War Thunder Custom Decal Guide

War Thunder Custom Decal Guide

Things Needed:
uMod: http://code.google.com/p/texmod/downloads/list
Nvidia Windows Texture Viewer: http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_texture_viewer.html
Something to Open .DDS files: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

First, open up uMod and go to Main->"Start game through uMod" and navigate to your War Thunder folder, selecting aces.exe. When the game prompts you to run the launcher, hit no. When the game is open, set a path to dump your textures, preferably to the textures folder inside the uMod application. Do not change any settings, but make sure the texture file type is set to .DDS.
http://i.imgur.com/2B5oJng.png

When you're in game, check "save all textures" and then go to the customization screen and select a decal you want. After putting it on your plane, you can exit the game.
http://i.imgur.com/3gorh8fh.jpg

After you exit the game, go to the folder where you set all your textures to dump to and there will be a large amount (100-500 depending on how hard you fucked up) of DDS files. Windows Texture Viewer is a lightweight program, so you can use it to quickly search through all the shit that uMod extracted.
http://i.imgur.com/M7WtKndh.jpg

When you find the decal you want, open it up in the image editor of your choice (I used Paint.net because I'm a cheap asshole that likes free shit, but anything is fine as long as it can use DDS files. Photoshop with the DDS plugin mentioned above is much better) and edit it as you please. Make sure to keep the file name from the original extracted texture. Also make sure to have an alpha channel for transparency if you don't want your decal to look like shit.
http://i.imgur.com/4CVu9T2.png

Having saved your custom decal, you can go back to uMod, run the game again, but this time stop when the game asks you to use the launcher. With the game open there will be a tab open that says "aces.exe", with a large empty box at the bottom. That's your mod display. Right click anywhere there, hit "Open texture/package" and navigate to your edited file. After it's selected, hit the OK button as many times as necessary. There should now be a mod in the box that says "Single Textures." The A column should be ticked, meaning that the mod is active.
http://i.imgur.com/rzsRaNR.png
http://i.imgur.com/XmCI1x9.png

With this done, continue launching the game. When you get in game, you should have your custom decal on your plane.
http://i.imgur.com/OibtGP0h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ng4h43yh.jpg

Things to keep in mind:
To have the mod active, you must run the game through uMod each time
uMod lengthens load times and makes the game unstable, more alt+tab crashing, etc