers, Boomers and Spitters can attack you through it. Survivors stop being dragged towards smokers when touching a toolsinvisible wall.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Used for ladders in most multiplayer games except , either by itself, or tied to .
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Not drawn in game, seals leaks, and is skipped by VRAD. Blocks visibility if used on all surfaces of the same brush. Optimally, every face that can't be seen during normal gameplay should have this texture. Portals can be placed on it, but not in . Use Nodraw Portalable instead if this behavior is desired.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Blocks the line of sight of NPCs and bots. will reveal that, while this texture doesn't block visleaves, it draws crossing polygons, and they alone are capable of preventing the engine from rendering enveloped brushwork. This can be worked around by turning the Block LOS–textured brush into a with its Solidity keyvalue set to a solid state. (A Block LOS func_brush can still be traversed in this state.)
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Casts shadows artificially. Only used at compile time by VRAD. Does not seal leaks. See more uses here.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Used on triggers and on entities.
=== General — Game-specific ===
These tool textures are only available in specific Source engine games.
Image	Filename	Visible if world brush	Casts shadows	Cuts VIS leaves	Blocks NPC LOS	Solid to NPCs	Solid to player(s)	Solid to physics	Solid to bullets	Usage / Notes
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsBlack, the only difference is that uses special "black" shader. has a replacement that works with older engines.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsBlack, but no fog will appear in front of it. Uses the shader.
Inherits various City17 %25keywords from ToolsBlack.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsBlack. Seems to have been intended as a non-portalable version, but this is already the case with the normal texture in the final game.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsBlack, but does not render fog.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsBlack_Cheap.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsBlack, but for some reason is used instead.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsBlockBullets, but doesn't cut visleaves.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsNodraw, but with a different texture name.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsNodraw, but will make wood impact sounds when hit.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsNodraw but with metal surfaceprop. Does not show metal marks. You may want to use Invismetal instead.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Identical to ToolsNodraw, but portals can be placed on this texture.
== Optimization ==
Image	Filename	Visible if world brush	Casts shadows	Cuts VIS leaves	Blocks NPC LOS	Solid to NPCs	Solid to player(s)	Solid to physics	Solid to bullets	Usage / Notes
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Use with areaportals (s and s). Can be used with other brush entities, such as some triggers.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Instructs VVIS to cut visleaves along this texture, but does nothing else.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Has no effect on anything (except bomb in ). Skip faces are removed during compile, so a brush textured with Skip won't prevent leaks.
Useful in combination with Hint tool textures (to prevent the other sides from cutting vis) and as a tool in Hammer for grouping, moving and place-holding objects.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Used only for the occluding sides of entities.
Unlike toolstrigger, toolsoccluder will correctly work when VBSP is compiled with .
== Clips ==
=== Clips — Common ===
These tool textures are available in every source engine game.
Some of these textures have special function in some games. These special functions are noted by having the game's icon listed in the description (such as , , , , etc.).
Image	Filename	Visible if world brush	Casts shadows	Cuts VIS leaves	Blocks NPC LOS	Solid to NPCs	Solid to player(s)	Solid to physics	Solid to bullets	Usage / Notes
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Solid to players and NPCs but not other objects.
 Also solid to item pickups like ammo packs but not dropped weapons.
 Solid to dropped C4. Solid to hostages in .
 Feature clip brush textures with different material types: Concrete, Dirt, Glass, Grass, Gravel, Metal, Metal Sand Barrel, Metal Grate, Metal Vehicle, Plastic, Rubber, Rubber Tire, Sand, Tile, Wood, Wood Basket, Wood Crate.
:See more about clip texture here.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Solid to NPCs only. Solid to bots. Not solid to hostages. Solid to infected only, but does not stop Smokers, Boomers and Spitters from attacking through it.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Solid to players only.
 Also solid to item pickups like ammo packs but not dropped weapons.
 Solid to players, bots (!), and dropped C4. Solid to hostages in .
 Solid to the survivors only.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
=== Clips — Game-Specific ===
These tool textures are only available in specific Source engine games.
Image	Filename	Visible if world brush	Casts shadows	Cuts VIS leaves	Blocks NPC LOS	Solid to NPCs	Solid to player(s)	Solid to physics	Solid to bullets	Usage / Notes
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Solid to grenades only.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Used to prevent drones getting stuck on complex geometry.
== Sky and Fog ==
=== Sky and Fog — Common ===
These tool textures are available in every Source engine game.
Some of these textures have special function in some games. These special functions are noted by having the game's icon listed in the description (such as , , , , etc.).
Image	Filename	Visible if world brush	Casts shadows	Cuts VIS leaves	Blocks NPC LOS	Solid to NPCs	Solid to player(s)	Solid to physics	Solid to bullets	Usage / Notes
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	No effect; uses nonexistent compile flag .
