I.R. Hogan

The following is a Tutorial for making transparencies in Photoshop for CSS. I had posted this in another post concerning sprays. I felt it would be easier to find just making a new post for it.

STEP 1

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:



STEP 2

Create your image

STEP 3

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:



STEP 4

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, you’ll see your new spray in the list.

You dont have to use the vtex, you can just use CSS option panel to import your spray I just like using the vtex converter myself.

Tips

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:





Hope this helps all who need it..

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ouija

Very nice tutorial, thanks for taking the time to put it together. ++ rep

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Trooper

i think everyone needs to make a jessica alba one of this and paint it every place..lol..+ rep hogan nice work

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that sounds like a good idea trooper.
-Vulcan

MagnaCentipede

Those poor headphones. What vulgarites they have witnessed.

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m0h3k4n

SprayR is still easier to use :P Just automates the converting into 1 step. But still, nice pictures.

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Clip

Have just followed the instructions above, but my sprays keep coming up with a white background.

I dunno what's gone wrong, any ideas?

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ScratchMonkey

Are there still aimbot hacks that depend on special colored models? I remember playing CS back before Source and a buddy would make sprays with the red/green aimbot colors. I could always spot someone using an aimbot because they couldn't hit me; their bot would fire at the spray on the wall behind me, leaving them helpless to my fire.

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ednos

Since the client knows the exact position of the enemies, the bot can use this information instead. I doubt any effective aimbots require colors.

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kean

Ever think that they were just missing you and hitting your spray that was ironically right behind you? lol

Agreed. It would be pointless to use colors.

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MagnaCentipede

Color bots are steampunk.

I'ma do this once so watch closely. Superfast transparencies using GIMP because if you steal Photshop, you set sail for fail.

1) Get your source image. Duplicate the layer. Delete the original "background" image.
2) Use the select tools (wand rocks) and use cut on everything you want gone. (no pasting, just cut cut cut) Everything that will be transparent will show as grey checkerboard.
3) Do any editing you want, like stamping text. Use "Merge Visible Layers" to condense everything to one layer.
4) Resize to 256x256 if you're square, 512x256 is valid, too. Use Cubic resize. (Resizing isn't required, but you get better quality if you resize it yourself rather than letting Source do it)
5) Save as TGA. Uncheck the RLE option, leave the start-bottom-left checked.
6) Load in game.
7) Spam it around.

I did a big example thing, but GIMP crashed because it sucks and fails moments before I was ready to save it.

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ScratchMonkey

Note that at the time I saw color-based aimbots, the game was based on the original HL1 engine. This was a looooong time ago. Since then I'm sure the cheaters have found the location of every important byte in the running binary and don't need to read the screen memory to do their dirty work.

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YouGotSmoked|TG|

thanks hogan, ill have to try it..

Potshot

Could someone link me to a tga2vtf converter?

highly_flammable

VTFedit is a powerful tool for converting anything to vtf's. It can also make vmt's for you.
VTFedit

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