Custom skins

If you are bored with the look of your favorite vehicles and the available in-game camouflages are not quite right for your vehicle - a custom camouflage can be a good solution to creating a unique look for your vehicle.

You can always find interesting camouflages on the War Thunder LIVE or create your own. Custom camouflage will be set locally which means it is only visible to the player creating it themselves. For others, the tank or aircraft will remain in the camouflage that has been selected in the “Customization” menu as the basis for custom camouflage.

It is also possible to purchase camouflage for your vehicle on the War Thunder market. This camouflage will be visible to all players in battle.

How to setup custom camouflage

Select the tank or aircraft on which you want to update the camouflage, open the “Customization” menu and click on the button to create an example of camouflage.

Then head to the folder with the installed War Thunder client and do the following:

1. Follow the path: War Thunder → UserSkins → *previously received folder name* (in example: template_ussr_t_34_85_d_5t).
2. If you want to install camouflage from War Thunder LIVE you need simply delete all the the contents of the folder then download the unique camo you like from live.warthunder.com and copy into the folder the contents of the archive, which will consist of several .dds or .tga files, as well as the camouflage configuration file "vehicle_name.blk".

• If you want to create your own camouflage then proceed to editing already contained in the folder simple graphic files in .tga format. By default a texture will be created for tanks, which will be applied to all elements of the tank.

Return to the client and update the list of available camouflages by pressing the appropriate button.

If you have done everything correctly, the camouflage you downloaded will be displayed in the list of custom camouflages when you click on it. Install it.

The War Thunder developers periodically refine and update 3D models of vehicles in the game. Custom camouflages for such vehicles may need to be corrected in order to correctly display the custom camouflages created prior to the model update.

How to create camouflage

Creating tank camouflage

Here we will take a look at three options for creating camouflages in order of complexity:

• Scalable camouflage (via replase_tex)
• Fixed camouflage (via set_tex)
• Combined camouflage (via set_tex with replase_tex elements) — Coming Soon!

Let's start with the simplest one. As an example, we will make a scalable camouflage for the T-34-85 (D-5T).

Using the "Create Camouflage Example" function in the customization menu and finding these files in the UserSkins folder in the root of the game, we can start editing them.

Scalable camouflage

Let's start with the simplest one. As an example, we will make a scalable camouflage for the T-34-85 (D-5T).

Using the "Create Camouflage Example" function in the customization menu and finding these files in the UserSkins folder in the root of the game, we can start editing them.

We will need the two files marked in green.

• ussr_camo_green.tga - can be edited in almost any picture editor.
• ussr_t_34_85_d_5t.blk - we may not need it, but it can also be opened and edited by almost any text editor.

Opening ussr_camo_green.tga in the photo editor we will see the standard camouflage for the tank.

We can start editing immediately: let's draw some orange stripes as an example.

We can save the camouflage and see what we get. For simplicity save it in the same format and with the same name: ussr_camo_green.tga. So our new texture replaces the old one.

Back in the game, you don't need to close it, pressing "Update custom camouflage list" will update all textures.

Just don't click on the "create camouflage example" again! If you do that, all textures will be overwritten and your changes will not be saved!

Then select our camouflage from the drop-down list and immediately see the result.

We can scale, rotate and change the state of the camouflage, just like with the other available camouflages in the game.

Note: Right away that for camouflage to work properly, the texture must be seamless. If this is not taken into account, such inconsistencies may occur:

There are quite a few guides on how to make seamless textures on the internet, it won't be hard to find it.

It is also worth mentioning that the texture may have a different name or even a different resolution.

In this case we will need to put this texture in the folder with the other textures and replace the name of the old texture in the .blk file with the new one.

For example, we have the new_tex.dds texture. We put it in the template_ussr_t_34_85_d_5t folder and in ussr_t_34_85_d_5t.blk replace ussr_camo_green.tga with new_tex.dds.

Congratulations, we have made our first camouflage!

Before we move on to a higher level in creating camouflages, a few points should be noted:

• The camouflage texture must be square.
• The texture side must be 128; 256; 512; 1024; 2048; 4096px.
• Basic textures of vehicles are best executed in a resolution no lower than 2048px on the largest side!

Possible errors

Some ground vehicles may have textures that look like this after creation:

This can be fixed in two ways:

1. Edit blk
2. Edit textures

How to edit blk To do this, we will need a camouflage blk file (in this case template_ussr_t_80 / ussr_t_80.blk). In it, we remove all textures except our scalable camouflage and save.

This method is suitable if you only want to use scalable camouflage. This method is not suitable for fixed camouflage, but we will cover that next.

How to edit textures

1. Open the textures of the hull, turret and cannon:
2. Find the alpha channel of the texture:
3. Black out the alpha channel on all textures and save.
4. Update in game!
5. Done!

Scalable texture and alpha channel.

Let's take it up a notch! Let's say we have an inscription that we want to put on the tank. Let it be... "Camouflage". But if we will use the previous method, so the inscription will appear in an unclear place and, most likely, will be stretched...

Let's go back to our T-34-85 and try to make it look nice. Let's place this inscription on the turret.

1. Open the texture of the turret t_34_85_d5t_turret.tga.
2. We see a rendering of the texture of the turret. With a little skill we can guess which part of the texture is responsible for what.
3. Place the inscription on the turret where we want it:

Now we need to make it visible.

By default the alpha channel of the texture is black, which means that this texture is completely transparent and does not affect the camouflage. If we make the alpha channel white (i.e. completely opaque), this texture will completely cover our scalable camouflage.

This is what it would look like if we fill the "alpha" of the tower texture with white:

Therefore, in order to make only our inscription appear, it is necessary to paint only the area where our inscription is on the texture in "alpha" white.

Save, check the result in the game. Don't forget to press 'Update custom camouflage list'!

The inscription has appeared and is not affected by rotation, scaling and our scalable camouflage! It will always be in the same place on the tower!

The alpha channel doesn't have to be white or black. You can use different greyscales to get a semi-transparent or uneven overlay. For example, if you make the lettering grey rather than white in the "alpha", our scalable camouflage will partially shine through from underneath it.

Why do we need this apart from proper inscriptions and decals?

For example, we don't need camouflage to be applied to the rollers... or the turret roof... Find these parts of the tank in the textures, create them the desired color and paint these parts white in the alpha channel.

There is plenty to experiment with, try it out and find interesting solutions! In the meantime, we will go one step further and move on to fully fixed camouflages.