Prop Details and Sprites for Source

I was recently hired by our esteemed friend Robert Briscoe to add some functionality to the Wall Worm tools to import detail props into 3ds Max. After finishing that project, it revived my interest in creating sprite tools in Wall Worm (which I started last year but never truly finished). As such, I've now tackled that with a new plugin called Detailer, which contains a new geometry primitive called Prop Detail (and a couple other helper functions). This tool is commercial and enhances the VBSP importer I built for Robert. It also adds a VBSP exporter. Moreover, the VMF exporter in Wall Worm now places your prop details as prop_detail_sprite entities (so that you can control exactly how the details look). I have not yet made the videos demonstrating this tool yet, but do have cursory documentation for Detailer. I also loaded a new video tutorial on easily creating sprite cards in 3ds Max to be used with the Detailer plugin.

Now there is a video sharing start-to-finish demonstration of setting up and using the objects in Detailer to create a detailtype > groups > models, scattering on scene and exporting as VBSP file. It is long, yes, but is meant to be an exhaustive example of usage.

Note that there are more features and tools than in the video. One cool feature not addressed is that you can paint the props from a detailtype or a group by using the Paint button in a Detail Type or Detail Group modify tab options. This will prefill the Object Paint tool in Max with all objects in a detailtype (if that's the button you press) or all the objects in a particular group (if that's the button you press). This lets you scatter those objects in more targeted fashions.

(Note that Object Paint in pre-Max 2014 has negative scale on objects, which may or may not affect the results of your VMF export, presuming you are exporting with the Wall Worm VMF Exporter. Max 2014 fixed this bug at release or some service pack but may still affect older Max.)