Here are the test results:

The twp community is awesome in creating awesomeness! This is not only limited to awesome portal 2 maps but also art and video's. For those who haven't checked out the thread here's a summary of some of the best entries:

this model is made by skotty

by zivi7

by brainstone

SKUdo14NXZM
by PixeledFace

by brainstone

by greykarel

WlIJv7eUie0
by Habzs

1sTybnjpHIU
By DamnImOnFire

A big thank you for everyone who made something, it's been awesome to see all your creativity!

We encourage everyone now to PM the 'Global Moderators' your final files to be posted inside the downloads section.

A little tweaking might have to be done in order to get the animations to work on elevator screens etc. Did not occur to me that .bik files cannot be packed inside a .bsp until someone posted in other thread.

Well done everybody for participating. TWP thanks you!

Pakrat might not recognize them, but stock bspzip probably can. Has anyone tried that?

Yes, they can be packed, and no they don't play in-game.

How would one turn it into an animated texture without losing quality through several conversions (BIK -> AVI -> lots of PNGs -> VTF)? Is there a way?

FelixGriffin wrote:
How would one turn it into an animated texture without losing quality through several conversions (BIK -> AVI -> lots of PNGs -> VTF)? Is there a way?

It can be converted, but the animated texture would be huge in size compared to a .bik. It is like playing an uncompressed video.
howto
We would have to export all the frames in the movie into separate images and use vtf or another program in order to create an animated vtf.

So either quality has to be reduced or the amount of frames in order to keep it a reasonable size.

Converting to an animated texture is out of the question, there's a very small maximum number of frames allowed in an animated texture.

HMW wrote:
Yes, they can be packed, and no they don't play in-game.

I see. But is there no way that changing the file path can fix anything? I'd hate to see the idea of elevator video's go to waste...

FourthReaper wrote:
HMW wrote:

Yes, they can be packed, and no they don't play in-game.

I see. But is there no way that changing the file path can fix anything? I'd hate to see the idea of elevator video's go to waste...

No, .bik doesn't work if it isn't included. :/
I will give the animated stuff one final try to see what I can do

FourthReaper wrote:
I see. But is there no way that changing the file path can fix anything? I'd hate to see the idea of elevator video's go to waste...

Well it won't really "go to waste", it just means that it will have to be included through traditional means. It might be out of the question for Workshop maps, but it doesn't mean it can't be used.

Will workshop maps use custom assets if they're in the Portal 2 folders?

Yes, if they don't override anything in a VPK. That's why you can play things with HMW's logic gates even if the images aren't packed.

FelixGriffin wrote:
Yes, if they don't override anything in a VPK. That's why you can play things with HMW's logic gates even if the images aren't packed.

The logic gates don't use any custom images. It's all brushwork.

I must say that the idea of relying on custom, separate assets for workshop maps doesn't sound great. The whole point of the workshop is to have an easy interface that enables anyone to install and play custom maps, without having to hassle with downloading and extracting files into their Portal folder manually.

I think those videos would be really great for some larger SourceMods based projects, like Enceladus, Back-stock, Portal Stories, etc.

I would like to point out that 8 (Skotty, Brainstones and PixelFace's is on original thread) out of the 9 mentioned entries we would put in the downloads section has actually been PM'd to the Global Moderators. If you will not attach them to an email or send a link to download a physical copy we can use (no youtube), we won't be able to use them.
I am talking to you DamnImOnFire.

HMW wrote:
FelixGriffin wrote:

I think those videos would be really great for some larger SourceMods based projects, like Enceladus, Back-stock, Portal Stories, etc.

Indeed, the larger the mod (map-pack) the more likely people will play it by downloading off portal map hosting sites.

Hey ya'll. I have uploaded the chosen advertisements to the download database here:

TWP Advertisements

I want to see TWP appearing in your maps proudly people!

&

Quick question: if someone (e.g. me) is working on an advertisement but didn't get it finished on time (Damn you work, for there being so much of you.), what would be the best way to publish that?

(Besides just using it in my map and let people extract it from there, of course.)

you can still upload it to the forums ^_^

HMW wrote:
Quick question: if someone (e.g. me) is working on an advertisement but didn't get it finished on time (Damn you work, for there being so much of you.), what would be the best way to publish that?

If it's good enough I'll add it to the download.

Ok, sounds good! I'll just upload it when it's done and you guys can decide what to do with it.

I was tossing around the idea of using PixeledFace's video as an outro clip for videos on the Youtube channel. That way, people watch the content, and boom, they see a built-in ad to go to the website. I'd also be interested in using Ziv's rat-man illustration for the same purpose.

Alternatively, PixeledFace: I would love to adapt that elevator video as an intro for the web series, as well. If you would be okay with giving me a copy of the source material's project file (in whichever program you used, Flash, Vegas, doesn't matter), I think that would look a lot cooler than the current elementary fade-in titles that I have.

Regardless, let me know if you're cool with me using your work for that purpose.

wstrika, I would PM him if you haven't already, I don't know how active he is here.