How to make custom Unit emblems

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How to make custom Unit emblems

Postby 96th_Nightshifter on Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:55 pm

Hi all, can anyone tell me how to or point me in the direction of a tutorial on how to make custom Unit emblems; not nose art but I mean the actual unit emblems that you can choose from the from down menu in game.
I have searched all the usual places that I can think of and am sure I have saw a tutorial on this subject before but now that I want to find it I can't lol typical.

Thanks in advance!
~S~
96th_Nightshifter
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Postby dieg777 on Fri Sep 30, 2005 10:04 am

Hi have you tried posting here ?

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/ubb.x?a=frm&s ... f=45410763



good luck
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Postby 96th_Nightshifter on Sat Oct 01, 2005 1:04 pm

Yeah thanks mate, I did and got an answer - thanks again.
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Postby WWSandMan on Tue Nov 15, 2005 6:36 am

I'm going back into this -creating custom unit emblems- myself, since at one time I had a working set of custom unit emblems for the squad I'm in (Wing Walkers). Since a fresh re-install, I seem to have gotten something a bit mucked up, as my WW unit emblems are no longer being displayed, but I'm closing in on the problem. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

There are two main elements to individual (or custom) unit emblems. The .bmp file graphic to be used and a text file which tells the game what to do with that graphic.

I'll start with the text file, since that's the easy part. The best way to learn the format is to look at one of the default "non-historical" units included in the IL-2 series. For this exercise I'm going to use the "Flying Barans" squadron.

Browse to the <drive letter>:\<folder?>\Ubi Soft\IL-2 Sturmovik Forgotten Battles\PaintSchemes\Regiments folder. Scroll through the list of files until you find two files with FlyingBarans at the start of the file name. One has no file extension at all (Windows simply labels this as type "file") and the other is a .bmp graphic.

You can open that "file" in NotePad or any text editor (right click it and select "open with..." then choose your preferred plain-text editor). The contents will be:

country = RU
id = ZZ
gruppeNumber = 1
short = Flying Barans
info = Flying Barans


In this case, the Flying Barans is set up to display as a Russian unit option. You can change the country of choice by changing the country = line and add the two letter country designator you want. Some choices include:

NN : None (will display your unit emblem when no other unit is selected, handy for co-op servers where a unit is not pre-selected for you)

DE : Germany
FI : Finland
JA : Japan
GB : Great Britain
IT : Italy
UN : US Navy
US : US AAF

... etc. The Wing Walkers are not constrained by pledging to fly for any one nationality, so I made copies of the basic file for all nationality codes I could find.

The id = line is what the aircraft side code for your squadron will be, if that country displays such a side code. For my squad, I put in WW. This worked well on German bomber/Jabo types (side code would be "WW + <aircraft number>" ) and on British aircraft ( "WW O <aircraft number>" ) but not at all on most others that used only numbers. No big deal... It's kind of neat to see a bunch of Jabo Wing Walkers members displaying WW on their aircraft sides, and on the "S" key list in d/f servers. :)

The gruppe number = line is for which squadron of the group/wing/gruppe this emblem will display for. IF using German, you may want to make this "1" so you can access it in QMB, otherwise it's not too important (may be worng on that however).

The short and info descriptions are just that: the first (short) description is how you'll find your emblem in the "squadrons" drop-down list in game. The secodn is just an expanded description if you're using an acronym. Not sure where that displays... In the case of the Flying Barans, they have their full name listed in the squadrons drop-down menu.

Alter the file contents as needed for EACH nationality you want, and give each a unique filename (I used ww_de, ww_ru, ww_none, etc.).

//Any errors in this, please correct me!!//

Dealing with the .bmp file next....
WWSandMan
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Postby WWSandMan on Tue Nov 15, 2005 7:04 am

The .bmp file for your squadron is pretty simple. A 64x64 pixel .bmp file.

Note that whatever color pixel is in the extreme lower left corner will be the transparency color for the .bmp file. Name that .bmp exactly the same as the text file corresponding to it's nationality (only with a .bmp extension of course).

In the example of the Flying Barans above, the two files would be:

FlyingBarans (no filename extension!)

and

FlyingBarans.bmp

For my own squad work, with the same graphic used in many different nationalities, the .bmp names go with the text files...

ww_de ; ww_de.bmp ...etc., etc.

The tricky part for me is to get a .bmp in sufficiently sharp resolution while maintaining the 64x64 size. //sigh//

(of course after searching by hand through the UBI Skinner's forum -why is the search busted over there??- , I finally found where you got a much more concise answer. Oh well... )

Hope this helps one or two other folks...
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Postby Ace of Spades on Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:30 am

Can this be done for single player or non "on line " playing? :?:
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