Essential Spray Guide

[mystrdat]

This guide is meant to introduce an average L4D player to the world of the Source games spray feature. I will be using Photoshop terms, but you can create sprays in any other suiting software (GIMP, paint.net etc...).
Now, let's create a nice 256x256 spray with some transparency effects.

Image Format

Source can use 4 formats - JPEG, BMP, TGA and VTF. While it is easy to crop and resize a JPEG to use as a spray, it cannot have any transparency applied to it (simply a JPEG limitation). In case you want just a simple picture spray, you can end reading here - crop and resize your image, import through the game menu and enjoy. If you however want to create a nice texture with transparency effects, read on.

While BMP is pointless because of it's size and is in fact inferior, I will only talk about TGA (Truevision Targa) format and it's transparency. VTF is the Source SDK compiled texture file, which is created during any of the other formats import process.

note: Custom sprays are saved in the following default dir - C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\materials\vgui\logos\custom (or C:\Program Files (x86)\... on a 64bit system)

Photoshop - New Document

1) Create a new document with 256x256 pixel dimensions.
2) Open a JPEG or other format image of your choice, that you want to clean up with transparency and use as your spray.
3) Drop the JPEG Background layer onto your new document and delete it's default white background layer.
4) Resize Layer 1 (the dropped JPEG) to fit the document.

note: Valid spray dimensions are 256x256 // 128x128 // 64x64 etc... Anything less /2 down to the size of 1x1 will work, but will be too small at the same time. The maximum importable file size is 120kb.

Photoshop - Cleaning Up

5) Delete all areas you want to be transparent with either Magic Wand Tool, Eraser Tool, Magic Eraser Tool etc....
6) Switch to Channels tab and create a new channel. This channel will appear as Alpha 1 by default.
7) Toggle the RGB channels visibility back on and toggle the Alpha 1 channel invisible for now.
8) Get back to Layer 1 and use the Magic Wand tool to select all the areas you deleted from the image before.
9) Right click -> Select inverse.
10) Turn on and select Alpha 1 channel and delete the areas selected.
11) Proceed to Saving section or read up for more advanced effects.

Photoshop - Advanced Cleaning Up

note: The default Magic Wand selections, antialiasing and feather effect will create sort of a white halo around the spray where transparency should take effect. To get rid of it, read up this section.

For advanced cleaning up, you have to understand more stuff. All of it centeres around the new Alpha 1 layer - in a similar fashion as GIF does, it defines a color that will be interpreted as transparent. TGA however can create and use more than 1 transparency levels on that color. This gives you somewhat infinite possibilities on how to apply transparency to the layer - feather selects, advanced eraser brushes...
Note that everything not covered by the alpha channel color set will be visible in the final spray texture. At the same time, you can as well make the transparent color different than the default red to feel a bit more uberleet.

Another approach to advanced masking is the Color Range (Select -> Color Range), which is useful to select multiple transparency levels of a single color. With Localized Color Clusters unchecked, select the color you want to get rid of and use the Fuzziness slider to apply a bit of... well... fuzziness. 200 creates a fine anti-aliased effect. What you will get from this dialog is an advanced select with feathers applied and when inverted, can be used to delete unwanted parts from the Alpha channel. This process is handy when cleaning up images that highly blend in their own background.

note: The Source internal VTF conversion is far from perfect, so using VTFEdit to generate the VTF/VMT files yourself produces better results with less halo. Just note this if you want to produce a precise masking with the least amount of white halo.

Photoshop - Saving

11) Save as TGA with 32 bits/pixel resolution and Alpha Channels ticked.
note: At this point, you might as well save it as PSD first to be able to tweak your work later.
12) Import through the game menu. Options -> Multiplayer -> Import Spray.
13) Spray your shiny stuff in game with default "T" key.

GIMP/paint.net TGA Transparency

1) Create a new document (256x256 max).
2) Delete the default layer to get a checkerboard transparent layer (you might have to create a new one). This layer now serves as the transparency definition (in Photoshop - the Alpha1 channel has the same effect).
3) Add your stuff.
4) Save as 32bit TGA (Targa) file. Merge layers if asked to.
5) UNCHECK RLE Compression.

