ShadowReality

Since I’ve been playing Counter-strike: source again recently i’ve wanted to get better quality spray tags in there. The default way is fine enough, click Import Tag, select your piccy, and voila it’s in the game.

Just one problem.. It looks CRAP! The images tend to come out all choppy and blocky , and any black lines you have tend to not be a real black anymore, accompanied with bits of white (bad alpha channel) all over it.

Not to worry however as I have the ideal tutorial on how to get your spray tags from looking like this…

Looks Really Blocky, Can’t read the writing at all, one horrid mess

to this..

Ahh much better! Now we can even read it.

Ok , here goes..

Perfect Spray Tutorial

First off grab your image, as I am a big fan of Ctrl-Alt-Del I used Ethan in my spray tag, plus a nice graffiti font. I will also show you in this tutorial how to add an alpha channel which makes some parts of your tag transparent for some nice effects, this is just down to personal preference though.

My Image here is 256×256 (maximum spray tag size), as you can see it currently has a transparent background.

Transparent Background

I find it helps to see what it would look like in-game to use a bit of the background from the level, for this i took a screenie of a wall out of dust2.. nothing special here..

That’s a nice wall!

You can delete this layer later on, but while your editing your image it helps a lot to know exactly what it may look like.

Oh, thats how it will look. Great!

Download VTF Plugin

Ok, so now your ready you just need one more thing. The thing that makes this all possible. A VTF (valve texture file) plugin for photoshop, you can grab this from http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/. I belive it also works in Paint shop pro too for those who dont have Photoshop. Also if you dont have one of these paint programs then there is also a program on the same site named VTFEDIT, that you can use to convert images into the vtf files.

Now, before I tell you how to create a transparent alpha channel for your image i’ll quickly run over how the VTF plugin works..

Once you’ve read the readme (RTFM) and installed the plugin (it takes like 2 seconds) you can save out your spray tag by choosing “SAVE AS…” and choosing the new VTF file format.

A box of complicated options should pop up, but dont be scared, simply choose the template option “Compressed texture with alpha channel”, I also unselect mipmaps and thumbnails, then your done.

Some people seem to have some problems with the options, so below is a screenshot of the options I use.

I’ve also heard that checking “no level of detail” might improve it slightly, I tested this theory but it didn’t seem to do much to improve it, though there are threads on the internet that say this option is used for textures on the HUD.

If you have chosen not to have an alpha channel then your almost done, click here to skip the alpha channel tutorial and find out what you need to do next.

Adding the Alpha Channel

This isn’t as hard as it sounds, In Photoshop click the channels tab (next to your layers tab) and click the add new channel icon, it will automatically add the “Alpha 1″ channel.

You can think of the alpha channel as a layer mask, White areas are solid, Black areas are 100% transparent and grey areas are translucent.

Final Step

The last thing to do is move the .VTF file into your counter-strike directory. Copy it to your steam path..

C:\Steam\SteamApps\yourusername\counter-strike source\cstrike\materials\VGUI\logos

Boot up Counter-strike, click Import Spray, find your .vtf file , and your done.

IMPORTANT: You have to import it from the cstrike\materials\VGUI\logos path and not from anywhere else.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful , a lot of people have been asking me how to do this, if you want any more information drop a comment in the thread and i’ll get back to you.