I mean, you could also probably make it a background image, TF2-style, but if you’re looking to make the most of it being a map, I’d suggest an orange env_projectedtexture occasionally panning over part of the image or something. Possibly more than one with some contrasting colours after the engine update adds support for more dynamic lights.
And maybe make normal and specular maps for the background image as well, make them really pop when lit.
I tried to look into this background image thing but couldn´t find any how-tos. But maybe I can squeeze something nice out of this by doing it in Hammer. Anyway, great suggestions! Love that light-panning idea. I was also thinking some occasional steam distortion and definitely something like THIS! Sparks like those are a must-have, I´ve become almost obsessed with them 
There will be randomized steam distortions and sparks flying around. However, you have to remember that this image is very abstract, so having concrete things happening on it would be odd. Otherwise, I really liked that Freeman-silhouette idea 
I was fooling around with those effects and it turned suprisingly nice. I want to emphasize that nothing is final here, except that heat distortion and camera angle. So please, I´d love to hear opinions; what you like and hate and so on.
I´m trying to make a hole in the wall exactly same size and shape as the BMS logo. I figured I´d make 360 degree arc and place in the wall and then just carve and remove it. Doesn´t work: every time I select the arc and hit “carve”, Hammer jams and crashes. Can someone help?
Hammer rule of thumb: every time you carve, a kitten dies.
I’d suggest doing it with displacements but 114 won’t do it, too small.
So you really don’t have any other option than modelling the wall - don’t, it’s a pain in the ass for Source.
So really, if anything, just have it as a blocklight to cast the logo as a shadow on the wall.
Yeah, I already gave that up. Too bad, if could´ve pull it off, it would´ve look beautiful… 
Oh well, pressing on! This is what I have now.
By this, do you mean that I´d have that logo shaped block “shielding” the logo itself, so that light changes won´t affect logos texture?
Block light would likely have that effect, yes, though it would also probably result in the logo being permanently in shadow. Not sure if you’re going for that or not.
I think you could do the hole in the wall, but you’ll definitely want to be using the clip and vertex manipulation tools (Never ever carve, and if you do, NEVER EVER do it with anything other than a cube with 90 degree angles!!)
Your brush topology would be something like this:
Chop a square into the screen around the outer edge of the logo with the clip tool, load up on triangles around the exterior, and then carefully fill in the logo being sure to make the edges line up with the vertices of the arch you already have. (You may need to increase the size of the entire background to do this cleanly)
No, creating shadows over it wasn´t really what I was after. I did a little research on carving and internet told me to just leave it be.
So this is what I´m after: I want to me hole and round the edges. Then make another wall element behind it and paint with animated texture, so that it looks like the Black Mesa logo was just pressed there. That way I could create panning lights and stuff that would affect everything else but the logo.
Alright, so in order to make this work, how much I should increase that wall? What would you do? Also, Should I make entirely new background texture for those panning lights you suggested?
Thanks for the tips and ideas by the way, they are really helpful! 
I’d just increase it as much as needed to ensure the vertices fit on grid while still conforming to the curvature of the logo. Looking at your screenshot again, I’d say what you have now should be fine as long as the arch is on grid.
You probably don’t need a new background texture, but you’ll need to remove the $selfillum 1 parameter from your vmt, and possibly remove the black mesa logo from the texture once you finish making the brushwork cuts, if you do decide you’re going to go that route. Otherwise, you might end up having parts of the logo ‘bleed’ onto your background material.
If you just want the logo to be a separate material instead of something that’s definitely 3D, you could also look into making an animated texture that uses a Black Mesa logo in the alpha channel and the $translucent parameter, then putting that on a func_detail brush face a unit (or even 0.5 units if you use the scale and translate functions in the right-click context menu) closer to the camera than the background.
I did it! I ditched that arch and just used the clipping tool after I finally got the hold of it. I may have gone overboard by increasing the wall size to 1024x1024 but I wanted make sure I had enough room to work with. I think it turned good, better than I expected. Now I just need to round the edges and I can proceed to texturing and lighting.
Doesn’t look like it’s func_detailed (the color isn’t green in hammer).
Func_detail it, it may be a small map but func_detail and you’ll get a real boost in compile time.
Also that manifest window, drag it out and kill it! You don’t need it.
Trying to round those edges turned out to be a complete fucking pain in the ass and it looked like shit. So I abandoned it and settled with just cutting off the faces from the edges. I also made normal, specular, bump and diffuse maps. Not nearly all of them are in use, just normal and base texture. To be honest, I´m not sure how to make use of them. I also started playing around with lights. Now, the texture behind bm logo is just a placeholder, I was thinking of creating animated texture and make it so that it´s not affected by surrounding lights. What do you think? Too dark? Too colorful? Too bad? As usual, suggestions and constructive criticism are welcome!
I swore I wouldn´t hassle you guys with this anymore but I´m a bit jammed and could use some advice. As you can see, I put some env_sparks behind the wall right next to the logo. I want the sparks coming strictly from inside the logo but they fly right through the wall. How can make it to block sparks?
Make that “group of 21 objects” into a func_detail for the love of all. Also, I’d test with simply making the wall thicker.
Neither func_detail nor thickening worked… This doesn´t make sense, I know that sparks bounces from surfaces in source games. Maybe I should just give up with this insane dream of having sparks not fly through walls… ;( Anyways, yes, I looked over this blocklight thing you suggested and I´m still trying think of a good way to use it.
No, I meant just make it a func_detail. What’s the texture that you’re using behind the wall?
I Understood, I made into func_detail and it didn´t work The grey one? concrete/hostiles_concrete1base
Oh wait, you mean the faces that are hidden? nodraw