Omg major newb question. >.<
As the title states I have a very newbish question to ask. Well, questions.
#1. How do I configure Valve Hammer Editor to make maps in portal?
#2. Where can I find the textures used in portal single player. (such as black non-portal surface, white portal surface ect.)
Deeply sorry if this is posted somewhere on the forum, but I looked everywhere and couldn't find anything. Thanks in advance!
-sssummer
(((EDIT: I visited the ThinkingWithPortals wiki page, (http://wiki.thinkingwithportals.com/wiki/Main_Page) and started looking around there for help and I stumbled across this page, (http://wiki.thinkingwithportals.com/wiki/Hammer_Setup) and it said there was a program called Portal FGD that sounded like it sets up your portal configuration settings. However, when I follow the download link, you page tells me the file does not exist. 
Can anyone help me with this?)))
Hammer should already be configured to map for Portal once you install the SDK, you just need to select the right option in the Source SDK window (the drop down menu at the bottom that lists HL2, TF2, Portal, etc.)
You can use the texture browser in Hammer to search for textures, use keywords like "metal" and "concrete".
Since you seem new to mapping in general and not necessarily Portal specifically, I'd suggest you read the tutorials and search the other sites for information listed in the Useful Mapping Links sticky. There are other, older sites that have resources that would be much more helpful to those totally new to mapping than this site, since we're pretty specific and therefore do not have a lot of Newbie resources.
Please do not Private Message me for assistance. Post a thread if you have questions or concerns.
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unless of coarse if one was using a non-legit copy of portal, and/or hammer....
If that's the case than they can 
Please do not Private Message me for assistance. Post a thread if you have questions or concerns.
If you need to contact the staff privately, contact the Global Moderators via Discord.
Firstly, make sure you install the SDK from Steam. Don't try to Google it.
Secondly, enter "portal" in the second text box in the texture browser.
Yay! Thanks, I downloaded SDK and opened hammer from there, SO much better. I previously downloaded hammer 3.4 from somewhere on the internet. Thanks alot. And again.. YAY!
so glad WE could help :-p lol but seriously welcome to the community. and be sure you check out that link msleeper gave ya.
sorry to piggyback off his thread, but i need to know how to configure hammer for portal as well, only this time i have the SDK downloaded from steam. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it and it didn't make portal show up on the drop down menu, so can someone show me what to do to set up hammer for portal. i think i have to do stuff with the tools/options thingy but i'm not sure what to fill in... help would be great
(and no, it isn't an illegal copy of the orange box if thats what it comes down to)
one thing to try is... make sure the SDK is fully installed. then. make sure it is completely closed. THEN: Go open portal and play a single level... just start a new game or quick load any of the maps you've already beaten... then come back out to the steam page. open the SDK menu thingy and see if you have portal in the drop down menu. if you still don't have portal in the drop down, click the "reset game configurations" that "should" hopefully fix it up
nope, didn't work, and i tried hitting reset game configurations but that didn't help either, and SDK says 100 % ready. i remember i did have to go in and manually configure the settings before, when i started mapping for hl2 and such...
In hammer under tools hit options, all i need to know is what to fill out for those forms... it has a lot to do with directories and whatnot.