How to create A-10 skins

[NECK]

Hello!

 

I am just wondering where one can find the skins in DCS A-10? Where should i put the skins when i have edited them?

 

What do I have to do to let other pilots im flying with see the same skins? for a squadron for example.

 

Are there any new or updated tutorials for how to create skins for the A10? The ones i have seen is from before DCS world.

Edited December 13, 2012 by NECK

[Frogisis]

I've been wondering about this myself, so I just browsed through the file structure and here's what I was able to figure out:

 

The skins are in the "Bazar/liveries/A-10C/" folder, but instead of being a set of texture files, they're a subfolder containing a "description.lua" file with a catalog of .dds images to use on different parts of the plane, and what country has access to that paint job.

 

An A-10 skin seems to be made of 12 basic parts, "1-a" through "1-L" (presumably capital so it won't be mistaken for an "i") and then next to it in the description is the name of the corresponding compressed .dds file stored in "Bazar/World/textures/A-10.zip". If you look at the descriptions, some of them mix and match parts from different "sets", which you can see if you look at the skins themselves (some have those gray stripes on the wings, etc).

And then there are four lines about where it puts the numbers, which apparently you pick by putting either "TactNumbers-USAF-Light_black"(or something else) or "empty" in the line for where you want your livery to have its numbers.

 

So really all you need to do to make a new skin is copy and rewrite a folder and its accompanying "description.lua" file in "Bazar/liveries/A-10C/" so it contains a list of the textures you want to use for each part, and make sure the "countries = {"XXX","XXX"}" line at the very bottom has the three letters for the country you want to use that skin.

 

But, there's a wrinkle in that the skins for non-US countries have their components in the same directory as the "description.lua" file, in which case the argument for that line is set to "false" instead of "true", which I guess is how it tells the texture loader where to look for that component. So you could either put the textures in with the description file in its unique subdirectory and set everything in it to "false," or add them to the "A-10C.zip" file and set everything to "true."

 

So to recap, it seems when picking a skin DCS World looks for a subdirectory in "Bazar/liveries/A-10C/" which will be the name of the skin as long as it has a "description.lua" in it containing the three letter code for the country you've set the plane to, and then that .lua file tells it where to find the 12 components of the skin (1-a through 1-L), what they're called, what set of number decals to use, and which of four places on the plane to paste them or not.

 

I originally mentioned that I though the set in the .zip file called "def_1" was a blank template but it's actually really weathered - However, a quick google search netted me the real deal: http://www.lockonfiles.com/index.php/topic/35919-dcs-a-10c-template/

Edited December 13, 2012 by Frogisis