Wargame Texturing Tutorial

By Vasto

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About…

In this tutorial I’m going to show how to edit Wargame’s texture files without using Photoshop. After
doing some essential steps according to this guide, you will be able to edit texture images in any
Graphic tool of your choice. This tutorial won’t cover the topic of using a Graphic software to make a
reskin, but rather it will be focused on a technical stuff around the exporting/importing and
preparing a texture files for the Wargame.

Setting things up

First of all, a couple of free tools will be needed:

- Ati Compressonator which can be download from here (if you have a problem with installing
a x64 version, you can use a x86 version, as it really doesn’t matter in our case).
- Paint .NET which can be downloaded from here.
- Alpha channel plugin for the Paint .Net from here.

Ok, now it’s time to install all this stuff and put the alpha channel plugin (AlphaMask.dll) into the
Effects folder of your Paint .NET’s installation directory.

After that, you are ready to start.

Getting a texture file

To extract textures from the Wargame data files you will need the moddingSuite which you can get
from here.

Run the moddingSuite, select from the menu File->Open and then navigate to your Wargame
directory. Look there for .dat files. Textures are usually stored in a file called ZZ_3.dat. The main .dat
file holding most of textures can be found at the “Data\wargame\PC\2060001225” for AirLand Batlle,
and at the “Data\wargame\PC\ 240000007” for Red Dragon. Though it should be noted, that some
updates (like those coming with a DLCs) overwrite parts of ZZ_3.dat files, so be sure to always look
for the newest version of ZZ_3.dat containing a unit which you are going to reskin.

The next image shows the location of a main texture holder data file:

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Open this file in the moddingSuite:

You will see a list of all files contained by the opened .dat. The textures, and image files have a .tgv
extension. Basically they are DDS files.

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Usually each unit should have its own texture files, though some of them are sharing one file with
others, so altering them results in having a couple of units changed.

There are 3 different levels of detail textures per unit: high (2048x2048px), medium (1024x1024px),
and low (256x256px) resolution ones. The low resolution textures are combined into the national
texture sheets which usually have 2048x2048pixels of size, and hold as many Low LOD textures as
they can. We want only to export the highest resolution one, as we can generate the rest of the
required resolutions from it.

Ok let’s say that we want to get the F-14 Tomcat’s texture file. To do so type in the search box “f14”.
Select the file with the biggest size, then click the icon with a picture on the toolbar and click Export:

Now you should have the selected DDS file exported to the default location which usually should be
your primary drive (C:\).

Converting the texture to an edit friendly format

Now we are going to convert our newly obtained DDS file into a more accessible image format. We
are gonna to use a first of our tools – The Ati Compressonator.

Open the exported earlier DDS file with the mentioned tool. You should see roughly something like
this:

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Now select from the menu File->Save Original, and save it as one of the popular image formats. I
suggest to save it as a PNG or a BMP file:

Ok, now you should have the texture image saved somewhere in an accessible file format.

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We could jump to the next step, but firstly I need to explain one important thing, so don’t close the
Compressonator yet.

Go back to the Compressonator and right click on the texture image. The Context Menu should
appear. Select from it the Show Alpha option. Your texture should turn black and white:

The Compressonator shows now the content of the file’s alpha channel. Usually the alpha channel
describes which parts of the image are transparent (black transparent, white opaque), but in the
Wargame it is used as a gloss map (brighter parts of texture are rendered as a glossier ones).

During a save of our texture into one of the popular images format, the alpha channel is discarded
from it. It’s a required thing, as in its current form, many of the Graphic tools can’t deal with it
because they don’t know that it doesn’t hold transparency info. Trying to open that file in a software
which is not able to handle the alpha channel separately results in a mostly transparent image. We
want to overcome this issue, so our aim is to separate the color part of the image from the alpha
part.

Preparing a file with the alpha channel

In a previous step we’ve already separated the color part of the texture. Now we need to prepare the
alpha channel, which we will be using later, when we’ll want to export our image back to the game.

We can’t just discard it and forget about it, as the texture without the alpha will be rendered by the
game as it would have the alpha channel all white, therefore with a maximum gloss.

