Tutorial: How to Check Hitboxes

Jinx

♡The Mom♡
Advisement
Hello!
I've gotten a lot of questions from community members and staff on how to check player model hitboxes, so I thought I'd make a tutorial showing you how it's done! This is going to start at the very first step and guide you through the entire process to make this as easy as possible.


Step 1: Find the model you want to check on the Steam Workshop.

Access the Steam Workshop from Steam.



Search for the model you want using the search box. You can use the sidebar to sort by models only.





Subscribe to the model



Download the addon: Open Garry's Mod and you should see the bellow loading screen pop up. Once this goes away, you can close the game.



Now you should have the addon in your Gary's Mod addon's folder. Now let's find it!


Step 2: Finding the addon in the folder and converting it.

Find where Garry's Mod is located on your computer



This is the page that opens. It should open you up to the "GarryMod" folder in your Steam programs folder.
Now there are two steps here:
Step a: Right click on the folder labeled "bin" and click "open in a new window". Set that window aside for now, you'll need it later.
Step b: Go back to the "GarryMod" folder and open the "garrysmod" folder.
a.



b.


Open the "addons" folder and then find your model. The name is usually the name displayed in the steam workshop.





Right-click the addon and copy it (ctrl + c) then go to the window that has your "bin" folder in it. Once in your "bin" folder, look for an application called "gmad". (Everyone has this application, it comes with your copy of Garry's Mod).



Once you find it, paste (ctrl + v) the addon you copied into the "bin" folder and drag it onto the "gmad" application. You will see a window pop up and then disappear.





Then you should notice a new folder at the top of your "bin" folder that has the name of your addon. Copy (ctrl + c) that folder, and paste (ctrl +v) it back into your "addons" folder.






Step 3: Using hlmv to check hitboxes.
Like gmad, everyone has hlmv in their "bin" folder because it comes with your copy of Garry's Mod. So let's find it. Go to your "bin" folder and find the application labeled "hlmv".




Now open hlmv. Click File and find your model's addon folder in addons. The easiest way to do this is by copying the file path, and pasting it into the hlmv open window.





The next thing is going to be finding what to open. This is slightly different for every model, depending on how the model creator packaged the model, but the end file always looks similar. If you have any questions during this step, you can always ask me. I'm going to show you the folder progression so you can see that it's easy, regardless of how many folders you have to go through, to get to the model you open.















As you can see, there are a lot of random folders you have to get through to actually find a .mdl file. But there is a pretty clear path to get to them, so it's not too difficult. The .mdl files are the ones you're looking for. There are multiple different body groups for my model because there are different factors such as color and accessories that come into play, but most modes will only have 1 or 2 .mdl files. You can choose any of these .mdl files to check because they will all have the same hitboxes.
Now open the .mdl file of your choosing. It will look like this:




Notice that the checkbox for hitboxes is unchecked. Check it, and you will be able to see this:



This is the most important part of the process. The part that shows you if the model has usable TTT hitboxes. Notice each hitbox area has a different color. The head is separate from the body, and the body is separate from the limbs. This means that this model is good to go!

The hitboxes must be this way in order to function properly. Hitboxes like this are not acceptable:



The hitboxes also must fit the body part it's covering. For example, it cannot leave areas unguarded like this:



Notice how the sides of the head are not covered by the box. This wouldn't work and could prevent players from getting proper headshots on the model.


And you're done! A member of SC Staff will always check over a model's hitboxes before we put it into the server to ensure the best experience for everyone playing, but I know a lot of you were wanting to know how to do this for yourselves. Remember, you can always ask me any questions you may have about the hitbox checking process on Discord or in the comments below!
 
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