I've been trying to reskin the default carbine for a little while now, and so far my efforts are really being hindered by my lack of VTF knowledge. The texture in question looks great in PS, but once exported it looks, the say the least, pretty bad. I'm aware that there is some texture stretching, but without resorting to making a 2048 x 2048 skin, what settings should I check (I'm using the PS VTF plugin) when I save my skin?

Also, the carbine stock is meshed at a 45 degree angle. Is there any easy way to skin it? I've tried copy and pasting the original at a 45 degree angle, skin, then re-rotate, but I lose a lot of quality doing so. Any suggestions?

Yay!
http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/9468/28ix.jpg
:(
http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/6224/17tc1.jpg

You can't alter the UV Mesh without decompiling, editing it and re-compiling the model.

As for VTFEdit, you need to set the No LOD and No MIPMapping flags before saving.

What should I check to make sure I am exporting a normal map correctly, also whats the best way to make them really noticeable, I have only made a clearly visible one once, and don't remember what I did so well :\

If you're using the photoshop plug-in to create the normal map then you should use the drop-down list and select Normal Map and it will set it for you. Other wise you want to check the following boxes:

[X]Trilinear
[X]No Compress (Format Specific)
[X]Normal Map
[X]Nice Filter

To make your normal maps stand out more depends on how your making them. If you're using nVidia's photoshop plug-in then either increase the scale number in the plug-in options or adjust the levels of the black and white image you're making it from. If you're just desaturating/converting to greyscale your image, you're probably using a very narrow range of the grey palette which is why you're not getting much definition.

Thanks alot, so I know I was exporting correctly. I had changed the scale a little bit before, but now I actually see the difference thanks

No probs, any time.

Whats the best format to export in, I usually just leave it where it is when I check uncompressed, but are there any better formats to use for file size issues?

You should always use DXT1 compression as much as possible and DXT5 if you have an alpha channel. This drastically reduces the ammount of texture memory a texture needs.

Does that go for both normals and textures?

No. Normal Maps should be saved as uncompressed as using DXTn format introduces artifacts which can distort the effect.

If it helps, take a look at this diagram I made for the Valve Wiki which shows how compression affects textures.

I knew about the visible quality differences, I just was wondering if there was a format that it wouldn't work in, but thanks for the pic, it makes the difference very obvious