Artwork for Half-Life: Alyx modding tools and workshop support

[Update]: Valve has added over three hours of Developer Commentary for Half-Life: Alyx!

While the Half-Life: Alyx community has been working on custom mods since the very beginning, progress was often tricky without official support and tools from Valve. However, as you might imagine from the title, this has now finally changed!

Through the most recent update Valve has now added Steam Workshop support for Half-Life: Alyx, as well as included a beta version of their community development tools. If you're now wondering just what falls under these 'community development tools', you'll find the full list right below:

Hammer, the latest version of the Source 2 level editor.

 Material Editor, the tool for creating and tuning materials in Source 2.

 ModelDoc, a tool for viewing, editing, and compiling models with animation, collision, and other gameplay attributes.

 AnimGraph, our animation tool used to create complicated animation setups with blends and transitions.

 Particle Editor, for making new particle effects.

 Subrect Editor, for creating smart texture sheets known as "hotspots."

 Source Filmmaker, the Source 2 cinematic renderer and animation tool.

From what little research I've done, the new modding tools appear to be pretty powerful, so expect to see some downright impressive mods come out out of this. This process will likely take a fair bit of time as creators will need to slowly figure out just what exactly the new tools are capable of. That said, the Half-Life: Alyx community was excited enough to create mods before the tools were even released, so I wouldn't be too surprised if quality stuff started popping up sooner rather than later.

Whatever the case may be, you can learn a little bit more about Half-Life: Alyx and its modding tools over at Steam.