PNG to VTF Converter

Games built on Valve's Source engine do not read PNG or JPG textures. They load VTF files, a format Valve designed for its engine and documents on the Valve Developer Community. Everything from a custom spray to a new skin for a map prop has to be a VTF before the game will show it.

Modders usually create their artwork in a normal editor and save it as PNG, because PNG keeps transparency and every pixel. The last step is turning that PNG into a VTF. Traditionally that meant installing a converter or a plugin for an image editor. This page does the conversion in the browser instead.

The workflow is short: prepare the image, convert it here, then copy the VTF into the right folder of the game or the mod you are building.

PNG is a general image format: one lossless picture at any size, with optional transparency. VTF is built for real-time rendering. Besides the image itself, it can hold smaller pre-scaled copies called mipmaps, which the engine uses for distant surfaces, and several frames for animated textures.

The pixels and transparency of your PNG carry over. What changes is how they are packed: game textures are often stored with GPU-friendly compression so they load quickly. The result looks the same in the game while taking a form the engine can use directly.

The sheet sums up why VTF needs a dedicated converter. It is a proprietary format from Valve, first used in 2004, that can store compressed or uncompressed pixels, an alpha channel and animation frames. Windows Explorer, phone galleries and browsers do not open it, so check the result inside the game rather than in an image viewer.

Source textures use dimensions that are powers of two: 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 and so on. Width and height do not have to match, so 512 × 256 is fine, but a 500 × 500 image is not a power of two on either side. Resize the PNG with Resize Image to the nearest suitable size before converting.

Sprays are commonly made square, for example 256 × 256 or 512 × 512, and the game decides how large they appear on a wall. For map textures, pick the size based on how close players will see the surface; larger textures look sharper but use more memory.

For a spray, many Source games let you import an image through their own options menu, and the game stores it as a VTF. Converting yourself is useful when the in-game importer is missing, limited or rejects your file, and for community servers or mods that expect a ready VTF in a folder.

For map and model work, place the VTF in a folder under the game's materials directory and write a VMT that points to it. Up to 20 PNGs can be converted per batch, so a set of textures for one map goes through at once. Uploads are deleted after processing and the VTFs 30 minutes later.