Installing CS:Source Skins

[siosios]

The guide to doing it right!


Due to the ammount of people who are unable to figure out how to install skins, I'm going to write a guide of how they work and what the files do, so maybe people don't have to rely entirely on a readme, and can figure some things out for themselves for once.
First of all I'll summarise what things go into a replacement.


What are they?
First things first...
A skin is simple a texture that covers a model, it does not change it's shape or anything else, only colour of the object in question. Their file extension will end in .VMT or .VTF

A model is what the texture covers, the model will determine what shape an object is. These are generally referred to as skins, so unless you want to sound like an idiot, get it right. There are 2 types of models, one is v_models , these are the models you will see yourself holding in-game.The other type of model are w_models , or world models, these are the models you will see other people holding, or laying on the floor. Both these model files have many extensions, including .VTX, .WD, and .MDL.

A script comes in the appearance of a .txt file, these control what sounds will be played when using the weapon, and although not always needed, they are sometimes used.

A sound appears as .wav file, and it's pretty obvious what role they would play in a weapon replacement.


Where do they go?
Extracting the contents to the right place...
Now you know what the files you're dealing with are, it's time to tell you where they go, and how to make them work.

In a replacement you download there will be several folders, more often than not a 'models' and 'materials', sometimes other folders such as 'sounds' and 'scripts' may also be present. These need to be put in specific folders, or they will not work correctly. We make it simple for you to install them however by pre-creating all the in-depth directories into the zip, so all you have to do is unzip to your cstrike folder, and it puts everything into position automatically, instead of having to unzip each part of the skin to its individual folder. However even this causes trouble for some of you, so below are details on where the individual folders are and where their contents should be placed:

The materials folder contains the textures/skin for the object, and is where nearly everyone cocks up. At the very end of this directory you will usually find only 1 set of files in the folder named after the weapon, which is in v_models, however sometimes there will be one named w_models too with another set of files. Either way, each set of files needs placing in either cstrike\materials\models\weapons\v_models\<WEAPON NAME>\<FILE>
or cstrike\materials\models\weapons\w_models\<WEAPON NAME>\<FILE>

The models folder will contain the models, and is the easiest to install, as there is just a heap of files, and only 1 location to dump them in - cstrike\models\weapons .

The scripts file will help the sounds in the script work smoothly, usually there will be 2 .txts, a 'game_sounds_manifest' that will go directly in: cstrike\scripts
And another named after the weapon that will go in:
cstrike\scripts\weapons

The sounds obviously are sounds, and go in:
cstrike\sound\weapons\<WEAPON/SKIN NAME>


FAQ
The things you won't stop asking us!
Now you know what the files do, where you need to put them, and what their extensions are, you should be well enough informed to be able to tackle the problems that arise when installing skins, but for those of you who still don't have a clue, I'll answer the most common problems in this section.

Q: This weapon skin is shit, it's purple and black! How could you give this a 9.0?
A: You messed up the material files, see above and make sure that they're installed properly, and that there is no previous skins conflicting .

Q: I want the new CT model again!
A: Delete cstrike\models\player

Q: The skin is all over the place, the grip is on the barrel!
A: You messed up the model, see above, try again.

Q: My folder doesn't have materials/models/sounds/scripts folder in it, what shall I do?
A: Extracting and/or drag & dropping should automically create these, but if not, manually create them.

Q: Sounds don't play, even though I've installed new ones.
A: check you've placed scripts in the correct places, and that they are installed properly.

Q: How do I remove my skins?
A: The reverse of how you installed them - delete the files of the skin and model you want to get rid of.

Hope this helps some people out there who don't have a clue.

[siosios]