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Animated Skin Tutorial
Difficulty: Intermediate
Category: CS:S > SkinningAuthor(s): killocity
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The Animated Skin Tutorial



A lot of people want to know this, after the success of DarkElfa's animated glove skin. A couple have been made after his, simply by experimenting on what they know, me included.

But for all those who simply need to be told how, this tutorial is being written for you.

Tools needed:

  • Any imaging program that allows you to save as Targa (for this tutorial I'm using Photoshop CS2)
  • Vtex


  • The Tutorial



    To start off, you will need to make your skin. Open the skin you wish to edit and animate. For the purposes of this tutorial, I'll be showing my glove skin.

    Edit the skin to however you need as the base skin. Next, create the sections for your animation.
    E.g. For my glowing tatoo, I made new layers, each with the tatoo on in the same place, but each one had a slightly larger glow on it.
    Hide all the animation layers apart from the first frame.
    i.e. on mine, the tatoo with no glow is the only layer visible on top of the skin.

    http://csscobalt.com/

    Save this image as a TGA, at 32-bit, and call it 'spray001.TGA'. You'll find out why in a minute. Then, make the next animation layer visible, and the last one invisible.
    i.e. On mine, the glowless tatoo is hidden, and the tatoo with the slightest glow is now visible. Save this as 'spray002.TGA'. Repeat this for each frame you want on your skin. I don't think there are limits, but try not to go too high, as it may cause problems loading large files in-game.

    http://csscobalt.com/



    Vtex extraction - if already done, proceed past the yellow line

    To get Vtex working, you will need to extract to somewhere. I find it easiest to create a new folder called 'Vtex' on the desktop, and put all the vtex files in there. Make sure every folder and file goes in there, or it will not work.



    Creating the Animation

    Now that Vtex is set up, it's time to get all your TGA files ready for converting. In the vtex folder, go to hl2/materialsrc/animated. You will find a txt file called 'spray'. Open it, and set the end frame to however many frames the animation has.

    Place all your 'sprayXXX.TGA' files into this same folder as the txt. Make sure they all have 001-00X at the end, X being the number of the last frame.

    Go back to the vtex folder and run the 'convert' MS-DOS batch file. A small dialog box will open and the TGAs will be changed into one vtf file. If an error message comes up in the box saying 'could not find file spray00X' or something similar, then you didn't set the end frame value correctly.

    You will find the file in hl2/materials/animated now, along with a vmt file. Ignore the vmt, and simply copy the vtf to cstrike/materials/models/weapons/v_models/hands. If any folders are missing, then make them.

    Now create a new text document with wordpad in the same place as the hands. Copy and paste this into the text file.

    VertexLitGeneric
    {
    "$basetexture" "models\weapons\v_models\hands\v_hands"
    "$envmap" "env_cubemap"
    "$bumpmap" "models\weapons\v_models\hands\v_hands_normal"
    "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" "1"
    "$frame" "4"
    "Proxies"
    {
    "AnimatedTexture"
    {
    "animatedTextureVar" "$basetexture"
    "animatedTextureFrameNumVar" "$frame"
    "animatedTextureFrameRate" "10" //this is the FPS that the texture will animate at
    }
    }
    }


    Make sure to set the value after "$frame" "X" to however many frames your animation has



    Save this as v_hands.vmt. Now, re-name the file 'spray' to v_hands.

    Animation Preview

    Go into CSS and they should now work.

    Thank you to DarkElfa for letting me make this tutorial. Any questions, contact me. Any improvements needed to be made? Contact me.

    Examples

    Animated Tribal Gloves



    DarkElfaź's animated fire gloves test release



    Dragon's hands animated

    Added: 1 year agoTags: animated, animation, skin
    Feedback (25)
    Page of 3   1 2 3 Next Page
    I am legend [NOR] .
    Noob Power!!!!!!!1Y2M
    Posted 6 days ago
    When im using my animated nade i get a message saying i need this in the .vmt: $model=1 what does it mean?
    error:
    Material models/weapons/v_models/eq_fraggrenade/fraggrenade is being applied to a model, you need $model=1 in the .vmt file!
    btw if u could pm me a way to fix this i would be realy happy. :D
    - Noob Power!!!!!!!1
    .
    Uberstyle is a WiP! xDY2M
    Posted 2 months ago
    "$normalmapalphaenvmapmask" "1"
    "$frame" "4"

    what is the frame number set to if the other is the number of frames....?????!!!??
    -plz respond dude
    .
    Bullet.Y2M
    Posted 2 months ago
    Posted by Punkhamster

    That VTex shit doesn't work. i tried it a thousand times but i never works. It always says pciture must be a number of 2 or power of 2 i don't know anymore. but that's just stupid...


    All VTF textures have to be dimensions with powers of 2, it's how the source engine works.
    Heavys Metal .
    Heavy loves Metal!Y2M
    Posted 2 months ago
    That VTex shit doesn't work. i tried it a thousand times but i never works. It always says pciture must be a number of 2 or power of 2 i don't know anymore. but that's just stupid...
    WolfDarrigan .
    Y2M
    Posted 2 months ago
    "Can't setup path, set VPROJECT to your game directory (e.g. D:/DEV/TF2) in your environment
    Hit a key to continue"
    ...Any ideas?
    -
    Sargon the Great .
    BannedY2M
    Posted 3 months ago
    Will this work on Day of Defeat Source skins?
    - Banned
    .
    If your gonna die....Y2M
    Posted 6 months ago
    Is there a way of getting this to only by animated when your firing etc. being able to see the bullets being eaten up in the p90 clip would be good.
    |4SW| hyBRID .
    Never!!!Y2M
    Posted 6 months ago
    PLEASE can someone tell me why when i open my vmt file, why it says "error loading vmt texture:

    error:
    error parsing material on line 1 (expected shader name) ???????
    why does it say this, and in-game i dont see my hands?????????
    Basskay .
    Play that funky music, white boy. . .Y2M
    Posted 6 months ago
    ***NOTICE***
    VTex does not worlk on Windows Vista, and some later versions of XP ,if you cannot get VTex to work, then you should douwnload SprayR, which is much easier, and is compatible with all OS'.

    SprayR is available at:
    http://sprayr.scumhunter.net/
    Manter .
    My English sucks...Y2M
    Posted 7 months ago
    Very nice tut
    Page of 3   1 2 3 Next Page
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