Garry's Mod is a sandbox mod for the Source Engine. Unlike normal games there aren't any predefined aims or goals. Players are given tools and are left to entertain themselves. The player is in a world where objects can be created and destroyed on demand. Where people can be created and destroyed with the click of a mouse. A world made for him. A world he made.

Report this article Garry's Mod 10 Personal Skin Making

My First tutorial here it's to help everyone learn how to skin and make themselves personal skins for their use or others use.

Posted by Ziminvader on Aug 13th, 2007 digg this super bookmark
Basic Skinning.


[page=What you need (Important)]
If you wish to start skinning here's some tools you'll need.

Extract these files to your desktop:

  • GCF Scape: This is the program to open up VTF's(Valve Texture Files)
  • Adobe Photoshop 6.0 or higher: This is your skinning program, I personally recommend this on out of all the others. (I assume you will have some basic knowledge about photoshop before trying this tutorial)
  • VTF2TGA: This tool is what converts VTF's to TGA's when you convert VTF's to TGA's the VTF file becomes Editable.
  • VTF Tool: Lastly we have the VTF Tool this tool converts the TGA's back to VTF's which have been skinned over and they will show up in game.

[page=Ok let's get started]
To start us off open up GCF Scape (Steam may need to be shut down first)
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Next at the top left corner of GCF Scape click File > Open. This should come up, if it doesn't browse through your folders until you find one called "steamapps"
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Keep GCF Scape open and go to "My Computer" under your "C:\" drive make a folder called "My Skins.
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Back to GCF Scape, click on "Source Materials"
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Now you should see "root" "hl2" and "reslists"

Click on hl2>Materials and these files should come up.
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Scroll down until you see a folder called "Models" click on that.
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Next scroll down even more until you see a folder called "Humans"
Under Humans you will see a folder called corpse, Male, and Female Choose "Male"
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Click Group01 and alot of files should be under it.
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Next you will see a file called "citizen_sheet.vtf" Do not choose the vmt. file.
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Now Right Click on "Citizen_sheet.vtf" and choose "Extract" extract it to your "C:\My Skins" Folder
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Go to your "My Skins" folder and you should see this.
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Time to convert the citizen_sheet.vt to a TGA so we can edit it.

You should've downloaded the vtf2tga tool to your desktop so go there and open it up.
Now you should see these files:
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Copy all those files and paste them into your "My Skins" folder.
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Now double click vtf2tga.bat and all the VTF's in that folder will be scanned and asked if you want to convert them to tga's. When it asked you to delete the originals type y and press enter.
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Now the vtf should be a tga!
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[page=Skinning>

Now for the fun part getting to skin this citizen to have completely different clothing and to have a clothing stlye that matches you. Remember that you don't have to make him your personal skin just for you, you can make it for other people or just make a citizen have normal clothing instead of wearing blue suits.

Double click citizen_sheet.tga and it will open in photoshop you should see this.
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Now go to "Image>Image Size" and resize it to 2048x2048.
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Then click the magnifying glass tool and choose "Fit Screen"
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Next go to "Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen" And Sharpen it about 2 times.
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Ok time to skin, I usually start with the shirt first so lets go with that.
Create a new layer, then using the polygonnal lasso tool cut out the shirt.
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On the new layer pick a color that you want your shirt to be. I chose green so fill it in with green.
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Next under the Layer Options panel choose the layer to be "Overlay" Now you have changed the color of his shirt.
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Now to give the shirt a unique pattern go to "Edit > Fill" And use these settings.
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Now here you can play around with the patterns and create new combinations of patterns. This will make your shirt a little more unique.

Now it's time to add your name somewhere. Take out the Text tool use a good font you like and font size and put it in the top right part of your shirt. Make sure it stands out.
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Now for the Pants. If you like the texture of the pants but just want them to have a more lighter color try doing this.
Select the Background layer, then use the polygonnal lasso tool to cut out the pants, be sure not to cut out the shirt with it.
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Now go to "Image > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast"
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I used these settings, you can use your own settings too just play around with them.
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Now it's time to change these.
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I just went on the background layer and covered them with white.
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Ok now if you want gloves here's what you can do, select polygonnal lasso tool and cut out all the hands.
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Create a new layer and fill the hands in with whatever color you want your gloves to be. Next go to "Edit > Fill" and fill the gloves in with whatever pattern you want,
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Ok now we're done with skinning. Save the file you've been skinning on over the old TGA file.

[page=Gettings Your Skin to Work ingame]
Now it's time to get the skin you've been working on to work in game.

