v2b. No changes to VTF, however VMT has been tweaked. After testing ingame on cbble I felt the overall contrast wasn't right - it cant be a darker black as that creates weird green artifacts, so I've applied a darker-richer gold tone, and ever so slightly lowered the exponent boost, whilst increasing the exponency area by roughly 25%.

v2 (my ref v13Q5) - As a way of removing the unwanted green pixellation effect, I've lightened the blacks, darkened the whites, and also adjusted the tone of specific elements on the weapon.



It’s the anniversary of the SWAG sticker making it into the game this month. Ever since I made the Rekt IX I’ve been getting a lot of requests to put together a SWAG 7. A month or so back I spent a couple of weeks recreating the foil sticker high res, arranging a perfect tileable version, and also splitting apart the channels to support the other application methods. The results can be seen here[imgur.com], my gut feeling at the time was that none of them were of a good enough standard, so I benched the idea while I worked on the ‘delicious tears’ sticker.

After a little over two weeks I’ve come up with this bespoke design which I feel more happy with. The Mag 7 itself has a diabolical UV. The mirroring down the middle prevents any text or non-symmetrical objects from working, and the panels on the side are blocked out in some texture application methods. I learnt to work with the limitations and placed elements accordingly.

I wanted to create a bold design yet not overly garish which is why the colour scheme is severely restricted. I took reference from currency and jewelry, milling about in the same waters as the thug life sticker creative. To start off with I created a cheap bracelet chain pattern to frame the swag sticker in the middle of the weapon, and created some line work in illustrator using the the path-width tool for the calligraphic patterns and currency line work on the top of the weapon. Diamonds were a suitable replacement for the non-symmetrical dollar symbol, I used them and calligraphic line work to flesh out the design, along with ornamental swirls.

I couldn't narrow down the colours to a single version: I really liked the minimalism of the grey/black, but also wanted to incorporate gold. So I’ve created 2 submissions: a Monochrome version which starts very clean and gets mashed up the more wear is applied -(I actually prefer the battle scarred version as its trashy!) I then played about with the settings in workbench to create a gold version that washes out to a black and white version, which gives the best of both worlds.

Have a look at both versions, and let me know any feedback!