Some time at the beginning of the year the PBR validator appeared to have been adjusted, submissions that previously passed now failed, and so in order to get this pattern to pass again I’ve had to alter the colour palette so that the darkest brown is no longer dark, and to compensate for this lack of contrast I have made it shiny in the roughness map.

This is going to be a bit of a learning process for me as my background is not in 3D or in PBR. I spent so long tweaking the illustration and then the custom mask that I neglected the other new image maps. Post update I felt something was not right with the colours. Instead of relying on the roughness slider which gave a uniform reflectance, I experimented with a map that had different values for the pattern colours; the impact it had was tremendous. All the washed out browns looked crisp and shiny once I set the roughness to be smoother. Interestingly the highlights looked worse smoother, as they reflected the dark surroundings, so I reduced the reflectiveness of the highlights and mid tones. With the browns now more metallic I raised the RGB luminosity value of the brown to above 90, which I assume is what is meant by the effective RGB range blurb on the official guide site. Either way, it passes the albedo check ingame.


I had shelved this idea for years because I wasn't feeling it, but after new years in 2023 I wanted to start making finishes again and I felt this would be a good one to see to completion. When CS2 was announced I left it again until the final release as its generally a bad idea to design with moving goal posts!

I wanted to depict a herd of predatory animals in a random pattern finish, and there would be enough of them in a pack so that each iteration was different. I settled on hyenas as its a unique take, and it was to be called ‘pack lunch’, but I later found out that the actual term is ‘packed lunch’ which doesnt work so well; so I settled on ‘laughing stock’ due to the characteristic sound hyenas make. This monker also supports the lower damage SMGs as they are cheap and less intimidating to opponents. So I had a working concept and several potential weapon models in mind.

I studied some hyena reference and drawing guides then sketched some rough posed outlines to test for positioning in a tileable texture. Once I had the basic positioning in principle, I then manipulated the the sketches until the bodies were arranged into a good composition across the tile, then I rendered them in a vector style not to dissimilar to that of the glock weasel. During testing in workbench I noticed the new option for custom masks for some finish styles and I wanted to test them out. I had to convert the visual colours to a blend of the four paints for anodised multicoloured, which was a long process of trial and error. Since then I've been through multiple passes of tweaking the pattern tile, and creating and modifying the custom weapon masks which determine what parts of the weapon pick up what colour.

New to CS2’s ingame testing is a command that highlights albedo areas that are too dark. I only discovered this once I was ready to submit. Sadly all of the brown paint was much too dark! This lead to a prolonged period of adjustments, changing the paint colours to have less contrast and dark tones, and then adjusting the other colours in the albedo pattern texture to suit. The current colour scheme passes and is a good compromise, however in all honesty I much preferred the contrast from having darker tones. I have a gut feeling that the level the command highlights as being overly severe, however I have complied as submitting a design that fails would be a waste of time on my part.

Also note the colour I have used for the yellow paint does appear quite saturated. This can be toned down as needs be to be more realistic, however I felt the colourscheme is a little bit duo-tone and a bit more saturation adds interest.

I think the pattern, colourscheme, and concept suit lower tier weapons and rarity grades. and have worked up so far: an MP7, an MP9 with some static paw prints on the stock and top, and a Mac-10 which a static laughing hyena on the back facing the player. Originally the pattern was designed for the P90 as it has be best surface area for pattern based designs, however the existence of other accepted finishes of similar concepts (tiger pit) and similar brownish colourschemes diminishes its chances. In addition the custom mask for the P90 has many inaccessible components which is really frustrating as it limits creativity. I was on the fence about submitting it to the workshop, however I decided to submit anyway just for reference.

I dont expect positive feedback as none of the submissions are on sought after weapons and the salience level is low, but if you feel inclined to leave feedback do so in the commends below!