First, Download source SDK if you haven't.

Next open up the VTF Tool you downloaded (Should be on your desktop)

Extract the "VTFTool.exe" to your steamapps\account name\sourcesdk\bin

Now this program will become usable

The VTF Tool will be in you sourcesdk\bin Go ahead and open it up
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Now set both file paths for "C:\My Skins"
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Next go to "File > Convert to VTF > File..." Go to your My Skins folder and find citizen_sheet.tga. Click the "Let's go!" button and it will convert to a VTF.

Now go to your My Skins fiolder and you will see citizen_sheet.vtf.

Keep that file open and now go to your steamapps\acoount name\garrysmod\garrysmod folder.

Create a folder called "materials" if there isn't one, then inside the materials folder create a folder called "models" then inside models create a fodler called "Humans" inside the Humans folder create another called Male, then inside Male create yet another folder called "Group01"

Put the "citizen_sheet.vtf" into your "Steamapps\(account name)\garrysmod\garrysmod\materials\models\Humans\Male\Group01

Now your done you have completed your first personal skin!

Screenshots:
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[page=Finished]
Thank you to all who read this tutorial i really hope i helped someone out there learn how to skin. Remember that this was my first tutorial and I tried my best on it. Stay tuned for my next tutorial "Hexxing Your Personal Skin"

Comments
Ziminvader
Ziminvader Oct 24 2007, 4:29pm says:

Its on there?

+2 votes     reply to comment
huggybear4sh
huggybear4sh Oct 22 2007, 7:00pm says:

where the hell is step 4

+2 votes     reply to comment
huggybear4sh
huggybear4sh Nov 4 2007, 10:21am says:

ok it works now thanks

+2 votes     reply to comment
AlMightyBob
AlMightyBob Nov 12 2007, 6:02pm says:

Is there a way to make the skin serverside so that other players can see it if you host a server?

+3 votes     reply to comment
Ziminvader
Ziminvader Nov 15 2007, 7:18pm says:

Not that i know of you would need some kind of plugin on your server that makes client download it when they join.

+2 votes     reply to comment
huggybear4sh
huggybear4sh Nov 18 2007, 1:26pm says:

hey thanks a lot for this

this is what i came out with on the first try it's not great but really helped me
I52.photobucket.com

+2 votes     reply to comment
Ziminvader
Ziminvader Nov 19 2007, 12:40am says:

Thanks that's why i made this tutorial :D lots of people have been wondering how to do it.

+2 votes     reply to comment
Keenankeenan
Keenankeenan Dec 17 2007, 4:11am says:

I have done everything except making the .tga file into the .vtf file.. Whenever I try to open VTFTool.exe it comes up with an error that looks kinda like this:

VTFTool.exe - Entry Point Not Found

(X) The procedure entry point Q_SexExtension could no be located in the dynamic link library vstdlib.dll.

Do you know of any solutions to this problem?

+1 vote     reply to comment
marishtar
marishtar Dec 20 2007, 12:49am says:

You don't need the programs for converting the .vtf file. For this I only used GCF Scape, then I searched for and found a .vtf plugin for Photoshop.

Link- Nemesis.thewavelength.net

+1 vote     reply to comment
ArmidiloX
ArmidiloX Dec 31 2007, 1:31pm says:

awesome tutorial but do you have to have adobe photo shop cuz i dont have it and really wanna make a skin but photoshop is like $700.

+1 vote     reply to comment
belagiorgo
belagiorgo Jan 5 2008, 8:57pm says:

ArmidiloX you can download free anyware its easy to use to the photoshop

+1 vote     reply to comment
Rockcoons
Rockcoons Apr 5 2008, 10:11pm says:

Whenever I try to open something with GCF Scrape it says: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process?

+1 vote     reply to comment
PayamT
PayamT Jun 23 2008, 3:08pm replied:

You need to turn off steam

+1 vote     reply to comment
Exionatchi
Exionatchi May 24 2008, 6:17pm says:

I can't get the skin in the game, can anyone tell me what I should do?

+1 vote     reply to comment
PayamT
PayamT Jun 23 2008, 7:39am says:

User Post image -.-

+1 vote     reply to comment
Ryuhza
Ryuhza Sep 2 2008, 10:23pm replied:

User Post image -.-

I can't see it either

+1 vote     reply to comment
LordShrimp
LordShrimp Aug 21 2008, 9:42pm says:

alright.
have you released your hexxing tutorial yet?
i really am looking forward to that.
great job on this one.

+1 vote     reply to comment
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Garrys Mod 10
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Released Nov 25, 2006
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