A little advice on editing textures for BIS units

[BobMalarkey 10]

Hi!

I'm a keen mission creator for OFP and I've been doing this since it came out.

I'm also pretty keen on modding and I've been through as many different mods as you can name.

It always bugged me that the 'West' side had US flags on a lot of their uniforms and vehicles. I know, they were US units, but seeing as it was called 'West' it would have been nice to have made them possible to be any Nato force. Recently, though, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could have a go at retexturing some units to change this.

For example, if I were to get an Eastern officer with a beret. I would like to replace his camouflage with the West camo, and maybe add a flag to his arm. Now, I've read a little into this, and I downloaded Eliteness so that I could have a look inside the .pbos. From there, though, I am at a little bit of a loss as to what to to do. Where is the East officer located? And, if I could edit his skin or texture (not the model), could I do this with Microsoft Paint? Photoshop? Paint.NET? And then, for example, could I replace one of the BIS West units with this unit?

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but any help is appreciated. Assume I am the world's most ignorant person in this regard, for although I've been a keen mod user and player for a decade, I've never made my own units and I would like some help.

Yours,

Bob Malarkey.

[sanctuary 19]

To find what is the name of the P3D for a specific unit, look into the config.cpp located in ..\whatevermod\bin\ folder or \whateveraddon.pbo\ folder

Some config files maybe be in .bin format (the default game config is, some mod main configs are), you can convert them into the readable .cpp format (i don't remember if eliteness can do that) by using binview

Simply using wordpad/notepad/etc.. is enough to read the cpp obtained.

Now for modifying a texture that is in .paa or .pac format, you'll need to convert it into a format image editors (any of them can do, gimp, photoshop, etc...) can read

Then once done, convert it back into the .paa or .pac format they were, tools for this listed there :

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/OFP:_Community_Tools

For replacing models, give a search i'm sure it's been explained multiple time, like in that thread :

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?39138-I-want-to-make-my-own-custom-config

that formatting has been unfortunately butchered by the forum changing its code some years ago

[BobMalarkey 10]

Thanks! I must say my efforts are quite modest, but I'm glad I have finally made my own unit.

I've been reconfiguring mods for yonks, so it's easy to add them in, but thank you very much.