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, view individual faces
• For texture arrays, browse individual slices
• HDR textures are tone-mapped for display

Exporting

1. Open a .vtex_c file in the viewer
2. Right-click and select Decompile & Export (or use the save button in the viewer toolbar)
3. Choose the output format in the save dialog: PNG, JPG, or EXR (for HDR textures)

For batch export:

• Right-click a folder containing textures → Decompile & Export to export all textures at once
• 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/"

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. Use the face selector in the viewer to browse them
• HDR textures can be exported as EXR to preserve the full dynamic range, or as PNG/JPG (tone-mapped)