Texture Source Photos

This is a sub-page of Development:Half-Life (Windows).

To do:

Karen Laur had some commentary in the 25th anniversary documentary from Valve that should probably be added here.
Possibly identify what is seen in the images (i.e. species of Bettles, object photographed, location etc.)
Every image here that wasn't a jpeg to begin with needs to be replaced with a Png so that images presented here are as lossless as much as possible. Also add full filenames and possibly original file dates as well.

The source files for the in-game textures were released in 2021 by Karen Laur, the main artist behind the majority of textures. Originally the textures were supposed to have been hand painted, but it was too time consuming and photo references proved much easier to do.

(Source: The Whole Half-Life)

beetles#

The folder named "beetles" unsurprisingly contains an assortment of photos of various beetles. In the final game these were used mostly used for the flying Alien Craft as well as the Alien Grunt containers seen towards the end of the Interloper chapter.

The photos of yellow beetles might've been used as the texture for the second Bullsquid variant seen in some prerelease screenshots.

The file "yelspot1" has two layers, these were uploaded here as separate images.

desert#

Photos taken at the Colombia River Gorge in Washington. Used as references for the canyon in Surface Tension. There's also photos of various office halls and food boxes, both being used for Office Complex. Note there is no P00060 in the files present.