📷 Original Texture Source Photography from Half-Life 1 

I got chased out of Costco TWICE getting those food photos, lol.

Seeing half-life textures in real life places feels really surreal.

deadass thought this was marphy black for a moment cause i thought he did a voice reveal

Ah, no longer in the ears. Much better! Thank you, Lymphoid. :)

Texture archeology is great

Imagine stumbling on one of these things in the wild and being like "OH NO THE GAME IN REAL LIBE!!"

M A Z D A B O Y Z

So she basically taken photos of Black Mesa to recreate Black Mesa into Half-Life

this man is like the decino of half life

It's also worth noting that most, if not all, of Karen Laur's photo references were taken in and around the Seattle, Washington area, near where Valve's offices were, and several locations and landmarks can be identified today. For example, the canal photos seen at 4:24 through 4:35 were taken at Ballard Locks, a popular tourist attraction in the city. On a side note, the Half-Life Wikia/Fandom you show at 0:07 was abandoned almost a decade ago and hasn't been maintained in that time. The entirety of the wiki's staff, myself included, created and moved over to the Combine OverWiki, a fully community-owned and run wiki free of advertisements and the rest of the obnoxious pop-ups and embedded videos you see there.

imagine working freight at some grocery store and someone comes in and takes a picture of the potatos you stocked and puts them in one of the greatest video games ever made and that one box is seen by millions of people.

the fact bugs are used for textures in this game, this legit gave me a scare. and dude, this was actually informative content. thanks for showing us these!

Daaaamn crazy seeing those red container textures original source, theyre used all over GoldSrc engine games

It is incredible the level of realism that valve has wanted to include, despite the limitations of that era have been very good at innovating graphics and not only in textures even in AI.

wow! not to be that guy, but I think I recognize a couple of these IRL locations. I've lived in Washington all my life and I'm 100% sure a few of those desert shots are of Dry Falls over in eastern washington (as well as many roadside shots in that same area), and this may be a bit of a stretch, but I'm almost certain those interior grocery store shots are the Costco in Grace, WA. I'd also say that the machinery parts look reminiscent of Gasworks Park in Seattle, but I really don't think they match the coloration of Gasworks or the shape of any machinery I've seen there, so probably not. really fun to think about!

I wish they would use that famous "Cobble stone" texture at least once

4:17 3_2216.BMP is used as a ceiling texture in Surface Tension. And 3_2219.BMP is used in Unforeseen Consequences.

It's so surreal seeing all these HL assets existing in the real world

Man, I thought the desert skyboxes were only pixelated art. But no, it's actually a real place. Just like the Windows XP background

the xen levels' skyboxes always looked very similar to microscopic imaging of cells and other micro-organisms to me. and now I see that those images were also used, so my hunch was kinda correct, good to know I guess.

Some of these textures, specifically the doors, are so iconic that I don’t see them as “real-world photos used for half-life”, I see them more as “half-life textures in real life”. That probably made no sense but maybe you get what I mean

It's so surreal seeing this. I never honestly thought the textures in Half-Life were real, they seemed too perfect to be real. I thought all of them were photoshopped. To think some of the doors and big machinery were train doors of all things! Thank you Karen for your amazing pictures and work.

That Texture Archeology is very cool, I've been watching videos about it and I was wondering when a HL one would pop, very nice one! Your content is very cool, deserves more subs.

I wonder if someone will one day do a remake/upscale of the game textures using these original source images.

At around 5-6 years old, this game was my first memorable encounter of rusted metal and often with flakes of paint coming off it. I have had a fascination for it ever since. Nice to see the origins.

The wall texture at 3:30 is actually from P000598 (shown at 4:08)

3:53 that container is classic

i'm going to eat all those beetles

This channel is blessed. Someone who’s actually making contents about this 20+ years old game that never stops to amaze me is such a great thing. Appreciate your efforts, wishing you could keep doing this!

Honestly the most interesting of all hl trivia. Seeing the real world images of what’s burned into my memory playing hl as a kid was strangely beautiful. Also reminded me of an earlier time of 90s computer encyclopedias for some reason. It’s new & nostalgic at the same time. Wonderful stuff

oh wait, when did you start using a mic, i love this! (im too smooth brained to read)

I did recognized a bunch of them the moment i saw it, it's just that legendary. Half-Life 1 is a masterpiece, even when it comes to the in-game textures.

2:59 OPEN A SILO DOOR IT'S A ONLY WAY OUT OH MY GOD WE'RE DOOMED

damn, i can't believe there's cheez-itz in Half Life Fucking love this game

6:13 hatch is i believe is the door from that bunker in "We've got hostiles" chapter (I'm not sure) 6:17 It looks more like A boxes from office complex 1:31 you know this fence reminds me of l4d2 level... 2:15 The 8th one looks like a kitchen floor from office complex 3:08 The textures from 3rd to 8th It seems like a cargo from the beginning of the game When you sit in the tram Pbglobs and trachea Look like xen skybox texture

3:52 That one made it in CS later on , and many other great goldscr mods . I think it might be the most well known Hl texture there is, other that the wooden boxes one ofc .

I like this texture sources, honestly, i would be more happy if i could see other texture sources, like for the whiteboard ones, like that whiteboard from "apprehension" next to getting the crossbow and others.

Imagine being one of the persons whose objects were randomly used as textures for the best game ever... « _Hey, look son, this was one of my crates, back when I worked at this old depot, 30 years ago_ »

Idk why but I _love_ watching texture source videos.

