Content Authoring Tools contains a tool under Hammer++ called Cartographer.

Cartographer is based on a CS:GO Tool called Terri's Auto Radar (TAR), which has since been re-written from scratch in C#, however we still use the same entity names and vis groups. Since the original was only designed to work with CS:GO, we've also added in native Source Engine mounting so that it works with content from other Source Engine games, with additional support for the Garry's Mod mounting system.

Before you can use Cartographer, you need to make some changes to your map.

Installing the Auto-Radar FGD

From the Content Authoring Tools Dashboard, install the FGD for "Auto-Radar Entities" if you have not already.

Defining Layout

The layout of your map is defined by putting playable areas into a specific vis group.

Put the general playable area brushes and displacements into a vis group called tar_layout.

Masking

You can assign brushes that limit the playable space to the tar_mask vis-group.

You would generally use this for walls that limit the playable area, or for buildings inside that are not enterable.

Cover

You can assign brushes and props to a vis group called tar_cover.

This places gray items on the radar that are shaped based on the 3D model or brush shape.

Overlaps

Overlap displays elevated walkways on the radar with a striped pattern, making it clear that the player can walk below and above.

Simply assign the brushes to the tar_overlap vis-group.

Customising the Radar

You can customise the radar by creating a new entity and changing the class to tar_config.

There are a variety of settings you can configure.

The most common configuration changes are the colour scheme of the radar. There are some preset colour configurations such as:

• Dust II
• Mirage
• Overpass
• Cache
• Inferno
• Train
• Nuke
• Vertigo

You can also select a custom scheme and set your own colours if you prefer.

In addition, you can customise the Ambient Occlusion, cover colour, and much more.

For the output mode, we recommend leaving it as Radar .VTF | .JSON as this is the only format we support, but other formats were kept in case content creators found them useful.

How do I define Bomb Sites and Buy Zones?

This is done automatically as both have unique entity names.

Generating the Radar

Once you've defined layouts, cover and fine-tuned your config, you are now ready to generate the radar for your map.

Go to Hammer++ and then click on the Cartographer tab.

A list of recent Hammer++ maps will be shown.

Once you've found the map you wish to generate, click the "Generate Radar" button.

Depending on the size of your map, generating may take a few seconds, but once complete you should see the output of Cartographer.

Reviewing

Radars are generated to {GARRYSMOD_PATH}\garrysmod\resource\overviews.

Results should look something like this: