I can't find a single page on how to make skins for units.

[Sky999 10]

I have looked very hard for a page on the armaholic forums, that tells me simply how to make skins for units, I can't find a single thread on it. It's as If everyone was born with the knowledge so no one has ever asked!?

I don't want to be told 'not to be rude but you should have used the search function', because I did, believe me I did, there was nothing.

Can anyone give a link to a thread or some software that will allow show me how to easily create custom skins for ARMA2?

It'll be worth it, I have some great skins in mind.

[Defunkt 431]

Textures are usually stored in pbo's (similar to a gcf or pak from other games) so you'll need a tool to de-pbo, the default pbo's live in the \AddOns folder. The texture files usually have a "paa" extension and the diffuse map you're intially after will often end with _ca or _co (ie. texture_ca.paa). The ArmA tools come with a tool called TexView2(?) which allows you to convert to and from this format but there are others including a Photoshop plug-in by Kegetys. Do not place your new texture back in the original pbo (this would fuck your game install), you will instead have to create your own AddOn, there must be tutorials on this. It will involve writing a config (a textfile with a .cpp extension) which describes how your texture replaces that of a default class or is referenced by a new class you've added. Unfortunately most character models do not have the 'hiddenSelections' that will allow you to simply supercede the default texture so you're going to have to add the original model into your addon and hexedit the texture names within to point to your own paa's. Help for most of the above should probably be sought HERE.

[Aeneas2020 10]

Sky...firstly drop me a pm i'd be more than happy to help you out. But more than just reskinning you'll need to get aquainted with hex editing and writing configs also which i'm afraid to say there also isn't a lot of help on. Also do you have any experience doing reskins before? Just curious...anyway drop me a pm.

[Mr Sarkey 0]

"Skins" is not a term really applied to Armed Assault, it general goes alot more complex than that. As above the whole configuration of new textures for models is a relatively complicated task.

However, if you hunt around for some basic modeling tutorials (here or on the community biki) and start from there you might get some where...