Hello, everyone.
I want to get started on creating weapon finishes for the game, but there are still a few things that I find confusing. I'll keep my questions separated for organization purposes.
1. I'll start with something simple, that, sadly, I haven't been able to figure out due to my stupidity (probably). How do I make the Workbench full screen? I want to take advantage of the green screen feature so I can get a nice preview image like everybody else for when I publish my gun, but I can't seem to find a way to do it. I'm obviously not going to settle for the Workbench's preview window's current size, as that'll give me a picture with not a lot of detail. So, any tips? Or do most of you use an external program to load the obj file with the finish into and add a background there? I've considered that with Photoshop, but the 3D models of guns looks different than they'd look in the Workbench, and subsequently, in-game.
Onto something a bit more complicated (hopefully not)
2. The alpha channel. When I loaded a finish that I made for testing purposes onto the Workbench, I pulled the wear slider all the way to the left (factory new skin quality in this case) but there were still some signs of wear along the edges of the gun's magazine. After some quick searching and information digging I've found that I need to add an alpha channel layer to my design inside Photoshop, and that I'm required to paint the parts of the gun that I don't want to experience wear in a darker shade of grey/black. However, I've read that certain values in the alpha channel have specific effects to your design. I don't know what these values are, though. I remember seeing 128 or 196 being mentioned, but I don't know what kind of impact a particular set of values will have on a gun. Any help on this topic? Maybe some tutorials? All I want to achieve is have the factory new setting show absolutely no wear in the Workbench. That's it. As for MW, FT, WW and BB, wear will obviously be visible.
Does Valve change how each of the skin quality state appears? I noticed that in the Workbench, while moving the wear slider just slightly but still in the same skin quality range (battle scarred for example) more wear was applied. Correct me if I'm wrong, but every official community created weapon finish has a pre-established appearance for every skin quality, right? Or are there variations in the same weapon finish? (same gun, too)