PRISM — an aircraft and livery viewer for IL-2

[Haluter]

PRISM v0.2.38 — a skin viewer, painter and render studio for IL-2

 

IL-2 Korea support in PRISM is suspended

Following today’s IL-2 Korea update, PRISM can no longer open Korea aircraft, so IL-2 Korea support is suspended for now.

• From the next PRISM build, the Korea logo is dimmed, and Korea projects and the Korea hangar show a short notice instead of opening.
• Your Korea projects and liveries are not deleted. They stay on your PC, ready for when support returns.
• IL-2 Great Battles, including Tank Crew and Flying Circus, is not affected.

We hope to bring Korea back and will share news when we have it.

 

 

PRISM shows the aircraft and vehicles of IL-2 Great Battles (with Tank Crew and Flying Circus) and IL-2 Korea in your liveries, lets you paint and decorate those liveries, and renders pictures, turntables and Blender Cycles images of them. It reads everything from your own installation: it never changes game files, and no game assets are included with it.

A lot has happened since the last public release, v0.1.74. PRISM now has a full Painter, decals, a Projects page, turntables, exhaust flames and gun smoke, a proper installer and two guided tours. Here is what the current version does.

Download: https://github.com/riaanjutte/PRISM-Distribution/releases/download/v0.2.38/PRISM-v0.2.38-win-x64-setup.exe

User guide: https://riaanjutte.github.io/PRISM-Distribution/guide/

---

New since v0.1.74

• Painter: paint colour and finish straight onto the skin, in layers, with the 3D vehicle live beside the texture sheet.
• Decals: markings, numbers, text and artwork placed on the vehicle's surface, with blend, finish and weathering.
• Projects page: every livery you are working on, planned, ready or released, as a card drawn in its own livery.
• Turntables: GIF or MP4 of the vehicle turning, from the viewport in seconds or from Blender Cycles.
• Exhaust flames in each engine's firing order, gun smoke and tracers with the muzzle flashes.
• Photo skies from Poly Haven, and an orthographic lens for flat, profile-style pictures.
• Auto vehicle exposure for a consistent look, whatever the vehicle or light.
• Export to game: write a livery straight into the game's Skins folder, keeping the files it replaces.
• An installer, built-in updates, Report a problem, and two guided tours that play over PRISM itself.

---

The library and the viewport

• The game logos choose a collection: IL-2 Korea, Great Battles aircraft, Tank Crew ground vehicles or Flying Circus aircraft. Every vehicle is listed with a side-view picture; search knows full names such as Mustang or Thunderbolt. AI-only aircraft are marked.
• The viewport shows the vehicle as it will export. Orbit, pan, zoom and fit with the mouse; Ctrl + drag turns and pitches the vehicle itself and Ctrl + wheel banks it, and exports keep that pose.
• Lenses: Wide, Normal, Telephoto or Orthographic, matched in Blender renders. An export frame shows exactly the area your pictures will hold.

Liveries and your own skins

• The livery browser shows a picture of every livery, packed and loose, with favourites and recently used.
• Drop in your own DDS or PNG at full resolution; Great Battles two-sheet liveries load together.
• Live DDS follows a skin you are editing in Photoshop, GIMP or Affinity: save there and PRISM refreshes within about a second.
• Surface finish tools repair missing Great Battles alpha and show Korea's MRR channels. The skin inspector shows the flat texture beside the vehicle: click a panel to find it on the texture.

Scene

• Charcoal and Ivory studios, a plain background, the games' own IL-2 and IL-2 Korea hangars, sky with clouds, a transparent cutout with an optional ground shadow, and green and blue screen.
• A round platform sized to the vehicle, in diamond plate, glass, wood, marble, stainless steel or mirror.
• Skies: presets from clear blue to sunset and overcast, sun and haze, cumulus, stratus or cirrus clouds placed above or below the vehicle, optional countryside below, or photographed skies found and downloaded from Poly Haven inside PRISM.

Lighting and tone

• Lighting presets shown as small diagrams (Soft studio, Shape & detail, Polished metal, Rim highlights, Dramatic and more), and four lights to adjust one by one: softbox or spotlight, position, size, brightness and aim.
• Vehicle and background exposure, contrast, and Auto vehicle exposure.
• Ambient occlusion, screen-space reflections and supersampling in the viewport.

Vehicle details and effects

• Landing gear, flaps, canopy, bomb bay doors, open crew hatches on tanks, and the game's own loadouts.
• The game's seated pilots and gunners, in summer or winter kit, and navigation and landing lights.
• Spinning propellers with speed and shutter, for a photographic blur.
• Muzzle flashes caught mid-burst, with tracers in each nation's colour and gun smoke (sunlit volume or quick puffs).
• Exhaust flames on piston aircraft, each stub firing at its moment in the engine's firing order, timed from the propeller speed.
• Vehicle Data: the game's description, history and diagrams, where it has them.