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To prepare an image which holds the alpha, open the obtained earlier DDS file in the Pain .NET. You
should have the following image on your screen:

You can see here the issue which was described earlier. Because the alpha channel serves a different
purpose and holds mostly black color (which normally says that the part should be transparent), the
Graphic software displays the image mostly transparent.

We are gonna to use this fact in our favor, and recreate an image with exactly the same content like
the original alpha channel has.

Add a new layer under the default one called “Background” (one which holds our opened DDS image)
in the Paint .NET, and fill it with the black color:

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After this, you should have the image looking nearly like the alpha channel which you saw earlier in
the Compressonator tool:

Though, we still need to do some adjustments, because bright parts are not contrasting enough.

Select the ”Backgrodund” layer and then from the Paint .NET’s menu select the
Adjustments->Brightness/Contrast and set both values to maximum and click Ok. Your image should
now look a more like this one:

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Select the “Background” layer and click the “Merge Layer Down” button:

Now it is time to save the image to a PNG (or other widely used image format) file. We will be using
this image with the alpha (gloss map) each time we will be preparing a DDS for export back to the
game.

Ok, now you have both the diffuse (color) part of the texture and a gloss map saved in a easy to edit
image file formats. You can go and open them in any software of your liking, and make an
astonishing reskin (note that you can also adjust the gloss map to your liking).

Putting things back together

When you are done with painting, you probably will want to see the effect in game. To put a
modified texture back to the game, you need to prepare it in a format which game expects. So the
highest resolution texture should have size of 2048x2048px and should have the alpha channel

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present. The medium one, 1024x1024px and NO alpha channel. The low one should be as well
without the alpha, but with size of 256x256px. Each of them should be saved into a DDS file, using a
DXT5 compression, and without the generated MipMaps (important).

So to prepare our DDS which will be exported back to the game data files we need to merge our
diffuse image (color) with the gloss map (alpha channel).

To do so, run the Paint .Net tool and open the both mentioned images:

Now go select the alpha channel image (dark one) press the ctrl+a on the keyboard to select the
whole image and press the ctr+c to copy it to the clipboard.

Then switch to the color image, and from the menu select Effects-> Alpha Mask (if you don’t have
this option it means that you haven’t installed the alpha plugin correctly). The new window should
appear. Make sure that the “Paste from Clipboard” option is checked, and click OK:

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If you have done everything correctly, the result should look like in the following picture:

It now looks exactly like the original DDS file which we opened earlier, though now it has the color
part holding your amazing reskin. We have to save this image into a DDS file, and we are ready to
export it back to the game.

To save, select the File->Save As, and be sure to save it as the DDS file format (choose form the
combo box appropriate option). Click Save. The new window with the DDS settings should appear.
Set things up like in the following image:

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Click Ok, and you will have a DDS file which can go straight in to the game. You should also create a
medium and low LOD files. They must not have the alpha channel, so you have to create them from
the diffuse file only. Remember to resize them accordingly and save as DDS, like you have done with
a high res file.

There is one thing to note about the low level of detail textures. As it was mentioned earlier, those
textures are not stored separately, but rather are merged into a big texture sheets with all units of a
given nation. Because some nations have many units, they have also a several texture sheets. If you
want to provide a low LOD texture for your reskined unit, you have to find appropriate texture sheet
and locate a desired unit on it and replace it with your texture sized to the same resolution as the
original, which usually is 256x256px.

From here, you have two options. You can put your files into the .dat from which you obtained them,
using a moddingSuite, or you can use a Wargame Mod Installer which can be downloaded from here.

Probably for testing purpose it is easier to replace a texture using the moddingSuite, because in case
of the installer you would have to familiarize yourself with writing the configuration files for it.

Though when you will want to release your skin, probably you will want to give a try to the Wargame
Mod installer, as it should offer the end users a little easier way of putting your skin into their
Wargame’s files.

Ok, so for sake of completeness of this tutorial, the image showing what to do to replace a game
texture by your modified file:

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The replacing process requires some time to complete, so be patient. When it is finished, and you
have done everything correctly, you will be able to see your modified skin in the game.

That’s it. You should now have some general knowledge on how to deal with the Wargame’s texture
files and after a bit of practice you should find the process being not that difficult as it looks initially.

Happy skinning!

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