mavisxp.com

Custom sprays for CS:S

For those of you interested in creating custom sprays for Counterstrike: Source,
I've created the following tutorial. This tutorial assumes that 1) you have
Photoshop 7.0, and 2) you want to create sprays with transparency. If either of
these is not true, I recommend you check out this excellent tutorial by abe2000 -
otherwise, continue reading!

Before I begin, here's a quick sample of the kind of effects you can achieve with
sprays in CS:S

Once again, this tutorial is intended for use with Photoshop 7.0 or 7.0.1. I've
heard that some people have had issues with Photoshop 7.0, but the steps listed
below work for me, so hopefully they will work for you guys too.

To begin, open Photoshop and select "File|New" ... Specify the following dimensions:
Width: 256, Height: 256, Res: 300 pix/inch, RGB Color, and BG: Transparent.
See the following screenshot for an example:

Create your image ;)

When you are finished creating the image, select "File|Save As" and select
"Targa" from the "Format" drop-down box. A window will appear allowing you to
specify the exact .tga properties, in this window select "32 bits/pixel" and make
sure "Compress (RLE)" is NOT checked, as in the example below:

Now that your picture has been saved as a 32 bit Targa file, you can convert it
to the .vtf/.vmt format used by CS:S. Download this file and save it to
your desktop (any location is ok). Extract the files to the folder of your choice,
and then place your .tga file in the vtex\hl2\materialsrc\sprays folder. Run the
tga2vtf.bat, and it will convert your file - move the .vtf and .vmt files from
vtex\hl2\materials\sprays to your-css-folder\cstrike\materials\VGUI\logos and
the next time you load CS:S Beta, you'll see your new spray in the list.

Just as a little tip: if you're using effects like shadows, etc in your image, it can
be difficult to judge exactly how they'll look in-game. One easy solution is to
take a screenshot of a bare wall (in-game), open it in Photoshop, and paste part
of it as a layer in your spray (make it the bottom layer, of course). Now you can
see what your spray will look like on a wall in-game. For example:

(default transparent background)

and here, with a portion of a de_dust wall as the background:

As you can see, it's much easier to tell what the effects will look like if you have
an in-game background as a layer in your image.

Finally, to see the above logo in-game, click either of the screenshots below:

Anyway, I hope this tutorial was helpful - happy spray-making!!

mavis

ps. special thanks to abe2000, his excellent tutorial was the basis for my tutorial here ...

HEy mavis!

wow that's fucking AWESOME! sexy logo i love it.
umm i wanna play CS:S beta.

Hey guys! Twinke, Kaku ... Kaku?! Cool!!! Nice to see
you here buddy!

Sorry you got the shaft with the X800 Pro purchase, but
don't worry - you'll be able to play HL2/CS:S soon
enough! hehe

Holy shit thats a nice spray w00t lol
Very nice tutorial bro w00t alot easier than the otha one :)

w00000000T

Very nice!

NICE easy tut... only problem is.. mine wont say as transparent. I followed exactly what you did except.. i created a seperate layer for my text. That way I could change the appearence of my text to suit my needs. After that.. i merged both layers and all effects. Then saved as you specified. However in game it looks like this
[img]http://members.lycos.co.uk/lawgiverclan/testlogo.JPG[/img]

Nice tut.... I created one with your tut.. worked great till i got into game. Tell me what i did wrong. I followed step by step. I created logo however i created a seperate layer for my text. That way i could edit the text how i wanted without effecting the logo. [img]http://members.lycos.co.uk/lawgiver/testlogo.JPG[/img] Mine failed to be transparent.

im trin to post but its not letting me

this did not work.. mine were not transparent. Instead they came out with white background to them

chiefndubs, there is a reason it says "All comments will be reviewed before appearing on the site" right above the POST button ... lol

Anyway to answer your question(s), the reason your transparency isn't working is that you are using Photoshop CS, or version 7.0.1, rather than 7.0 ... As I stated in my tutorial, the instructions I gave apply to VERSION 7.0 ONLY. According to "panickme" at rage3d's forums:

--------------------------------------------
1) Photoshop 6 saves the TGA but once it's converted it's all transparent for some reason.

2) Photoshop CS fails to save the transparency and replaces the background with a white surface (this is true of the patched versions of PS 7 too).

3) Photoshop 7 (unpatched) is the only version of Photoshop that seems to save the TGA files in the format will keep the transparency once converted.

If you drop the Targa plugin from PS 7.0 into any other version the transparency works fine.
--------------------------------------------

So there you have it. Just go to Adobe's site and get the Targa plugin.

Oh and btw, "please" and "thank you" are some words you may want to add to your vocabulary. It's certainly not my JOB to help you, I just posted this tutorial because I WANTED to help. A little appreciation would be nice, rather than simply EXPECTING my assistance. ;)

Mavis thanks so much !!!

I haven't finished with mine but now I know it's possible and I'm sure I'll have a blast when I start mucking around, the transperency is what I'm liking the most, it will help the aliased(spelling?) edges of text etc.

