Well this is probably my favorite part of modding. First thing is to decide what weapon you want to model, then go on the web and find all the high quality pics you can. Usually, however, this process si reversed with me making a texture out of an especially good pic. Either way, try to find the largest images you can.
For Ghost Recon, I typically use a 512X512 texture (they must be multiples of
, but for Rogue Spear, I'd sometimes use ones as big as 800X500, etc. Other games will handle huge textures with no problem.
You need a good, straight side shot, no angled shots. I then use the eyedropper to select the color of the body of the weapon, and then fill the background with this color. You want as little contrast between the background and gun as possible.
Now I'll desaturate the pic somewhat (suck some of the color out) to make it look less like a photo. This is the artistic phase, there's a lot you can do but it's all preference. I like to add scratches, shade bright areas and add some metallic effects near the raised areas of the weapons, the areas where paint/coating would wear off. This is the texture work that can make a simple model look incredibly detailed. I am not familiar with Paintshop, but in Photoshop I use the burn tool, eraser, etc, for these effects.
When I'm happy with the gun, I'll go around the outline and lightly blend the edges with the airbrush tool to create a "buffer zone" around the gun. The color of the blend should be the same as the color of the area of the gun that it it surrounding. When modelling and applying textures, this will eliminate the "smeared" look where color differences in the texture appear as streaks across the top of the weapon. This can also be solved by seperately texturing the faces individually, but I rarely do that.
That's pretty much it for a basic texture. More advanced techniques include composing a weapon out of multiple textures, adding camoflage, and adding accessories to the weapon, adding scope lens textures, etc etc.
Sometimes the texture must fit into a specific size constraint, in that case don't hesitate to break the completed texture into pieces to fit it into the frame. You can always re-assemble the pieces after you model them. IN fact, it always looks beter this way!
Any questions please don't hesitate
