I noticed this tool over at Interlopers, it is an alternative to hammer with some peculiar tools that Hammer doesn't provide, like merging, 3 point clipping, paint selection, etc. This, along with Propper make your mapping much easier. It really makes you wonder why Valve doesn't update Hammer to provide tools like these.

Videos (older to newer)

View YouTUBE video http://youtube.com/watch?v=69WXG6aGqTs

View YouTUBE video http://youtube.com/watch?v=GETe1q8mLe4

View YouTUBE video http://youtube.com/watch?v=Iexc8QrqD88

View YouTUBE video http://youtube.com/watch?v=UgaV6jxDe8M

Project URL
http://shrinker.beyond-veils.de/projects/Microbrush2/

Download
MicroBrush 2 + Samples

Neato. I'll have to check that out tonight.

I don't see why you need alternative programs to make maps... Hammer is there for it it really isn't that hard to learn.

I know how to use Hammer, I'm just showing people an alternative, MicroBrush 2 has a more intuitive interface, it's kinda like a Sketchup specialized for Hammer. People over at interlopers are saying that it's much easier to use and you get stuff done faster (brushwise), it's also great for optimizing since you can select all the brushes in the map and merge automatically all the ones that can be merged.

This could be interesting. Merging will be a godsend, as I hated having to use grouping, sometimes it just wouldn't group when I hit the hotkeys. And does it rely on much of the SDK? I'd love to be able to bring it in to college with me so I have something to do while I wait for my bus home.

What about props/textures/entities?

It doesn't depend on the SDK, I think you can associate textures with colors right now so if you associate a concrete texture with a light grey color you can then export it to hammer and it will keep that texture where the grey color was, the author is planning on adding full texture support later on.

Edited:

Right now they have to be added through Hammer (except for the small texture support) but editing a map made with Hammer in MicroBrush 2 won't delete any props/textures/entities, once you go back to Hammer everything will be where it was.

Keep in mind this is mostly made for brushwork, so you can take this small app anywhere and design your maps, come home and open up in Hammer for texturing/decorating/placing entities.

Sounds better and better, I might get it just to mess around in.

Does this mean all brushes created through microbrush will be nodraw? what is the default face texture? I hate making a map in hammer and find my self getting al caught up in texturing when i realize i should be worrying about brushwork <_>

Although Hammer isn't exactly complex. This does sound intriguing.

I don't think I will use this rather than Hammer, but it looks like fun to try.

Interesting.

I love how I, by posting one single word, have received a bad spelling, dumb and bad reading rating.

-snip-

I can't figure out how to navigate in 3D space in MicroBrush o_O

Edit:
Escape key >.<

VBSP already merges every merge-able face in the map.

Edited:

Also you do know hammer mappers fear the word "Microbrush", right?

That's what I thought, I was like "what the hell have they made now" and was expecting some kind of follow up on that "my friend uses Carve to make terrain" thread.

For some reason I can't work with a 2D grid and every button on the interface. I mean, I was just born for professional tools. At least it's brush-based.

Hmh, I gotta admit that it's slightly confusing at first, but if I'd learn the shortcuts, it'd probably make creating the geometry of my maps much faster.

As fucking awesome as those videos make it look I think I would be just as efficient on hammer.

I'm not so sure about this. the nature of most of my maps really requires a x/y/z/3d interface.

this is cool. merging would be a great addition to hammer.

Could I run this on a memory stick?

Yes.

Surprisingly easy to pick up, I could imagine using this for brushwork.

is there some sort of tutorial?

Right click on the tools and it will explain everything.

Tools? where's that?

In the F menu.

Example of a map made with Microbrush 2

looks really really interesting. faster than hammer. gonna check it out

It's not really that easy to get into it, the controls are frustrating.
Though the selection/deselection system is excellent.
FaceDrag works like shit.

Yeah, the coder of Microbrush 2 really needs to make a simple easy to use GUI, the one right now is quite confusing.

Yeah and make FaceDrag actually work, it refuses to drag in the direction I want :(

Also I kind of take it back about the selection system, it's now useless again lol.

Because Hammer is like all Valve programs. Hacky code piled on top of more hacky and buggy code. You also never know when Valve feels like releasing an "update" that may or may not break everything, cause random crashes or make Hammer fail to work at all.

Hammer is also a staggering 13 years old and has had extremely few features added to it over that exorbitant period of time. I've been wanting a viable 3rd party editor for Source for years, I'm sick of the monotonous way of having to do things (IE. the shitty displacement editing system, when it could be more like QER's patch system.)

Any program that takes the monotony out of mapping and makes it actually fun it better.

Yeah, and Hammer isn't exactly lightweight either.

Edited:

Also how do you measure a brush?

Hello there. Somehow FP's activation mail kept getting refused by the German mail provider I'm with, so I had to register twice and leave a dead "Shrinker" account :(

Let me make a few statements on all posts posted so far:
TH3_L33T: Yeah, Hammer is easy to learn. My tool is there to augment the process, to help make brush work faster, not to replace hammer.

Technopath: There is no feature to merge together all eligible brushes. There is a feature to merge together the selected brushes, to be used when they properly line up.

hexpunK: There is no SDK dependency at all, and it is a portable application.

IRN Zombie: props no, textures yes, entities no

Technopath: It works a little different. Textured faces (with a string property named "material") are visualized in green color. There is a feature, enabled by default, to emphasize faces with the current value. As you click to pick the current texture value of a face, all those with the same value become highlighted. During conversion, only textures and brushes are preserved at the moment.

Magman77: Only those faces which do not have a texture assigned will be nodraw.

kukiric: But Microbrush is such a beautiful name, isn't it? :D What are you referring to afterwards? The grid is part of the 3D world, so I'd consider it a 3D grid. Also, the interface is just there to train you to get used to the shortcuts. You can always see the shortcuts assigned to a function if you rightclick it.

esalaka: Yeah, if you got used to the shortcuts, it should make brushing faster. That was actually the intention :D

limulus54: Yeah I know, experimenting with new paradigms here. For a nice overview, you can always go to the converters directory and dump an SVG graphic of your map. X/Y/Z should be easily distinguishable for you though, no matter where you are. By default, there is a little direction guide to the bottom left.

IRN Zombie: Two friends have already agreed to making tutorials, but real life is holding them back :( And I lack the time too. Maybe someone who got used to the tool could make a tutorial sometime...

war_man33/Technopath: Once you got used to this kind of interface (= no graphical interface, just visual aids), you might appreciate the immersive experience it offers :9

war_man33: Facedrag only drags faces along the brush normals, just like in Radiant. It is a feature that is difficult to explain, yeah. There is no shearing or vertex editing, as those require quite an extra effort I am not willing to make yet. Those require converting the brushes to a mesh representation, and I must also prevent malformed brushes... A friend once claimed that vertex editing is such a simple feature, but here, it is not, because the brushes and means of manipulating their planes are what this whole thing evolved around.

GiGaBiTe: Quake-style patch meshes are in my plan.

war_man333: The measurements are defined by what the converter for the target platform does. In this case, one default grid unit is 16 Source Engine units wide.

Sweet.
And my shortcuts suddenly stopped working, what did I do?
And can you make another 'visual aid' in the newbie interface so you can see what too you currently have selected?

Hm, marking which one is selected is a good idea. I shall note that down in my todo. If all shortcuts stopped working, the config file might be broken. If you can recreate the situation, I'd like to know how to do that.

I can't exactly recreate it, I just got frustrated and bashed every single key on my keyboard...
I'll just re'install' it.

Also the config was broken, original config is 6,5 kb or so, the broken one was only 3,1.

You just need to overwrite the config with the original config :)