Is this thing on? Guess I haven't been around in a while. But hey, wonders never cease. I am back with a brand new pattern collection which, in my opinion, looks pretty damn good. On top of it, it's actually the first ever spray paint finish that I created in well over 6 years of being a member of the workshop. Gosh how time flies. Anyway, the pattern. so I know it's quite a common theme, tiger skins, on the workshop, but I thought that I've never really seen one where I was like, yes this is it. I decided to give it my go, see what I could come up with, and at the same time test my abilities and see if I could make something which I considered a good representation of the king of the jungle, the tiger.


I went into the work process thinking that I could whip something up in a couple of hours, however, I was gravely mistaking. This skin took me a bit more time then I anticipated. I wanted to make this pattern completely in a modular environment so I challenged myself to only use substance designer. As I went to work I noticed that for some reason I could never fully resemble a tiger print, no matter what I tried the lines were too thin, not long enough, too short, not flowing correctly, or there were dots all over the place. It never really looked right.

As I kept going I got more and more frustrated and thought that I might've lost my skill, I mean, it's been a while since I have done something game design related. But eventually I started picking up from where I left off. I finally got the print right. Now it was time for detail.

The detailing process went quite smoothly. Instead of just quickly doing this part I decided to really take my time, look at what makes a tiger print, a tiger print. So a lot of testing later I finally managed to get a proper looking, greyscale pattern. And now the moment I dislike the most, making it in channel-separated colours so I could use it in-game. Luckily this process was quick and I managed to get a result I liked.

In-game I decided to fiddle with the colours, what was too saturated, what was too orange, and what was too bland. I feel like the colour pallete I ended up with works well with this texture and it bears a nice balance between the subtle orange of the tiger and the nice black lines running through it.

As for the style I decided to go for spray paint on every gun, except 4. Reason for this is that the spray paint finishes have this nice distinct look to them and it applies the pattern in such a way that the pattern is unobstructed. I had never really worked with it, but I was really happy with how it made the gun look. I made sure that every gun had it's own size parameters, because one size does not fit all when it comes to guns (or me).

After that it was time for taking screenshots in-game, and making the final images in my style. Write this description, and the most fun part, PUBLISHING! :)


As for the wear, I did nothing really special with the alpha channel. I just made sure that the maximum wear wasn't so extreme that the whole paint was gone, but instead make it so that you could still see the tiger pattern. I must say, even the battle-scarred versions look pretty cool with the remains of the tiger print.


I am happy with the end results, and I am happy that I am getting back into making skins for CS:GO. It's been a really long time and with me going into my last year of uni soon, I feel like this is a great oppertunity to get myself ready for the future and acquire skills that I want to use later when I become an artist in the videogame industry. There are some work in progress projects for CS:GO that I am working on that allow me to explore 3D-Modelling, baking, and much more, so keep an eye out for my workshop because I will start posting these when they are ready.

In the meantime, stay healthy, make sure to wash your hands, play some CS:GO and look after yourselves! :)

love

Hollandje