Custom Menu Background

Prerequisites:

• VTFReloaded - Website VTFReloaded
• An image that matches your native TF2 resolution (otherwise, it will stretch to fill your screen)
  • NOTE: If the final size of your VTF is larger than ~50 MB, it will not work! (thanks for the information sheybey & techno)

Note: This tutorial is specifically for budhud, so just keep in mind that file names/directories will be different with other huds.

Image Background Steps

1. Open VTFEdit

2. Navigate to File > Import and find the image you'd like to use

3. On the next screen, leave the options at their defaults and hit okay

Important

VTFReloaded saves images at a higher VTF version than TF2 supports. When you first import your image, check to see if you can change the version to 7.4 or lower.

4. Under Flags: on the left, ensure that No Mipmap and No level of detail are checked. These settings ensure that your graphics settings do not affect the quality of the background

5. Navigate to File > Save as and name it background01. It will then be saved with the .vtf (Valve Texture File) extension.

6. Next, duplicate this file and rename the copy to background01_widescreen. You should now have two VTF files called background01 and background01_widescreen.

7. Navigate to ../budhud/materials/console and move the two files you created into this directory. If you did this right, it'll ask to overwrite the two files already present in this directory.

8. Finally, navigate to ../budhud/#customization/ and move bh_menu_hidegif.res into the _enabled folder.

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Animated Gif Background Steps

NOTE: If the final size of your VTF is larger than 32 MB, it will not work! (thanks for the information sheybey)

1. Extract the individual frames of the gif you'd like to use. This can be done with a website such as this one

2. Open VTFEdit

3. Navigate to File > Import and select all of the individual frames of the gif

4. On the next screen, leave the options to their defaults and hit okay

5. Navigate to File > Save as and name it menugif. It will then be saved with the .vtf (Valve Texture File) extension

6. Navigate to ../budhud/materials/vgui/replay/thumbnails/menu_icons and move the file you created into this directory. If you followed these steps correctly, it will ask to overwrite the file already present in this directory

7. After doing this, launch your game and see if the speed of the gif is acceptable. If the gif is too fast or too slow, you can adjust the framerate by opening menugif.vmt in the same directory as step 6 and changing the value after animatedtextureframerate. This will require a game restart after every change.