Making Steam.

This is a question that was asked on the CS-MAPS forums, and so a tutorial was requested. And here it is :) 
Lets get down to business:

Ok, first of all, make the area where you want the steam to appear from. Here, I'm using a pipe with a hole in it:



The black areas on the pipe is where the steam is going to appear from. Using the clip tool, the pipe appears to have a dent in it, where something has cracked it open.

Now, to insert the steam, insert an entity and change it to an env_sprite.

Next, go to the sprite name attribute and select "xsmoke1.spr". 
Then, set the Render Mode to additive. 
Also, check the flag "Start On".

Yes I know this is a steam tutorial, and were using a smoke sprite! But the final result is why I use it to make steam.

Now, copy the sprite and paste it 6 times until you get something like this:



Because the sprites are circles, make sure that each one is overlapping to get the right effect. Right, now set each one up as follows (starting from the sprite closest to the pipe)
Sprite1:
FrameRate = 10
Scale = 0.6
FX Amount = 80

Sprite2:
FrameRate = 14
Scale = 0.65
FX Amount = 70

Sprite3:
FrameRate = 18
Scale = 0.75
FX Amount = 60

Sprite4:
FrameRate = 22
Scale = 0.9
FX Amount = 50

Sprite5:
FrameRate = 26
Scale = 1.05
FX Amount = 40

Sprite6:
FrameRate = 30
Scale = 1.25
FX Amount = 30

Sprite7:
FrameRate = 34
Scale = 1.45
FX Amount = 20
You will now have something like this:



Doesn't look right, but it will look correct in game (when the rendering will take effect).

Next, we need a decent steam sound. 
So insert an ambient_generic and set its sound as "steamjet1.wav"
Set the flag "Small Radius"

And here's the compile:



Look at that...lovely! It gets bigger and less visible as it goes further out, just like it's supposed to.

An extra that you can incorporate is to have a trigger_hurt entity over the steam, so that when a player touches it, they take damage. This isn't true in all cases, so don't overuse it, especially if you have 30 of these in a row and a bot decides to walk though the lot of em!

Also, the trigger_multiple can make them appear at random times by placing them around different areas of the map. To do this:

Create a block with the aaatrigger texture and tie it to an entity.
Change the entity to a trigger_multiple and set the target field to "steam".

Give all the sprites and the ambient_generic, Name - "steam"

Then check the flags:

Ambient_generic: Not Looped, Start Silent
Env_sprite's - Play Once and then Check OFF the Start On flag. 

Now, whenever a player walks through it, the steam will activate. You may need to play around with this a little to get the right effect though.

The GOD.

 

Comments?