Editing Fighters Anthology
Help and Tutorials

1. In the toolkit Graphics menu, click on textures, and select the texture you wish to edit. Click OK to save the texture in the project.

2. Using the Pointer To Cache program from the Files page on this site, convert the Libptr.sh file in your Fighters Anthology/Toolkit/Cache directory, and place the data in your Cache.m file in your Cache directory. Or, simply download my customized cache file from the Files page.

3. Then, open the Mission menu in the toolkit, select the shape that corresponds with the texture you have edited, and save it in the library.

4. In the Fighters Anthology/Toolkit/Projects/xx_your_project_name_xx/ folder, rename the shape and texture file file that you have saved in your project. The new name must be the same number of characters as the original name.

5. Open the Item.dat file in your Fighters Anthology/Toolkit/Projects/xx_your_project_name_xx/ folder. Find the lines that correspond to the ORIGINAL NAME of the texture and shape files you have just renamed in your project. Most recent files will be at the bottom of the Item.dat file. Rename the files to the same new name that you just gave to the actual files in the folder. The reason for this second renaming step is due to the fact that the toolkit file lists are compiled from Item.dat, and the names need to match for the renamed file to be found.

6. Using a hex editing program, open the recently renamed shape file. Using the "Find and Replace" option, replace the original name with the new name that you have given to the texture and shape files. These instances are where the shape files is referenced to the texture file. The number of instances in shape files differs.

7. Now that your new shape and texture are found by the toolkit, and the shape points to the texture, let's actually edit them.

8. One option is to use Sick Puppy's Airbrush to change the colors of shape polygons and the texture. Simply copy your new texture and shape file from your Fighters Anthology/Toolkit/Projects/xx_your_project_name_xx/ folder, and into your airbrush folder. Open airbrush, and color the files. See the airbrush readme for more information. When you are done, simply copy the colored shape and texture back into your Fighters Anthology/Toolkit/Projects/xx_your_project_name_xx/ folder.

9. You can also simply export the texture file from the Graphics menu of the Toolkit. In the Graphics menu, select textures, then find your new texture, select it, and "Save As" it into a folder. Edit with your favorite graphics editor. It is usually desired to edit textures through this method after using Airbrush, so that the landing gear, cockpit, and afterburner textures can be brought back to the original color. An easy way to do this is to export the texture which your new texture was based on, and copy the original gear, cockpit, etc. areas from the old graphic file to the new.

10. From the Graphics menu of the toolkit, select import, browse to the texture you just painted, and select it. In the file type menu, select "Texture File". Remove the second "_" (underscore) from the front of the file's name. The toolkit automatically adds a second underscore in front of the filename, and this is usually unneccessary. The 1st underscore can't be removed, so remove the second.

11. Now, select the aircraft, vehicle, object, etc. which you wish to give the new shape/texture to. In the Shape Selection box on the main screen, browse to your new shape. For aircraft, it is only neccessary to create a new "XXX.sh" name, "XXX_A.sh", "XXX_B.sh" names are uneccessary if the edited shape file is from Fighters Anthology. There will be more info on using ATF/USNF, etc shapes later. When using a Fighters Anthology shape for an aircraft, just be sure that the "XXX_S.sh" (shadow shape) file corresponds to the original shape that your edited shape was based on.

12. Build the library and tryout the new shape.