Editors

Editors

The built-in source editor

Every file can be edited as text: choose Source in the view switch. It has KeyValues highlighting, bracket matching and search. Edits made in the designer and in the source editor share one undo history.

Your own text editor

Choose it in Settings → Text editor:

Choice	What happens
System default app	The file opens in whatever your OS uses for it.
Found on this computer	Editors the studio detected. The hint shows the program it found and whether it can jump to a line.
Other known apps	About 45 editors the studio knows how to launch: VS Code, VSCodium, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, Sublime Text, Notepad++, Notepad3, EmEditor, UltraEdit, Kate, gedit, Geany, JetBrains IDEs, TextMate, BBEdit, CotEditor, Vim, Neovim, Emacs, Helix, Micro, nano and more. If the one you pick wasn't found, choose its program.
Custom program…	Any program, with an argument template. {file} and {line} are replaced. For example: -g "{file}:{line}", +{line} "{file}", --line {line} "{file}".

Then use:

• the ↗ button next to Source, or Ctrl+Shift+E, which opens the current file at the cursor's line;
• right-click a file or tab and choose Open in …;
• right-click a problem and choose Open in … at line N.

Terminal editors such as Vim, Neovim, nano, Micro, Helix, Kakoune and emacs -nw open in a new terminal window. On Linux the terminal comes from $TERMINAL, then x-terminal-emulator, GNOME Terminal, Konsole and others. When you save in your editor, the studio notices the change and reloads the file.

Your own image editor

Choose it in Settings → Image editor. The list includes GIMP, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Krita, Paint.NET, Affinity Photo, Pixelmator Pro, Acorn, Preview, PaintShop Pro, Clip Studio Paint, Aseprite, Pinta, Paint, Inkscape, PhotoFiltre, IrfanView, XnView MP, MyPaint, KolourPaint, VTFEdit and VTFEdit Reloaded. You can also choose any program.

In Images (the picture icon), pick a material and choose one of these:

• Edit in … opens your HUD's own .vtf (or .png/.tga) file. Use this with an editor that reads VTF, such as VTFEdit, or GIMP or Photoshop with a VTF plugin.
• Edit a PNG copy decodes the texture, including TF2's stock ones, to a PNG in your temp folder and opens that. When you're done, convert it back to VTF (for example with VTFEdit) and save it into your HUD's materials/ folder.

After editing a PNG copy, Save PNG copy into HUD writes it back as a VTF. If the texture is one of TF2's own, it's saved in your HUD as an override.

Importing images

Images → Import turns a picture into a HUD material, materials/vgui/<name>.vtf and a matching .vmt. The default name, replay/thumbnails/<file>, can be used in an element's image straight away.

Input or option	Needs
PNG	Nothing: HUD Studio writes a lossless BGRA8888 VTF without mipmaps itself.
TGA, JPG, BMP, PSD, WebP, GIF	ImageMagick, which converts to PNG first.
Compress (DXT5)	VTFCmd, which comes with VTFEdit and VTFEdit Reloaded.
Scale to a power of two	Nothing.

Other tools

The Tools panel (wrench icon) finds and launches Crowbar, Blender, VTFEdit and VTFEdit Reloaded. It also locates the command-line converters VTFCmd and ImageMagick that image import uses. If one isn't found, press Choose… and point at its program.