Making Gold guns for noobs

[Heartview]

For some reason beyond me, people are still in love with gold guns, and constantly wanting them. And with so few people that know how to do gold, I figured I would whip up a little tutorial that shows people how to get a proper gold. This tutorial is going to cover one of the 3 main ways to make gold, as this method is the most versatile, and provides some of the better results. It is also a simple method, where editing only one part of the file can give drastically different results. This method also only requires editing one file, the specular file, which means you can turn gold on and off simply by disabling/enabling specular mapping in game.

So first off, a little info about specular mapping:

"Specular highlights are important in 3D computer graphics, as they provide a strong visual cue for the shape of an object and its location with respect to light sources in the scene. Specularity is the visual appearance of specular reflections. In computer graphics, it means the quantity used in 3D rendering which represents the amount of specular reflectivity a surface has. It is a key component in determining the brightness of specular highlights, along with shininess to determine the size of the highlights." -Wiki

To put it simply: The speularity of a gun, will determine how much it reflects light as you move around the map, and how intense the specularity is. (polished) Gold has a naturally high amount of reflectivity, and will reflect a lot of light when you move around the map. This is why when you simply color the gun yellow, it still doesnt appear gold, because the specularity of the gun was kept the same as before, but the color (hence the file name _col for color) changed.

This entire tutorial assumes that you know the basics of texture modding. If you feel that you are not experienced, or are new at this, try getting a little more practice so you comfortable doing it before moving on to some more complicated stuff.

So in this guide I will show how to do the simplest, as well as cleanest and most versatile version of gold. It only requires editing one file, and will not mess up guns that are not using the specular shine. So this method is noob friendly, and nice looking, while at the same time looking very well done.

NOTE: This is going to be a picture tutorial, but I will post text as well, for the 56kfags, and people who just dont want to wait for all the pictures to load.

First of all get all the files you will be needing. For a guide on where to find the correct files, especially the specular files, go to this thread and download the attachment:
https://www.mpgh.net/forum/281-call-d...-guide-v1.html

For this guide I will be using the Famas as an example. So get your files ready.



After converting them to DDS, and properly organizing your originals and mods, lets open it up and start. Here is the unmodified specular file for the Famas:



For this tutorial, we will be using one color for the entire thing. The color can change slightly, But its reccomended that you stick with just this one. The color is #ffba52


Select the areas that you want to have gold:


With your brush settings as so, cover the entire area with our color:



This is where it can get interesting. The alpha channel. First off, to get a dull shine, you will need to select a gray color. For the first screenshot I used a slightly lighter gray, but this one is fairly darker, and you will see the difference it makes:


Alternitivley, you can simply turn the slected area white, and end up with a very reflective surface, that is much closer to that of CoD4's golden style.


Here is the in game effects:

Dark gray alpha:

Lighter Gray alpha:

White alpha:


Playing around with these effects will give you different variations on you gold's reflectivity, and tint. Also feel free to mess with the color itself, but for the best effect, keep it close to what I use.

No make sure to save your work, fix it, and go in game to check it out. Always remember to turn specular mapping on, to be able to see this. Another reason why I like this, is because when you turn specular mapping off, you will have just the regular colored gun, while the other methods will give a nasty look

Now remember: This is only one of the methods, and the simplest. Adjusting the colors and alpha channels using this tutorial will give many different results, but other methods are capable of producing cleaner, crisper, or brighter camos. However, by using this tutorial you should be able to grasp the basics of how gold will work. Feel free to modify the techniques for different guns, to get different effects.
An example of altering this tutorial, would be to set the brush settings to color dodge on the specular file, and using the Hue/Saturation filter to turn the color file to a goldish color, to achieve a bright crisp gold like so:
https://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3...2921053003.png

Also, certain methods may not work or have the same effects on all guns. Each gun will require a certain technique, and most likely adjustments to each of those techniques.

I realize this tut might not be incredibly noob friendly, but like I said, it helps if you have a good grasp on what you are doing when it comes to modding before hand. If anybody has ANY questions on gold, or wants to request a golden gun, feel free to ask here. And just one more time: This is just ONE of the ways to do gold, but its the simplest. This tut was aimed to show a simple way, but there are more complicated, and better ways out there.

Examples:
Here are some examples that you can download and look at, as well as use in game.
Scans----
Famas Simple:
Virustotal 0/43
Jotti 0/19
FAL Intermediate:
Virustotal 0/43
Jotti 0/19
M4 Advanced:
Virustotal 0/43
Jotti 0/19

[Killamodzsta]

Awesome tutorial dude! I actually did not know about the alpha channel editing. Thanks a lot.
EDIT: don't know if this will help your tut, but this is a color sheet to choose from...
https://img80.imageshack.us/i/colorgold.jpg/

[B4M]

Even I have never liked gold weapons..

Those look amazing.. good job.

/file approved

[lolbie]

nice tut dude

[♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ]

nice nice, make one for adding images into the weapon xD

[JackSTR]

im happy i got to see them before mpgh xD!!!

[Heartview]

Awesome tutorial dude! I actually did not know about the alpha channel editing. Thanks a lot.
EDIT: don't know if this will help your tut, but this is a color sheet to choose from...
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

Alpha channels are a very important part of gold And no I didnt need a gold chart. Just that one color should be all that you need. I also have most of the Hue/saturation values memorized.

Even I have never liked gold weapons..

Those look amazing.. good job.

/file approved

Trust, I got quite tired of them too after doing about 30 different guns in nothing but gold.

nice nice, make one for adding images into the weapon xD

C+P

[scmogc0]

hmmm. cant get it workin for black ops...
just getting a "yellow" picture (yes highest settings are enabled...):


https://img832.imageshack.us/img832/5...1020621502.png

[Heartview]

Because doing black ops is different from doing MW2. The closest method for getting it right in BO would be the method used on the M4.

[scmogc0]

i cant find a file like ~weapon_m4_short_spc-rgb&weap~f7eec864.iwi for the l96 in iw_11, so is it impossible with l96?

[Heartview]

The files are in different locations from MW2 to BO, just like from CoD4 to MW2.

~~-gt5_weapon_l96a1_s-rgb&~-r~18da6a03

Is located in iw_14 for BO.

[Muffin.]

How do i add these textures to black ops (PC) i have the l96a1 gold camo that i downloaded from scmog how do i add it? wheres the files where i add it

[ProDiiGy]

I like the second picture near the bottom, are there actually any deagle versions that look like that out now, I don't use specular because I don't really care about shiny guns, just wondering if there are. If not i'll guess i'll make my own ¬¬. Anyone know?

[Heartview]

How do i add these textures to black ops (PC) i have the l96a1 gold camo that i downloaded from scmog how do i add it? wheres the files where i add it

This is not the thread to be asking about things like this. If you dont know the basics of texture modding you should probably not be here.

I like the second picture near the bottom, are there actually any deagle versions that look like that out now, I don't use specular because I don't really care about shiny guns, just wondering if there are. If not i'll guess i'll make my own ¬¬. Anyone know?

The point of this tut was to teach you to make your own. ^^

And also, here is some of my later work:
Gold+Silver

[killerkevin100]

What program did you use to open up the Famas Spec? Because i tried using Paint, but it comes up with an error that says Paint does not support this file. Or something like that. Please help!