UDHA! Always nice to see R3D folks poking around here, of course half of my traffic is from there, but still ... lol ... Anyway, thanks for posting! Glad you liked the tutorial too, I think that whole text-aliasing thing is a big reason why I dig on the new 32-bit sprays as well ... ;)

Cya online!

Thought I'd show you the monstrosity that I created:

http://www.ecn.net.au/%7Eudha/images/css/de_dust0028.jpg

PS can I do an html img src tag or does that not work?

oh ya, even if you not actually making anything 'transparent' it's still needed for smoothing edges of text, something many people don't realise.

actually I found this site before rage3d or atleast before I found it ON rage3d.

haha, nice tag, UDHA - that pic cracks me up!! :)

Thanks for stopping by and spamming my boards! lol j/k

Hey mavis,

How about becmoing the official [Rage3D] spray maker?

You know you want to! ;)

i have followed the exact instrustion from meny spray making tutorials and i get the smae problem, i go to convert into the .vtf and it comes up with "Problem figuring out outputdir for hl2/materialsrc/sprays/" please help!! if you got the solution then please mail me at suicidalstyle@hotmail.com

@suicidalstyle- your email address didn't work, so I'll just post it here and hope you see it. It sounds to me like you're running the vtex.exe from a location other than its default directory. The folder tree needs to be intact, I took a screenshot to show you:

http://www.mavisxp.com/screenshots/vtex.jpg

And you may wanna check out your Hotmail account, it doesn't seem to be working ... ;)

Hey there Mavis! first of all, thankx alot for this tutorial, you've made it pretty Pro looking and very clear!, there was only one problem for me though! Am using Photoshop CS, and I've downloaded the Targa_plugin from adobe, and I've followed all your steps to the dot!have bought Half Life so I'm not using a beta version of CSS. Still, all my transparancy comes out white!

Am real greatful for any help on this! thankx alot!

This is the problem i have when i download the vertex thing that the tutorial tells me to it itsnt a folder........ its like one of those things that doesnt have a folder to open it please someone help me!!!!

I'm getting the same problem:

C:\vtex>vtex.exe -mkdir -shader LightmappedGeneric hl2\materialsrc\sprays\*.tga

input file: hl2/materialsrc/sprays/testspray
Problem figuring out outputdir for hl2/materialsrc/sprays/testspray
Hit a key to continue

My directory structure is fine.... havent moved anything.

Well I tried it, and came up with this

http://www.farcryuniverse.com/images/spray.gif

I have the same problem!
Help some1 please..

~

C:\vtex>vtex.exe -mkdir -shader LightmappedGeneric hl2\materialsrc\sprays\*.tga

input file: hl2/materialsrc/sprays/testspray
Problem figuring out outputdir for hl2/materialsrc/sprays/testspray
Hit a key to continue

~

Respond please..

Thanx in advance..

-^1900-

:)

It seems that the current CS:S will accept the TGA if you simply use the import spraypaint in the options menu. No need to convert it, even for transparant backgrounds.

check out http://sprayr.scumhunter.net/
This prog does all the work for you except for creating your custom tga with an alpha channel
It can even create animated sprays...

Nice tutorial m8!

So is there any way with photoshop 7.0.1 to create a transparent targa? Is there a plugin I can get, or something to that degree, because I have a sweet spray but I can't save it as transparent. If you have any links to a plugin like this, so I can make mine transparent, that would be great, thanks!

@ Salami Gonzales: thanks for the link!

@ Fireball: I've heard that the Targa plugin for PS 7.0 works with 7.0.1, too ...

I had a problem. It said: "Problem finding an output directory." when I ran the program. Any idea why? I extracted the VTEX folder to my Desktop and added the Targa file in the corresponding "Sprays" folder, as the tutorial stated. I'm not sure what I did wrong.

Mine appears really really small but transparent, you cant even read my name on it :/, any ideas?

For the vtex problems, make sure you place the .tga file in the materialsrc/sprays folder, not the materils/sprays folder :D Hope this helps, and good luck to you all :)

Just wanted to say thanks for the guide. I was going crazy trying to get it to work, and after reading this I found out I was doing everything right, except I was running Photoshop 6.0. Had to do it from a frends house, but in the end I got my spray, so thanks again for the help.

Woo hoo! You rock, thank you so much for the awesome tut!

Excellent tutorial. Unfortunately I couldn't get photoshop CS alone to do what I wanted, even after replacing the file format plugin--but here's what DID work:

Save the file as a .png with transparency.
Install the latest binary of ImageMagick from http://imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php (You need the windows binary if you're on a Win32 system, obviously.)
Install ImageMagick, and assuming you updated the search path (an option in the installer), you can simply run:
convert spray.png spray.tga
Use this .tga with vtex and it works like a charm.

Thanks for that info, Hagios ...

I hadn't really thought about this tut in quite some time, I'm glad that it's still helping people ... (^-^)

Thank you both for the tuto and the great link

Its so great! Thanks all! It so difficult way to create transparent spray with Photoshop CS 2.