I remember seeing something on that Valve Archive website about someone who shared an image of some of the texture sources a few years ago and said something along the lines of "I have them, and no one else has them" before abandoning the account they used Not sure how true it is, though, seeing how I can't find the message or image on the forum it was sent in

1:33 P000643.bmp... i remember placing those boxes in the barn on the CS country style map in WorldCraft map editor back in 2002.

I have no words to describe how fascinating this find is! 23 years later and we're still talking about HL1. Kudos to this guy and MarphitimusBlackimus for uploading videos with trivia about HL games, and Karen for making the textures and releasing the reference photos.

This is an amazing case study for aspiring game developers. I really like how she creatively used pieces of her source photography to create one texture.

at 4:55 8500 - it can be found in residue processing in a part when you surface for air and fill up on health. it looks especially good in the AI upscale

Now, after watching this video I finally understood what gave half life 1 graphics that special feeling. It was the perfect mix of digital art and low Res photography. After studying some textures original files I've even seen real textures with shadows drawn over them. Blur made it hard to distinguish what was real and what was not.

In Half -Life 2, it was recently discovered Valve used a real burned corpse face for the texture of one of their torched bodies model. It apparently came from an autopsy book

I love this, this is so fascinating to see, especially when you recognise the textures, and do the whole "Leo pointing at screen" meme, haha. The microscope pictures at the end look like they were used for Xen, but I think more specifically the Xen you see in Opposing Force (the sky especially).

You become so used to seeing some of these textures that they look out of place when you see them surrounded by other objects irl.

The olden days where you could take low-res photos around town, plaster parts of them all over your game, and people would praise how good the graphics look.

There's a lot of photos that made it as textures/props for the HL2 Leak instead - from the ones seen in this video it's the hatches and ship doors,a few walls,the wire spools,the pallet with the tires,the big metal gates for the canal levels and so on....

First! thx for the video! Hope you doing good^.

seems like fun taken pictures for a game

I recognized a lot of other textures from source images. Examples: Bullettin boards, the rusty textures and the freezer door at 4:17.

Since it is not linked in the RU-vid description, here the original #TheGamer article: www.thegamer.com/original-half-life-artist-reveals-texture-sources-photo-references-for-first-game-1998/

what a legend she is, its really trippy seeing some of this stuff. My brain is telling me I know this picture very well but i cant work out where (i have never been to america). hudnreds of hours on half life and thousands in the hammer editor!

in 3:31, those walls are more like "p000598" on 4:08

Just went outside and took random photos at everything to the point most of the images look generated by an AI, games back then had really creative developers.

I always say: Where did this textures came from? And I learned where they came from. Thanks to you

Why does this make me feel so sad?

I adore stuff like this, old data like this doesn't survive very often

Kudos to Karen for texturing the entirety of one of the best shooters ever. Apart from Xen, very little people liked it 😂

Radiation Hazard should look into these texture sources.

wow, amazing content. Thank you!

All those realistic textures and it looked super bland .

I hope one day they'll find the full quality sound files from Half-Life...

Half Life developers: "How much more data can we fit into a 400mb game?" Gabe: "Yes."

I love how in most of your videos you're not talking, but in this one you just out of nowhere you talk

this vdeo was really cool thumb upp

somebody's industrial fan is in hl and they dont know it

Is there a mod that puts those back into the game?

I love how unprofessional some of these photos look

Half life HD texture pack when?

That is so cool man. I've always wondered how the texture were made and and where they originated from

so it means that half life has kind of foto-realistic graffics

it belongs in a museum

this is so fascinating, thx for showing us

i think the yelow paintcan is in tf2

first ever KAREN W

Really cool information)))))) I like this video very much. I try to do similar thing in GTA San Andreas

Half-Life textures don't exist, they can't hurt you. Half-Life textures:

2:10 Now that's creative; I never would've guessed the exhaust shield would come from that photo. 6:01 Studio.jpg is a photo of Kelly Bailey's equipment where some of synth presets provided parts of the soundtrack, such as the credits theme.

i didn't knew, that many photo is very rare Half-Life. we never born, about 1997-1998 photography better than phone. Valve did best hidden

bullsquid.... bugsquid??

A strange small detail I've noticed for quite some time now is that the same fan texture used in Blue Shift (4:50) is reused for the Buggy in Half-Life 2... i.imgur.com/MVa1507.png

Nice piece of history. It was oddly satisfying and soothing to watch

I wonder if other texture artists ever coincidentally used the same pictures to make textures for other games, and if they ended up looking different or similar.

I now identify myself as a Half-Life one development file gascan.jpg. That image is truly enlightening.

music reminding me of tf2 train trouble 2 behind the scenes

coming back to these after the recent documentary is wild.

#Gabenewell

As 3d artist, making textures for games/renders are just the best part of the whole process!!

The attention to detail in this game is still staggering to this very day.

Иллюстрация того как из мусора построили технологичный подземный комплекс.

It's pretty cool that Xen used all sorts of textures from insects and microscopic pictures

4:23 They appear between Gargantuar Chase (Surface Tension) and just before Forget About Freeman near the green water (The tactical map puzzle)

How to make a level from another world step one, take a weird looking insect step two, done

half life is actually a documentary, karen took those photos at the real black mesa ya know

Have the half-life 2/counter-strike source textures been released yet?

Some pictures also look like textures found in Half-life 2

woah, so those gross alien skins are random bugs?