Exporting Textures

Source 2 Viewer can preview and export textures from any Source 2 game to standard image formats.

Finding Textures

• Textures are .vtex_c files, usually in materials/ folders inside VPK archives
• Use Ctrl+F to search for textures by name
• Textures are also referenced by materials (.vmat_c). Opening a material shows which textures it uses

Texture Viewer

Double-click a .vtex_c to open the texture viewer. Features:

• View individual channels: RGB, Red, Green, Blue, Alpha
• Toggle between mip levels to see different resolutions
• For cubemaps, set Projection type to None to browse individual faces
• For texture arrays, browse individual slices
• HDR textures are shown gamma encoded, so values above 1.0 clip

Exporting

• Right-click a .vtex_c and select Decompile & export to write a .vtex compile config with the image next to it. HDR textures write .exr, others .png; textures stored as JPEG, PNG or WebP keep that format
• Or open the texture and use the save button in the viewer toolbar to save just the image as PNG, JPG, or EXR (for HDR textures)

For batch export:

• Right-click a folder containing textures → Decompile & export, and pick which file types to export in the dialog
• Use the CLI for large-scale extraction:

Source2Viewer-CLI -i "pak01_dir.vpk" -o "exported/" -d \
    --vpk_extensions "vtex_c" \
    --vpk_filepath "materials/models/heroes/"

Source 2 Viewer only decompiles. To turn a PNG or TGA image into a .vtex_c, compile it with Valve's Workshop Tools (the resource compiler) for that game.

Texture Types

Source 2 uses several texture types you'll encounter:

• Color/Albedo (_color): The base color/diffuse texture
• Normal map (_normal): Surface detail for lighting. These appear purple/blue in the viewer
• Roughness/Metalness: PBR material properties, often packed into channels of a single texture
• Mask textures: Various masks packed into RGBA channels (detail mask, self-illum, specular, etc.)
• AO (_ao): Ambient occlusion

TIP

Normal maps and mask textures may look wrong if you view only the RGB channels. Switch to individual channel view to understand what data each channel contains.

HDR and Cubemap Textures

• HDR textures (used for skyboxes and environment probes) are stored in higher precision formats
• Cubemap textures have 6 faces. Set Projection type to None to browse them
• HDR textures can be exported as EXR to preserve the full dynamic range, or as PNG/JPG, which clip values above 1.0