(You can use this for instead of the Trigger texture, but NOT for .)
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	This texture is used to make 3D skyboxes. Casts light if there is a entity in the map. Cannot be used in the same PVS as the toolsskybox2d tool texture.Things such as another area of a map will render on top of the skybox. An areaportal can stop this from happening, but it's generally better practice to add more scenery to cover the stuff that shouldn't be seen, reposition those things out of view, or just don't have an opening in that area.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
Used to make 2D skyboxes without displaying the 3D Skybox.Casts light if there is a light_environment entity in the map. Cannot be used in the same PVS as the toolsskybox tool texture.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	The SkyFog texture does not contain any properties. There is currently no existing corresponding Shader called "skyfog". (Generates error Error: Material "toolsskyfog" uses unknown shader "SkyFog".)
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
Used in conjunction with multiple s to change fog colours and densities in a level. Fog inside its volume will not appear to have different atributes when viewed from outside its volume, as it globally changes the appearance of all fog across the map when entered.
=== Sky and Fog — Game-Specific ===
These tool textures are only available in specific Source engine games.
There are no game specific tool textures in this section.
== Miscellaneous ==
These are textures that have a special use, sometimes only seen in one single game.
Some of these textures are not even "real" tool textures, as they do not possess any Compile Flags, but they have some important use that no other texture available can do.
Image 	Filename	Visible if world brush	Casts shadows	Cuts VIS leaves	Blocks NPC LOS	Solid to NPCs	Solid to player(s)	Solid to physics	Solid to bullets	Usage / Notes
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Acts like ToolsInvisible. Possibly unimplemented.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	A ladder only for Infected. Not visible to Infected Players during Versus, but can be climbed on. Use Climb Versus Instead. 
Could be used in areas blocked by where Player Infected cannot go to and should be unable to see a climbing spot, but the AI should be able to use it for hordes.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Same as Climb Versus, with the only difference being that climb_alpha uses , while climb_versus uses .
This texture may be usable in spots where the texture is applied over a translucent material, in order to fix sorting issues, but it has so far never been used in any official campaign.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	A ladder only for infected. Must be used with ; otherwise, it will be ignored by the navigation mesh editor.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	This is an obsolete visual cue texture of a wall that can be broken by special infected players.The texture itself has no special abilities other than being invisible to survivors.This texture is since superceeded by ../effects/tankwall. But this one was not removed from the game.See This page for further information.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	This is an obsolete visual cue texture of a wall that can be broken by special infected players.The texture itself has no special abilities other than being invisible to survivors.This texture is since superceeded by ../effects/tankwall. But this one was not removed from the game.See This page for further information.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	This is the "new" visual cue texture of a wall that can be broken by special infected players.The texture itself has no special abilities other than being invisible to survivors.See This page for further information.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	A face textured with this texture is rendered on top of all other brush geometry. Furthermore, a brush with Dotted on any face will not block visibility or cull any face that it touches, meaning that any area enclosed in a Dotted-textured brush will not be removed from the map in any way.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Light is not blocked by this texture, except in .
Despite being in the Materials/Tools folder, this is not a tool texture. It has no abilities. It is simply an invisible texture used for displacement clipping, where you make an invisible displacement instead of a clip brush because making intricate clip brushes is difficult.
 Uses and .
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Basic that has no abilities other than being invisible.
Officially used like invisibledisplacement for displacement clipping.
Has no VMT properties other than .
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Invisible texture, with metal surface properties. Simmilar to how Nodraw Metal should have worked.
Creates metal sparks when shot, but bullets pass through.
Does not seal maps.
No Image	Locked 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	This is a special tool texture, intended to prevent VMEX from decompiling any maps using this custom tool texture. BSPSource ignores this, rendering it useless.
It does not really exist, as every user has to make their own, but it is listed here for completeness sake.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Basic texture that has no abilities.
Used with to make it non-solid and fade away when approached.
It being UnlitGeneric makes it seems as if it were glowing in a warm color, but is not listed in , so it won't actually emit any light for VRAD to compile.
Only used in behind the three windows to the right of the entrance of the end map saferoom building, to simulate glowing light in a room.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Used to indicate the borders of the playable area.
 Only visible to Infected players.
 No campaign uses this tool texture anymore. See L4D Level Design: Blocking the Infected Team for more info.
 Used especially for the game mode. It has the same properties as WrongWay Timer.
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	Used for brushes that are temporarily blocking Terrorists during the freezetime of the game mode. It is only visible to players that are close to the origin of the entity that this material is applied to (e.g., ), achieved with the PlayerProximity material proxy.
Category:Source
Category:Level Design
Category:Material System