Simple Camera Tutorial

We all know the cameras used in cs_assault pretty well by now. But how do you make them?
Look no further, all is explained below!

Note: Ill be using the half-life.wad for this tutorial, since everyone has it.


First of all, we shall need to make a camera out of brushes. Make sure that there's a support attached to the wall as well, can't have it floating in mid-air! Here's my example:

This was made with 3 brushes for the camera, and a further 2 for the supports. I've textured it with black for the camera and glassblue1 for the front part.

Now that we've got our camera, we need to make it a func_wall. This is because VIS doesn't render func_wall's and so won't affect r_speeds (see SmdBlink_182's tutorial on r_speeds for more info on why to make it a func_wall).

So, select the camera and supports, and press Ctrl+t to make it into an entity.
From the drop-down list, choose 'func_wall' (should be near the bottom).

Ok, now we have our camera model set up. We now need to set up a camera entity.

To do this, insert a new entity (Shift + E) and insert one next to the camera.
Select the entity and press Ctrl + Enter. Then select trigger_camera from the drop down list. The following screen should be present in the properties box:

The attributes we need for our camera is as follows, with example text that I am using for my camera:

Name - Cam1
Target - Target_Cam1

The other options aren't needed for this set-up. No flags are needed either. However, feel free to experiment with them.

Now, we have a target set in the 'Target field' of the camera entity. So we now need to create that target.
Select the entity tool and insert an entity where you want the camera to LOOK AT WHILST VIEWING IT. Bring up the properties box with Ctrl + Enter and change the entity to an 'info_target'.
This entity only has one attribute; Name.
Set this to the text specified in the target field of the camera entity, so 'Target_Cam1' in this case. 

Your layout should be something similar to this:

The info_target entity would normally be further away, but I'm showing it up close so that it can all be fitted into the picture!

At last, we have a camera, a camera entity and a location that we want it to face in. But we now need to set-up a button to actually allow the player to view the camera (or else they'll only be used when loading a map and you get several views across the map itself).

So now we need a button. A good use of texture for one would be a computer or tv screen. So lets make one:

You will probably recognise this layout from assault. It's a simple, yet effective method of having a screen for viewing cameras. Now, we need to make a button to target the camera, so select the brush that you want for the button (I'm using the screen here) and press Ctrl + t.
From the drop-down list, choose func_button.

From the attributes, we only need to fill in one field to be able to watch the camera, and that is: Target.
So fill in the target field with the name of the camera entity. Ill be putting in 'cam1' for this camera.
We'll also need to set two flags as well. Click on the 'Flags' tab in the properties box, and click on:

- Don't Move, This means the button won't move elsewhere when being used
- Toggle, Allows the player to activate / deactivate the camera as they choose.

That's it! Done! There's your simple camera as used in assault. Note that you don't have to make the brush based camera model, however, its more realistic.

By The God