Entering the CS:GO market
A downloadable Textures
These past few months I have invested my time into creating skins for the Counter-Strike:Global Offensive workshop. Every once in a while Valve (the makers) release cases with 17 skins varying in rarity. These skins are often made by artists that post their designs to the community workshop, these artists also receive royalties for every sale of their skin. I have been playing CS for years and always thought of making skins, but was never skilled enough or did not have the time for it.
I started off with testing out the tools Valve made available for everyone to use and decided to enter in a huge contest they were hosting last year. I made several test skins for this contest to get in touch with the creative process. Skins I made for this competition were:
AK-47 : Dream emergence
Sketchfab model link: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/csgo-skin-design-ak-47-dream-emergence-5caa4208d...USP-S : Dream reaper and Nightmare harvester
Sketchfab models:https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/csgo-skin-design-usp-dream-reaper-120887697f8640...
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/csgo-skin-design-usp-nightmare-harvester-c3c615d...
Lucid flower collection:
After this testing phase I decided I needed more information on what style works best in the eyes of the players. I decided to choose a single weapon and make 3 differently styled skins but for the same rarity. By doing this the emphasis and only difference between the skins is the tyle, this will give me clear results after I pull the statistics from the CS:GO workshop.
The skins I made are:
P90 - Ancient (Material manipulation)
Sketchfab model:https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/csgo-skin-design-p90-ancient-5eb6f65af80347d48ee...
P90 - Discovery (Illustration style)
Sketchfab model:https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/csgo-skin-design-p90-discovery-c3a78728f4cb49009...
P90 - Artefact (3D manipulation)
Sketchfab model:https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/p90-artefact-d43b908a27c049b88fd6343f440aee29
Because I am a 2D generalist without the required skills to create insanely detailed 3D models and normals maps I had to find a workaround. The tools Valve presents us with are extremely outdated (about 20 years old) and only give us a few options to make the best skin possible. The normal map plays a crucial part in the skin designs, even the illustrated style skin utilizes a normal map to lay emphasis on certain points. I hand-painted all of these textures, including the normal map.
To find out how I managed to hand paint normal maps I have made a tutorial:
As a downloadable on this itch page you will find a PDF with a more comprehensive layout detailing every step I take in the process of hand-painting these normal maps, I hope it benefits anyone watching :)
Final statistics for the P90 collection skins:
P90 Ancient:
P90 Discovery:
P90 Artefact:
These statistics come as a big surprise, skins that utilise 3D modeling and changes seem to be quite popular, yet out of these three skins, ONLY the illustrative styled skin has a majority positive rating. This tells me I maybe know even less than I expected and that this test was definitely very useful. I will take this into account when creating my next set of skins by focusing on mainly illustrated and hand painted skins.
- Lan Gnezda
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