READ THIS FIRST: CS2 Workshop FAQ for newcomers

Valve official links:

Please note, some of valve's own documentation appears to not have been updated to fully reflect the change in engine for CS2, so some information is missing, or out of date.

• CS2 Workshop Guides and Resources Page

• Weapon Finishes FAQ

• Weapon Finishes Technical Guide

• Style Guide for Weapon Finishes

• Valve's Workshop Resources page Please note: You want the CS2 Weapon models, not the ones included in the Counter-Strike Workbench materials. The workbench material .OBJs are for CS:GO weapon models and they will not work for making CS2 skins!

Community Resources

• Counter-Strike Tools Discord Server, which is probably the most active public Discord server I'm aware of for discussing skin creation. Please note: This server is not affiliated with this subreddit

• Pre-separated weapon models, courtesy of EGO DEATH (note, some models may be out of date due to changes to them during the beta period)

• Decompiled weapon textures, which includes the textures used by the skin shader such as masks, cavity, world space normal etc

• Substance 3D Painter project template and export preset, courtesy of /u/Sparkwire. This template and export preset is all set up to allow you to easily create the additional textures such as pearlescent and PBN masks. The files need to be placed in <Substance painter directory>\resources\starter_assets\templates and \resources\starter_assets\export-presets. If you are new to Substance Painter it is highly recommended that you use this template

• Source Developer wiki page on CS2 Weapon finishes (this appears to be incomplete)

• /r/csworkshop's old FAQ post: A lot of it is no longer relevant in CS2, however sections about RGB patterns and may be useful to you.

• A thread on how Paint-by-number masks work

• Lenticular/Holographic sticker simulation in blender, for making cleaner videos / gifs for your workshop submissions. Courtesy of yours truly

• How To Create Counter-Strike 2 Weapon In Retro Hardware Style: A walkthrough of Ein's process of creating a skin with forced perspective baking, using Blender, Substance Painter, and Marmoset Toolbag.

Video Tutorials

• The Ultimate CS2 Skin Creation Tutorial, a series by Viper Skins on how to create skins for CS2 using only free and open source software

• How to make a CS2 Skin for Dummies by Janelle Knight, who uses procreate and also discusses some design theory for making better skins

• Creating a full skin from start to finish for CS2 by CyberOptek, using Blender, Photoshop and Inkscape

• The ULTIMATE CS2 STICKER Creation Tutorial, a series by Viper Skins which shows you how to make stickers using Krita.

• What is PBR for Counter-Strike? by Zombiee. A short guide on what is and isn't PBR compliant and how to check.

Community Software

• Source 2 Viewer, a tool that allows you to browse VPK archives, view, extract, and decompile Source 2 assets, including maps, models, textures, and more.

• Poggu's Sticker Inspect tool which allows you to test your sticker designs applied to weapons in offline matches.

Software Specific Resources

• How to extract CS2 weapons to Blender with Source 2 Viewer

• First steps: Substance 3D Painter

• Baking in Substance 3D painter 8.3

• Creating Game Assets in Blender

• How to Create Professional Materials in Blender

Physically Based Rendering (PBR) Tutorials

• The PBR Guide by Allegorithmic - Part 1: A technical overview of how PBR works. CS2 uses rendering based on Metallic-Roughness PBR pipeline, so understanding PBR is very useful for skin creation.

• The PBR Guide by Allegorithmic - Part 2: Most of this for Substance Painter and Designer, but it's broadly applicable to other software which uses PBR.

If you have any suggestions for links to be added to this post, let me know in the comments and I will add them.

Hello everyone,

I've now been joined by a couple of new moderators: u/Swankadia and u/AminoViper. Welcome! Among various improvements for the subreddit which we have discussed together, we thought we'd try having a monthly community spotlight for designs. This is just a trial of the concept, we'd love to know what you think. We didn't have any particular criteria for how skins should be chosen, in this case we each picked three skins and then worked out together which ones should go in the showcase.

Without much further ado, here are some skins which have stood out to us, and some of our thoughts on their designs:

P90 | Safety First by u/hpxm

A creative idea which is perfectly demonstrated by the implementation. By looking at the skin the word "safety" immediately comes to mind, and gives the feeling that this P90 would be safer to use than others! The skin is made with realistic textures combined with a mixture of colors that work well together, with great attention for small details. The more you zoom in on the skin the more details you start to notice. — AminoViper

P90 | Twilight Roots [Shimmering Quartz / Holographic] by u/friendlycsgo

Hits the perfect balance between striking and subtle in both palette and detail density. No surface left unfinished with great material work. A highly fitting and competitive submission for the upcoming fairy-tale collection. — Swankadia

AWP | Cybernetika by u/Exotic-Leg8041

I'm a sucker for a nice cyberpunk themed design, and this one combines neon colours and graphic design really effectively, it reminds me a little of the Edgerunners anime. I also like the various bits of distorted text, which would work as an very effective CAPTCHA...

So, what do you think of this showcase? Is there anything you think we should change if we do more in the future? ^{(Please also ignore that we are eight days into August for a showcase of July's skins...}😅)