So, you wanna make some dope-butt re-skins for Insurgency weapons. You've come to the right place! Let's get started.

First things first, you need some programs to begin.
1. GCFScape. This tool allows you to browse the source files and copy the images required for editing.

2. VTF Edit. This program is required to convert the images to and from the VTF format.

3. Photoshop. Obviously, you need this to edit the images to your liking. Now, if you don't have Photoshop, there is an alternate program that works just as well. Paint.net. The program itself is called Paint.net, and it's free.


Here are the links you need to download these programs. (Except Photoshop)

GCFScape: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=25

VTF Edit: http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?c=178

Paint.net: https://www.getpaint.net/download.html

Onto the next step!

Alright. Now that you have those programs, you're gonna want to open up GCFScape.
Now, click on File and select Open. Once you're there, navigate to this directory. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\insurgency\insurgency_materials_dir.vpk
It should look like this.
Now click on Materials, scroll down to Models, and scroll all the way down to Weapons.

For this tutorial I will be using the AKM. Click on the AKM folder that is on the right side of the menu.
You're going to see a couple of files, the ones you want to select and drag to your desktop always end in "dm.vtf"

ctrl+left click both of those files. ( "weapon_w_akm_dm.vtf" ) and ( "weapon_akm_dm.vtf" )
Now just drag them onto your desktop, or into a folder on your desktop.

Open up VTF Edit, and drag one of the akm vtf files into the empty box in the middle. And then click File, and Export. And save onto your desktop as a .png Do this for both files, and keep it as the same name as the VTF file.



Now that you have both files converted to .png, you need to create the folder system. You'll want to copy the format of the folders that you went through to get the AKM textures. Make these folders on your desktop, like this: materials\models\weapons\akm And then drag the akm folder into weapons, and the weapons folder into models, and the models folder into materials! And then, create another folder and call it whatever you want, like mine "Tiger AKM". After that, drop your materials folder into that folder.

This part can be a bit confusing. The textures for the weapons are all on a 2D plane. Coding in the game files fold the image over the 3D model using coordinates based on the location of each 'part' of the texture. But fear not, for the textures you want to change are mostly distinguishable from the bits of metal parts.

Now, the two files you have are the in-hand model, and the world model.
( "weapon_w_akm_dm.vtf" ) and ( "weapon_akm_dm.vtf" ) the one with the _w_ in the middle is the world texture. The only time you see that, is when it is on the ground, or other people are carrying it, and is not necessary. For the sake of a quick tutorial, I will not be editing it. The world texture is much smaller, and less detailed. You do not need to spend time on it.

Open up Photoshop or Paint.net. I am going to be using Photoshop, so there will be no Paint.net tutorial, but it's pretty straight forward. Drag the "weapon_akm_dm.vtf" into photoshop. I am not going to tell you how to use photoshop to edit it. In this picture, the selected parts are part of the magazine. You will find a lot of parts like this when you edit, and you need to put your texture on those images as well.




After editing your image(s), simply click on quick export as png and export to desktop, and overwrite the previous unedited image.

And now for converting. Open VTF Edit back up and click File<Import. Import the newly edited image, and it will have a settings menu. Follow this picture exactly. I don't think it matters too much, because I have it set to an animated texture, and I'm not sure why it still works.
Sometimes it can take a little bit to load. Once it does, click on File<Save As. Save it as the original name that it had. The original VTF file should still be on your desktop, just overwrite it.

Now that you have converted the file(s), head to the next step.

Follow this image. Place the two newly edited and converted VTF files into your folder that you created on the desktop.

Now, you are almost done! All you have to do is place the folder in this directory here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\insurgency2\insurgency\custom And you're done!

There is one more thing you can do now. If you wish to publish your newly created weapon texture to the Steam Workshop, you must convert the folder into a .vpk. To do this, follow my instructions.

Take your entire new texture folder, and place it onto the desktop again. Navigate to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\insurgency2\bin And scroll all the way down until you see an application called vpk". Now, simply drag the custom texture folder that you just created, onto the VPK application. It will create a vpk file on your desktop, and you can simply drag that back into the insurgency "custom" folder.

To upload it to the workshop, start Insurgency and load into the main menu. At the top right there will be text saying "Workshop" Click on that, and everything else is self explanatory! Thank you for viewing my tutorial, have a good one!