Decals and watermarks

• Decals: add images or text, then move, resize and rotate them on the vehicle. Each is a layer with blend, finish and weathering. Save a project to keep them editable, or bake them into a skin for the game.
• Watermarks: the vehicle's official name or your own text, your signature, artwork, or the vehicle's badge from the game, snapped to a grid on every export.

The Painter

• Paint on the texture sheet with the 3D vehicle live beside it: 2D, Split or 3D layouts. Click the vehicle to find that spot on the sheet.
• Brush, Airbrush, Eraser, rectangle, ellipse and polygon selections with feathering, paths that can snap to UV lines, Bucket with patterns, Replace colour that keeps the shading, and an Eyedropper.
• Mirror left / right paints the matching spot on the vehicle's other side, wherever it lies on the sheet. A UV overlay shows how the sheet wraps the vehicle.
• Layers as in an image editor: visibility, locks, opacity, Normal or Multiply blending, masks, renaming and reordering.
• Finish layers paint how matt, glossy or metallic the skin is (Matt, Satin, Gloss, Bare metal or custom values), with Vary with grey for streaks and worn paint, and Finish by colour.
• In the 3D view, Light from camera lights whichever side you turn to the view, the underside too, and a Brightness slider lifts that view alone. A column of pose pictures (front, both sides, rear, top, bottom and both front quarters) resets the view in one click.
• Painting never changes the original skin. Save project keeps everything editable; Export skin writes the painted DDS sheets for the game; Export to game puts them straight into the game's Skins folder. If PRISM closes unexpectedly, it offers to recover your work.

Exporting

• Quick PNG on your graphics card in seconds: 2K, 4K and 8K (with a JPG), transparent backgrounds included, and an HSD JPG sized for HSD Online.
• Blender Cycles renders for the most realistic light, reflections and glass, in 2K, 4K or 8K, while you keep working. PRISM can download a portable Blender for you; Cycles renders on NVIDIA, AMD or Intel Arc graphics cards.
• Batch liveries: render a list of liveries with the same camera and scene.
• Showcase packs: coordinated sets of pictures in a presentation style, with saved views and an optional contact sheet.
• Turntable GIF or MP4: one seamless turn from the viewport or Blender, with a preview and a time estimate.

Projects and sessions

• The Projects page shows every project in your project folder as a card drawn in its livery, grouped as In progress, Ready to export, Planned and Released. Search, filter by game or tag, and edit a card's details: livery file name, stage, next step, notes, tags, unit, period and reference photos.
• Double-click a card to open it straight in the Painter, or Open project for the viewport. Plan a project starts a card for a vehicle you have not painted yet.
• Export to Skins folder from a card writes the livery into the game, keeping the files it replaces in the project rather than in the game. Every export is listed on its card.
• PRISM reopens where you left off, unsaved changes included, without touching your project files.

Installing, updates and help

• An installer that needs no administrator rights; a zip for testers.
• PRISM checks for updates, downloads them, verifies them and restarts on the new version.
• A four-minute tour of PRISM and a detailed Painter tour, played over the real window.
• An online user guide, and Report a problem, which packs the log and a few facts about your PC (without your user name) for a GitHub issue.
• Light and dark themes, and the Inter or Segoe UI Variable font.

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, with a Direct3D 11 graphics card.
• IL-2 Great Battles, IL-2 Korea, or both.
• The Microsoft .NET 9 Desktop Runtime (x64); the installer tells you if it is missing.
• Blender only for Cycles renders, turntables in Cycles and showcase packs; PRISM can fetch it for you.

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Thank you to everyone who has tested PRISM and reported aircraft, vehicle, livery and export problems: many of the fixes and features above started as one of your reports. Please keep them coming, through Report a problem in PRISM's Settings or the Issues page on GitHub.

PRISM is an independent project, not made or endorsed by the makers of IL-2.

Example 8K render via Blender

View the public PRISM roadmap

Edited October 13 by Haluter
Added public roadmap link.

[LuftManu]

You da man!!!!!!!!!!! Looks amazing! Can't wait to try it out 🙂

 

[Rocket_Knut]

PRISM is looking fantastic already. This thread needs to be pinned. So, if you please.

[Haluter]

I have added a download link for the current dev version. Please feel free to try it and let me know if you encounter any bugs or missing features you would like to see in the v1.0 release 🫡

[FAW_Tromplamort]

I've just tried your tool on the F86 and it's magic! Thank you so much it save my life from nervous breakdown! 

