[Skinmaking] How to Get the Most out of the Gunsmith Finish Style

If you are aiming to make a metallic looking skin, it is ideal to use the Gunsmith finish.
However, there are some hurdles you first need to overcome to get the most out of your skin.

DISCLAIMER

This technique does not work for every weapon.
I obviously couldn't try every one, but it only seems to work if the mask colors are red, green and blue.
Some weapons, like the AK47, have a different looking mask comprised of cyan, magenta and yellow, and there I couldn't find a reliabale way to get the desired alpha channel using their mask.
But I still hope this guide will help you enough :)

This guide requires:

• Photoshop (or Gimp, although it might not work as well as PS)
  
• VTFEdit
  
• Basic knowledge on how to make a skin in CS:GO and, at best, already one you are making / have made, because I am not going to go too much into detail on that.

However, if you haven't made any CS:GO skins yet, I highly recommend you to watch this video series by Hollandje first.

Also, please check out Centauris expansive guide about skins in CS:GO, he has put a lot of effort into making it!
The Definitive Guide on the Weapon Finish[overpay.guide]

① The Problem

The prerequisit for getting that metallic sheen is to set the phongalbedoboost (and in most cases together with the phongintensity) to a value greater than 0.




But if you start with just a completely black alpha channel for your texture (as you would with Custom Paintjob), you partially get a problem that looks similar to over-exposure:

② Theory Behind the Solution

The fix for this is to adjust certain areas on the alpha channel.

If you look more closely at how skins work in CS:GO, they use a so-called "Paint-by-Number"-system, where each gun is divided into four different segments that are color-coded (Red, Green, Blue and Black).



This will tell the engine which parts will be textured and which ones will keep the default texture (for example in the Patina style).

The color coding is stored as a texture in the game files, which means that we can use it to get the correct alpha channel!

This is how it works:

③ Locating the File Containing the Masks

First, we need to locate the file that contains the masks.

To do this, go to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\materials\models\weapons\customization

(The path might be different depending on where you have CS:GO installed)

In case you can't find the file or folders for the weapons there, do the following:

• Go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo"
  
• Then open the file "pak01_dir.vpk" using GFCScape (you can download it here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/GCFScape)
  
• Then go to the corresponding directory and follow the other steps below.

Next, go to the folder with the name of your gun (be careful, some guns have different names from their actual name in the game, like M4A4 - M4A1 / Dual Berettas - Elites / etc.).






Then, open the VTF-file with the name ending in _mask using VTFEdit.




Go to File > Export or simply press Ctrl+E to export the file to your desired location.

④ Editing

Import the mask file into Photoshop and scale it, so that it fits the entire texture.
With a 2k texture (2048x2048px) the scale factor is 800%.






Next, go to Image > Adjustments and select Black & White




Then copy the settings shown below.

Based on the paint-by-number system the red area should be set to 50% gray, while all others should be set to black.
This is because the red area is the one where the alpha channel specifies the wear (like Custom Paintjob), while for the other ones it determines the exponent (like Patina).

After that, you can rasterize the layer and copy its content.






Then go to the Channels tab next to the Layers tab and select the Alpha Channel.

If you don't have one yet, you can create it by clicking on the menu icon at the right.




Make sure to name it Alpha and not Alpha 1.

Next, select the Alpha Channel by clicking on it and press Ctrl+V to paste the selection you had copied earlier.

If you are using the AWP and see the gray monster looking back at you, you know you have done everything correctly ;)

Finally, you can disable or even delete the layer if you don't need it anymore.




Now you can save your file and test your skin!

⑤ Testing

Now you can open the Workbench and see how your skin looks!

If you have done everything correctly, the issue with the over exposure effect should be gone and the skin should look something like this:




As you can see, especially from the handle, the reflections are working as well.

If you now combine this with other aspects that improve the realism of your skin, such as baked lighting, you can get some great results!

⑥ Final Words

I hope this guide has helped you overcome the problems I also had when first using the Gunsmith Finish style!

As always, feel free to give suggestions or feedback :)


🔫Happy Skinmaking! 🔫

[Kai]

You're welcome, glad it helped you!

[airelling]

Thanks a million. This is useful. I've been waiting for this.

[Kai]

Thank You Faded7 :)
Honestly until now I hadn't payed much attention to making the wear in gunsmith, because it seems it mostly just darkens the whole texture, unlike custom paintjob where you can really determine which parts will wear down to the base material.

What I think is possible in gunsmith using the alpha channel is to adjust the reflectivity of areas to a certain degree.
For example if you are working in substance painter, you can simply export the glossiness map and incorporate it into the alpha channel, so that stuff like dirt will look slightly less reflective.


The way I make my alpha channel if it is made out of multiple layers is by putting them into a layer group in photoshop.
Once that is finished, I duplicate that group, convert it to smart object, rasterize the layer and copy and paste that into the alpha channel and delete the layer.


I hope my answer helps you, I am still experimenting with this stuff myself, but good luck with what you're trying to achieve :)

[Fa7ded]

Great help Thank you Kai xD
Just one question: If I'm done with the skin design and I applied your guide and I want to do the weapon wear in alpha channel as a gunsmith style, how this won't effect the alpha I created for the shine/phongalbedobost? Do I need to create another alpha channel for the wear to work or the same one but that might change the shine itself right??

[Porter]

Really helpful and easy to follow guide, thanks a lot.

[Kai]

UPDATE:
I've included the solution to the problem by Viper in the guide!

[Kai]

You're welcome, glad it helped you!

[aquarius]

Thanks for sharing your experience!

[Kai]

Thank you very much for your kind words!
If you might not have the files, there is another way to get them:

- Go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo"
- Then open the file "pak01_dir.vpk" using GFCScape (you can download it here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/GCFScape)
- Then go to the corresponding directory and all the files and folders you might need should be there
- You don't need to extract any file in that case, just double-click on the .vtf file and do the same thing as I have written in the guide

(actually, I do not even remember whether I had extracted all those files manually a long time ago, to just have them in my regular file explorer for quicker access.
So if more people seem to have this issue, I apologize for that)

But I will update the guide with this information, thank you again for your comment and I hope my answer has helped you!

[Viper]

Thank you for the great guide. It's thorough and something that I never got to fully understand until now!
One question though: In the path you specified (customization folder) I can only see a folder called "paints". I made sure that it's the same path, in fact I copy pasted it from your guide. How come you have the mask files while I don't?
And again, thanks a lot for this effort :)