How To Make a Custom Weapon Skin for CS:GO
I. Important Notes / Disclaimer
- Be patient. Read carefully. Don’t give up.
- The skins you make won’t be visible to other players unless they install your skins. To install a custom skin, see the Reference section at the end of article.
- Servers that are ”pure” will kick you when you try to join if you have custom skin mods. This guide includes instructions on how to temporarily undo your mods when you want to join official servers.
- This was written pre-Weapon-Skins-Available-On-Workshop. It’s possible that almost everything contained in this article, and any cool skins you make, will be deprecated and useless if/when the Workshop opens up to allow for skins.
- You may run into errors while using the required third-party tools. Refer to the tool’s documentation if this happens.
- I don’t work for Valve. If you work for Valve and you’re using this guide, put in a good word for me please.
- Check out the Reference section to find the links that made this article possible.
- Be patient. Read carefully. Don’t give up.
II. Software Required / Tools Needed
You will need to install five things:
GCFScape to extract .vpk’s (Valve packages)
VTFEdit to extract and save .vtf’s (Valve texture files)
Image manipulation software that can open/save to .tga format (Photoshop or GIMP)
Notepad++ to edit the text of a .vpk
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to test your skins and enjoy!
CS:GO 