Creating Promo Images for War Paints

Learn how to create better workshop promotional images for custom war paints using a custom hud to create a green screen, then put these into photoshop to create a finished image

Getting started

Before you can create cool promo art for your skins you'll need a war paint of your own to work with. If you don't already have one check out this fantastic guide on getting started:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=500416008

Or, if you've already created a design, lets jump straight into creating some cool art for it!

For this tutorial I will be using my Peanut Polished war paint as an example:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1188598331

We will go over creating the following two images:

• A Thumbnail Image
  
  
• And a showcase Image
  

Setting Up

First, we are going to look at getting good screenshots of our skins that we can easily use to mask out the skin later on and put it onto the background of our choice.
As you can see here I have opened the war paint inspect menu and have selected the bamboo Brushed war paint. You should choose whichever skin you have replaced the materials for in your patterns folder.
However, as you can see the background behind the skin varies making it difficult to mask the skin using a tool such as the magic wand, and instead, the skin would need to be masked out manually.

To make this easier we are going to use a custom hud to add a green screen behind the weapon. We are going to be using the War Paint: Better Green Screen HUD. Download it and find installation instructions here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2224490198

Now when you launch TF2 and open the war paint preview, you should see something like this
Image provided by Dan Greene

And there you go, we can now take screenshots of our weapon skins on a green screen background, ready for masking the weapons out in photoshop

Masking the weapon

Now we are going to mask the screenshot in photoshop to remove the background from the weapon.
If you do not own photoshop you can look for tutorials for removing green screen backgrounds in your program of choice.

1. Start by pasting your screenshot into a new document, then make a box selection around the weapon
   
   
   
2. Press ctrl + shift + i to invert the selection and press delete to remove the non-green areas
   
   
   
3. Invert the selection again then go to select > color range
   
   
   
4. Select sampled colors from the drop-down menu then click on the green background, make sure the fuzziness is turned up to 200. Then press ok to accept
   
   
   
5. Now invert the selection again then go to select > refine edge
   
   
   
6. Turn down the shift edge to -100%, then press accept
   
   
   
7. Then invert your selection one last time, and then press delete on your keyboard
   

And just like that, your done!
If you are doing this a lot you might want to create an action that does this automatically, which you can learn to do here: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/creating-actions.html

Creating the Thumbnail

For the workshop, we are going to be creating two images, a thumbnail image and an image showing off our paint on various weapons. Let's start by creating the thumbnail:

1. To start with I create a new document that is 1024x1024, then paste in one of the textures for my war paint
   
   
   
2. Next I add a hue/saturation filter and turn down the brightness
   
   
   
3. Then I create a 10px border on a new layer and give it a dark outer glow
   
   
   
4. The next step is to get an image of the war paint itself, using the method talked about in the previous section. Alternatively, you can use this: https://gamebanana.com/skins/158136
   In my case, I have also added a drop shadow to help it to stand out against the background
   
   
   
5. Finally, I add some peanuts in the corner as extra decoration. This is up to personal preference and you are free to add whatever other details you want to the thumbnail
   

We now have thumbnail image to use for our design! Make sure to save it as a png before trying to upload it.

Creating a weapon showcase

Now we are going to make an image that shows off the paint on various weapons. To start with I follow the same steps as before, on a 1920x1080 canvas, in order to create a background

Next, following the steps mentioned previously, I mask out some different weapons that I think look the good with my skin.

Lastly, I add a shadow to the weapons along with some peanuts for decoration.

The End

You now have a thumbnail and showcase, ready to post your weapon to the workshop!

You're probably wondering how to get your weapon into a server, so you can take some screenshots, and unfortunately, right now the only way to do this is to purchase a copy of whatever skin you have replaced. This is currently the only way to actually hold your skin, so hopefully, valve adds a feature for this in the future.

Hopefully, you found this guide helpful, and if you have any suggestions, improvements or you think I missed something, let me know

[cuntcrusher.]

If you're using gimp once you remove the greenscreen turn the magic wands threshold all the way up, select the layer the weapon is on, and click anywhere to select the entire weapon, then go to: select > border. turn the border to 1-2 and press enter, it should select however many pixels you set it to around the object, then use the eraser tool to remove the pixels that are selected.

[MrStabed]

We need a gimp guide for this

[Venus #RustyLoot]

how do you resize the images of the war paint and weapon without losing resolution

[RazorUnibooplesgaming]

nice

[onliner ratat]

Please spam comments on my steam profile. im trying to collect comments ty

[Haxxit]

The hud download didnt work

[spy]

Dip here's a handy list of all the new ones.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1306670075
You'll have to make some more folders for it though.

[Pixel Brush]

Is there a command so I Can temporarily apply the War Paint to a weapon? (via itemtest or something)

[PlazmWraith]

how can you replace one of the new warpaint skins? like bamboo brushed or bonk varnished?

[Coolchou Zhao says: Hello Chat]

I used sfm XP