Sunday 30 January 2011

Day Of Defeat Source : Tutorial 6 - Animated Spray Tag


Animated Spray Tag  
It seems that an animated spray is not an impossibility in source games, just a little bit tricky.  In order to make one, you need some individual images that will make up your animated sequence/picture

For those unsure what an animation is, take an original image, make a copy of it and change it a bit and so on until you have some 'animation'  ::  the first to the last image if show quickly one after the other gives the impression of animation.  If you are making your own, I suggest using Adobe Fireworks which allows the use of layered imaging..Unfortunately this is not an animation tutorial, but will simply show the mechanics of what needs to be done.

You need 1 essential program called VTFEDIT.  It allows you to edit VTF files and also make them.  The game spray is essentially a VTF file.  If you view some of my older posts you will find a link to the program there or simply type into Google, VTFEDIT DOWNLOAD.  It is very easy to find.


  1. Download VTFEDIT.
  2. Install VTFEDIT.
  3. Make your images for the animation and save them as JPG image files.  Make sure the names of the files are in a sequence e.g. image01.jpg, image02.jpg, image03.jpg.  Why a sequence of names?  This is the order that the animation will appear in the game spray.
  4. Run VTFEDIT
  5. Import the images and click OK to any messages (we only need the default settings).  If everything went well you now have the images imported and ready to be turned into a VTF file. If you had errors it may have been because your images have different sizes/dimensions.  Ensure that all of your images sequences are the exact same size width X height.
  6. Select File menu Save option.  Here you will save the VTF file.  Ensure you save it in the correct location where the logos/sprays are held within the game folders.  C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\USERNAME\day of defeat source\dod\materials\vgui\logos.
  7. Now Toole menu Create VMT File. The VMT file contains the images.
  8. Start your source game, select Options and Import the new spray. 
This process is not overly complicated but making your own animation takes some time.  You may want to cheat and try and find existing animations that are in GIF image format. In order to use these you will also need a GIF Animation program to extract the individual images that make the GIF image.

Happy animating!