⚠️Warning: Do not join game servers with this tool active.
I do not know if it will trigger VAC but I wouldn't want to test it.

Intel GPA is a suite of tools to profile and analyse a game's performance. What the tools are capable of go far beyond this guide.

For this guide we will be using the "Graphics Monitor" and "Graphics Frame Analyzer" tools.

By using these tools we can take high quality images of in-game models. For this guide we will be taking screenshots of warpaints with transparent backgrounds.

⚠️Disclaimer: With the latest version of Intel GPA (release 2024.1) support for DirectX 9, 10, and 11 has been discontinued.

Therefore you need to download the previous version (release 2023.4) from the provided download link below..

🔗Download[web.archive.org]

Open Graphics Monitor after installing the Intel GPA tools from the download link above.

You need to enter the path for Team Fortress 2 in the first text field.
Application Executable with Command Arguments
"C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/tf_win64.exe"

Enter the Team Fortress 2 folder here.
Working Directory
C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2

and in the bottom text field you can enter the launch properties that you want.
Environment variables
-dev -console -noborder -novid -windowed -w 3840 -h 2160 -insecure
-insecure prevents you from joining VAC-secured servers.

Be certain to change to Frame [DX11]*. This will mean that we can use the frame capture tools in Team Fortress 2.

*Frame [DX11] is not enabled by default. You must click the Gear icon, then enable "Extended Profiling Modes. (Thanks for pointing this out, Zeugziumy)

You should now be able to launch TF2 by clicking Start.

When in-game navigate to the warpaint you want to capture and use the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+C

This will create a .gpa_frame file in your Documents/GPA folder. You can close TF2 when you have captured the frames you want.

You can open the frames you captured either by clicking on them within Graphics Monitor or by opening the .gpa_frame file directly within Graphics Frame Analyzer.


Navigate to the relevant Render Target (RT) on the left side of the Graphics Frame Analyzer window. Click on the RT that appears to contain the weapon you captured. In the instance depicted in the screenshot above the relevant Render Target was RT 3.

Right click on the image that contains your weapon and click Save Image.

Be sure to save the image as a .png file.

This process will allow you to capture high-quality transparent images of your warpaints!

The benefit to using this method is that you can get higher quality images than you could using in-game screenshots and you do not need to work on keying out or masking around the weapon as with other methods.

Please let me know if you found this guide useful and let me know if there are any issues!

The warpaint featured in this guide is my warpaint from last year. Check it out if you want to!
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3028357330
(This method was not used in the promos for this warpaint).