I started working on a brand new idea for USPS – new ideas are usually more exciting, but in the midst of working it up I asked myself ‘is this visually better than the Nightfire dragon design’, which to date has a staggering 1.4 million unique views [sigh...different times], but also no longer compatible. So in the spirit of putting my best foot forward I decided to prioritise a ‘reforge’ of the Nightfire dragon design, and the alternate colourschemes for it..

The previous CS:GO submission


Initially my plan was to produce something as close to the old submission as possible; but with a different shader setup my policy changed to reproduce ‘in the same spirit’. If a choice came down to how it looked in the original vs how it works best with the new shading, I opted for the latter. Hamstringing an idea because of archaic limitations is a bad policy.

Thanks to PBR the Kumicho dragon has much more reflection, the only drawback is I've had to make the grips lighter due to the PBR validation causing issues at the battlescarred states. Another thing to note is the colour difference between the Desert Eagle Kumicho Dragon which has a slightly more greenish tint to the metal, and this iteration which has a more blueish tint. I did test both tints, and it works fine with the green tint in the patina, but I really felt that the blueish tint looked much more fresh and crips. Rather than opt for consistency between the namesakes, I’ve opted for what I felt looked best for this particular model.

I created the nightfire dragon first, then at a later date created two separate versions for the other two options. I was thinking it would take a long time, but the changes were mostly straightforwards. There was a lot of tinkering as its not just a case of changing the basecolour, I had to live test each one and make little adjustments going backwards and forwards between the applications. I felt the Kumicho one should have more reflection as it was monochrome, it requires a bit more visual interest. The previous CSGO version has a very minor spectral overlay on both the metal and the engraved line, I felt due to the new channels and lighting that this was no longer needed as the reflection effect is created naturally from the engine. How reflective the engraved line should be caused me a bit of a headache, when it was pure white it looked too bleached out, so I've opted for white with a small amount of reflection in the line.

The grips caused problems. PBR validation meant I could never get the grips dark enough due to the how dark it becomes in the battlescarred state, so the Factory new state is a little bit lighter than I would have wanted, but it looks ok when ingame.

Let me know any feedback below