Spray Animation

The Source native VTF format is in fact a container and can hold several frames in a similar fashion as AVI does for movies. The only limit to the number of frames used is the maximum file size of importable content (120kb atm). Why not more? Well obviously because of network traffic. For compiling the frames into a VTF file, you will need a tool like VTFEdit.

Now - think of the texture animation process as a sequence of a couple spray textures you created. For ex. - you want to create a blinking eye spray with 2 frames repeating. Well - all you have to do is independently create each of the frames (one with eye opened, one with eye closed) and convert them to VTF with VTFEdit tool mentioned above.

1) When you got your frames ready, name them in an incremental fashion (1.tga, 2.tga, 3.tga...).
2) Open up VTFEdit and press CTRL+I (or File -> Import). Select the frames and click OK.
3) A lot of settings will come up - ignore them unless you know what you're doing and click OK. You can then view the sequence by pressing Play. In the Info tab, make sure your spray is not bigger than 120kb.
4) Save the sequence in the custom sprays directory (default C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\materials\vgui\logos\custom)
5) In VTFEdit, click Tools and Create VMT File. Save it to the custom spray dir as well (this file has directory structure saved inside, so if you for some reason did not save the VTF in the directory I mentioned, you will fail).
6) Import through game menu and enjoy.

Examples

- SSIops spray pack - some very nice sprays on fpsbanana.com

Useful Stuff

cl_playerspraydisable 1 - a client-side console variable that will make the spray textures invisible for you (useful when you don't want your kids to see hentai porn or jumbo wing-wangs during online games)

External Links

paint.net - a freeware lower grade editor equipped with all the mandatory features
GIMP - a freeware GNU "photoshop-like" editor
Adobe Photoshop CS4 demo - professional graphics editor
VTFEdit - Source SDK texture compiler (for animated sprays)
Photoshop VTF plugin - for creating simple VTF files straight away (32bit versions only)

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*Thank you for comments, technical information and votes.

-----

My Essential Console Commands thread.
My Essential Crashing Solutions thread.
My L4D Community Autoexec thread.
...

[mystrdat]

*reserved*

[Mixon.pl]

Originally Posted by oiccrene

I spray porn. Hentai to be specific.

I love you, man.

[oiccrene]

Originally Posted by Mixon.pl

I love you, man.

Only fail is that I have to scale it to 256x256 :/

[Mixon.pl]

Originally Posted by oiccrene

Only fail is that I have to scale it to 256x256 :/

Ah, damn it. It can barely hold 3 tentacles :/

[oiccrene]

Originally Posted by Mixon.pl

Ah, damn it. It can barely hold 3 tentacles :/

Yeah
and fail also is, that in ZPS, I could use any image as spray, I have to scale here ://

[T@T-2-MoNk3y]

i just use this

took 5 mins in paint.net

[HanoverFist]

Plus 1, for being a productive and helpful member.

[JereTHEend]

Originally Posted by DragonAsh2007

same here. Lets start a group! lol

Actually, will my TF2 sprays work with l4d?

all source game sprays work on all source games.

I myself know this info, but in addition have tool and skills to make animated sprays, they are also cool but the quality needs to be cut in half/frame - my "Do not fall UP stairs" spray rox tough

To get your TF2 spray in L4D, just import the VMT file.

[mystrdat]

Originally Posted by JereTHEend

all source game sprays work on all source games.

I myself know this info, but in addition have tool and skills to make animated sprays, they are also cool but the quality needs to be cut in half/frame - my "Do not fall UP stairs" spray rox tough

To get your TF2 spray in L4D, just import the VMT file.

I didn't go into animated sprays in this guide, but I might add it if people are interested.

[Fireflash91]

Originally Posted by mystrdat

I didn't go into animated sprays in this guide, but I might add it if people are interested.

I´m very interested!

[Lovok01]

I had trouble with GIMP and L4D using the TGA format ; L4D didn't know it was TGA 32-bit RBGA. I ended up converting to .vtf using :
http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?c=149
was quite simple really, and kept the transparency.

Also, my spray is awesome. It uses the last 'panel' from this comic :
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/0...cs-symbols.gif

[JCL]

Will someone explain to me what is so exciting about spraying something on the wall.......and then leaving?

[Ambrosia]

you might as well just learn photoshop if you want to make sprays with alpha transparency

[mystrdat]

Originally Posted by Fireflash91

I´m very interested!

Very well, give me some time to prepare it.