How to make a Counter Strike Source Spray with transparency

How to make a Counter-Strike: Source spray with transparency

By [HighHand] 2005

LINKS

Making animated sprays - need to know how to make normal sprays first!

INTRODUCTION

So what is "transparency" in Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S) sprays? Transparency is the part of the spray where it can be seen-through allowing what's underneath to show. That is, when such spray is sprayed onto say, a brick wall, in the game the transparent part will allow the brick wall texture to be seen.

Why want transparency in sprays? Basically because it looks nicer and reflects skill and creativity compared to those boring rectangular ones which everyone could make. It also makes the spray look like a spray! How often do you see saturated rectangular sprays in the real world?

HOW TO MAKE TRANSPARENT SPRAYS

There many tutorials on the internet so I needn't write one up. The best one I've seen is this one here by "benson a.k.a. (craigweb)". So have a read on that. Just to remind those who didn't know, you need Adobe Photoshop (preferably version 7) as the tutorial is specifically written for that version.

Those who have Paint Shop Pro please see the this tutorial.

In case the software links are broken use the ones listed below.

Photoshop TGA format update here (15KB)
TGA to VTF converter here (260KB) (Try using convert.bat for quicking moving of files)
Craigweb's tutorial, if link is dead

GETTING YOUR IMAGES

Now you know how to convert an image into a spray with transparency and getting it work in the game and you are now interested in how to use pictures downloaded from the web or your screenshots to use as sprays. Continue to read if you are interested...

The basic idea is to cut parts of a picture and apply Craigweb's method for converting it into sprays. Here I'll show you one common method on how to cut a part of a picture.

First make sure you have Photoshop (which you should have by now to create your own transparent sprays).

Next find an interesting picture.

I'll use mine in this example.

Those who play Unreal Tournament 2004 should have recognized where I got this screenshot from. Ok, so I decided I want an Unreal character spray - don't ask why. I took this screenshot by pressing the PrtScn button on my keyboard. This method applies to most games...including CS:S :)

Open the picture (or paste it) in Photoshop and you should see this:

You could use my sample image (571KB) for tutorial purposes.

Maximize the Photoshop window and zoom into the part of the picture you want. Ideally it should fit onto the screen - make it for comfortable for cutting.

Find the Lasso Tool on the Tools Menu and right click to pull down a submenu. Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool as shown.

With the Polygonal Lasso Tool start constructing lines to make the outline of our Unreal figure as shown below.

Feel free to start anywhere you like. I started at the red arrow. As you can see, I haven't finished the outline yet. It ended at the left shoulder at the time of taking the screenshot. You should continue until you end back at the start point - very important otherwise it will make it's own way back using another (undesired) way.

A few things to note.

Don't have to be perfect. But don't cut too much corners.
If you have lots of curves then you need to make more short lines to capture it shape profile. Be patient!
If you have transparency inside of the figure (like that of a "doughnut") just make another cutting inside. After completing it, press delete to cut out the shape. You need to use your common sense here :)
If you want semi transparency, consider Photoshop's features. Similar to how Craigweb made his semi-transparent shadow on the Half-Life logo.
Another common way of cutting is to use the Magic Wand feature in Photoshop. Up to you if you want to try it, but the Polygonal Lasso produces a much cleaner cut although takes more time. The Magic Wand ,actually, will also burn time especially when you are cutting an image with lots of similar colours!

Below is the complete one!

Now COPY this!!! Either by Ctrl+C (or Edit > Copy). Create a new canvas by pressing Ctrl+N (File > New). Press OK and then Ctrl+V, (Edit > Paste).

Save it as a Photoshop file since it will preserve the layers. Now you've got your figure!

You can dump away the original picture if you want.

Next step is to resize the figure to fit the spray dimensions.

Go to Image > Image size... Enter your new height and width. Here it's a personal preference on what you want them to be. For this tutorial we want the figure to be as large as possible whilst retaining the height-width ratio. So tick Constrain Proportions and select the largest number out of the two. I have 299 for width and 510 for height. So I would change 510 to 256*. Notice the other dimension also changes since Constrain Proportions is ticked. Click OK.

*256 appears to be adequate for most spray sizes, even for large ones so I recommend 256. Some say 512 could also be used. Personally, this didn't work for me.

Now we know this new resized figure fits completely into the 256x256 spray area. But for it to be a CS spray it's image size must be a 256x256 box. Therefore we need to resize the canvas too.

Image > Canvas size. Make sure you change the units to pixels and you should recognize that one of the dimensions is 256 which you previously entered. For the other dimension (which should be smaller than 256) change that to 256. For my example, height=256 and width=150. So I would change width to 256. Click OK and you now have your figure centred in the new 256x256 box.

Press Ctrl+Shift+N (Layer > New > Layer...) Name that as background_layer (using Craigwebs convention). Then OK.

In the Layers window (default near bottom right hand corner of Photoshop) you should see two layers: your figure and the background_layer. Drag and the background_layer down so that the figure layer is above the background_layer (now background_layer at the bottom).

Here (154KB) is the end result.

From here follow Craigweb's tutorial!!!