This tool is a must have!

[SundownerVF111]

OMG This is awesome... Thanks for it!!

[Panthercules]

Indeed - this is great - thanks so much!!  Just a couple of observations in case you're still working on polishing it up a bit.

1. If possible, it would be great if you could add an option to display the plane with its payload (maybe not all the weapons, but at least maybe the drop tanks, as there are some types (e.g., the F-84E) where the drop tanks are painted up as part of the skin/livery). It might already be in there and I just missed it - there's way more in there than just a viewer function and I don't have a clue about some of the stuff it can do, but it's awesome nonetheless.

2. I like having the various bases/floors, especially the wooden deck that looks a bit like a carrier deck of the era.  However, when I restart the program it doesn't seem to remember or display the floor that was last used (e.g., the wooden deck is still selected on the menu screen, but not shown - you have to select something else and reselect the wooden deck before it will show up again).

In any event, I was using it to help me finish off my first couple of F-84E skins tonight and it saved me a ton of time compared to loading up the game every time, so many thanks!

 

[Haluter]

2 hours ago, Panthercules said:

Indeed - this is great - thanks so much!!  Just a couple of observations in case you're still working on polishing it up a bit.

1. If possible, it would be great if you could add an option to display the plane with its payload (maybe not all the weapons, but at least maybe the drop tanks, as there are some types (e.g., the F-84E) where the drop tanks are painted up as part of the skin/livery). It might already be in there and I just missed it - there's way more in there than just a viewer function and I don't have a clue about some of the stuff it can do, but it's awesome nonetheless.

2. I like having the various bases/floors, especially the wooden deck that looks a bit like a carrier deck of the era.  However, when I restart the program it doesn't seem to remember or display the floor that was last used (e.g., the wooden deck is still selected on the menu screen, but not shown - you have to select something else and reselect the wooden deck before it will show up again).

In any event, I was using it to help me finish off my first couple of F-84E skins tonight and it saved me a ton of time compared to loading up the game every time, so many thanks!

 

Thank you for the feedback. It is still in active development, and I'll add your payload suggestions and bug report to the roadmap for the next update 🫡

Edit: The platform bug has been fixed in the latest release.

Edited September 13 by Haluter

[Haluter]

PRISM v0.1.28 — What’s new since v0.1.4

This update brings new tools for skin creators, more environments for aircraft portraits, and improvements to framing, rendering and the interface.

Tools for skin creators

The new visual livery browser lets you browse thumbnail previews instead of remembering filenames. It includes search, favourites, recently used skins and an option to open a skin’s containing folder. Double-clicking a thumbnail applies the livery and closes the browser.

The skin inspector lets you examine unlit colour, alpha/surface finish, normal maps and Korea’s MRR channels separately. Clicking a point on the aircraft locates it on the flat texture, with a pulsing marker to help you find it quickly. It also follows Live DDS updates while you work in your image editor. You can open it using the new magnifier icon at the top right.

New scenes

• Sky environments with clear blue skies, cumulus, stratus and cirrus clouds, plus sunrise and sunset presets.
• Controls for sun position, cloud coverage, thickness, height and spacing.
• Optional distant countryside with fields, woodland, roads and a river.
• The original Great Battles and Korea hangars, read from your installed games.
• Reflective Korea hangar windows and improved Blender lighting in both hangars.

Blender exports support volumetric clouds, with caching to speed up repeated renders. The viewport approximates these effects, so some differences in lighting and reflections remain.

Framing and image quality

Quick PNG and Blender exports now share an adjustable 16:9 frame, making it clear which part of the viewport will appear in the final image. You can move, resize and reset the frame, and save it with your project. Aircraft names, watermarks and logos remain inside its boundaries.

The viewport also has improved antialiasing for smoother aircraft outlines and wires. This change does not alter Blender rendering.

Interface and fixes

The aircraft library now uses game-logo selectors, with easier access to the livery browser. Loading another aircraft displays a spinner over the current viewport.

Fixes include floors not appearing after restarting, checkerboard backgrounds in Quick PNG exports, a window-resize crash, white panels during startup and garbled Blender progress text.

PRISM is still under development. Feedback from testers is welcome—especially reproduction steps, screenshots and the PRISM.log file when reporting a problem.

Download link to the latest version is in the first post.

[Panthercules]

OMG - just "discovered" the skin inspection function - absolutely amazing!!  Not having to spend all that time manually identifying all the little nooks and crannies of the template is going to save so much time - THANK YOU !!!

[Panthercules]

Found another possible small glitch. Note the message flagged at the bottom left of the screenshot below - as noted on the right side, the steel deck was not actually selected at the time, and in any event I could not find any way to actually turn off the deck that was active then.

I didn't think of it till just now, but maybe I could have gone back to the "background" drop-down and chosen a sky background and gotten rid of the deck that way?  But even if that would have worked that message on the bottom left could probably be made clearer.

At any rate, the inspection function was great in making it easy to fix up a couple of minor aspects I had noted but had decided it wasn't going to be worth the trouble trying to find the tiny parts buried in the template to correct them - such a cool feature!

[Haluter]

22 minutes ago, Panthercules said:

Found another possible small glitch. Note the message flagged at the bottom left of the screenshot below - as noted on the right side, the steel deck was not actually selected at the time, and in any event I could not find any way to actually turn off the deck that was active then.

I didn't think of it till just now, but maybe I could have gone back to the "background" drop-down and chosen a sky background and gotten rid of the deck that way?  But even if that would have worked that message on the bottom left could probably be made clearer.

At any rate, the inspection function was great in making it easy to fix up a couple of minor aspects I had noted but had decided it wasn't going to be worth the trouble trying to find the tiny parts buried in the template to correct them - such a cool feature!

Thank you for reporting this, it has been fixed and will be included in the next release.

[jocko417]

This is a very welcome addition for skinners Haluter, congrats! I really like being able to click on the skin and see where the component is located on the texture file, saves a LOT of time. In future, would it be possible to be able to save the textures we can only view right now with the Skin Inspection tool? Would be nice to be able to study the color MRR files for the aircraft as well as other files like the pilot textures.

Looking forward to watching this tool get even more powerful in future!

[SundownerVF111]

Haluter,

The C-74A skins from Great Battles aren't working properly; they look like you clicked the wrong file or forgot to create the second one.

And the B-25 is missing from the list that is generated, even though I have skins in the folder.

 

But freaking awesome program man!  Holy CRAP! Reading through the other replies, the Locator is a godsend!!!!

Edited September 13 by SundownerVF111

[Haluter]

1 hour ago, SundownerVF111 said:

Haluter,

The C-74A skins from Great Battles aren't working properly; they look like you clicked the wrong file or forgot to create the second one.

And the B-25 is missing from the list that is generated, even though I have skins in the folder.

 

But freaking awesome program man!  Holy CRAP! Reading through the other replies, the Locator is a godsend!!!!

I think I found the issue, I'll include a fix in the next build.

Blast from the past 😅

And thanks for the kind words 🫡

Edited September 13 by Haluter

[Haluter]

3 hours ago, jocko417 said:

This is a very welcome addition for skinners Haluter, congrats! I really like being able to click on the skin and see where the component is located on the texture file, saves a LOT of time. In future, would it be possible to be able to save the textures we can only view right now with the Skin Inspection tool? Would be nice to be able to study the color MRR files for the aircraft as well as other files like the pilot textures.

Looking forward to watching this tool get even more powerful in future!

Thank you! Saving skinners time is exactly what the Skin Inspector is intended to do.

Exporting the inspected colour, alpha/finish, normal and Korea MRR channels as PNG files should be possible. I’d also like to expand the inspector so aircraft components, cockpit crew and pilot materials can be browsed individually. I’ve added this idea to the planned Skin Inspector improvements.

[jocko417]

Great! Would it be possible to add more animations - landing gear, speed brakes, etc?

[Haluter]

9 minutes ago, jocko417 said:

Great! Would it be possible to add more animations - landing gear, speed brakes, etc?

I'll add it to the roadmap 😅

[jocko417]

👍 

[E69_julian57]

Hello @Haluter
I'm trying to run the program, and this appears.

 

 

[Haluter]

24 minutes ago, E69_julian57 said:

Hello @Haluter
I'm trying to run the program, and this appears.

 

 

You need the .NET Desktop Runtime to run PRISM, so go ahead and download it by clicking the "Download it now" link in the popup dialog.

[E69_julian57]

ok thanks.

[Bangat]

Hi haluter,

Nice work. Is there a way to add the tactical codes as well?

and: the Muzzle flashs look a bit fake. Is there a way to replace the muzzle graphic?

[Haluter]

1 hour ago, Bangat said:

Hi haluter,

Nice work. Is there a way to add the tactical codes as well?

and: the Muzzle flashs look a bit fake. Is there a way to replace the muzzle graphic?

Thanks 🙂

I agree the current muzzle flashes looks too fake, I'll try to improve that.

I plan on adding the placing of decals and tactical codes in the next few weeks.

First attempt at adding support for the MRR layers:

Metallic:

Roughness:

Reflectivity:

 

Edited September 15 by Haluter

[jocko417]

Looking good. Is it possible to add the helmet/helmet art to the pilot figure in the cockpit?