MRR file How to?

[FAW_Tromplamort]

Can someone explain me how to generate the MRR file?

[FAW_Tromplamort]

Here's what I found on google:

• Download Official Templates: Grab the official aircraft template files from the IL-2 Korea Livery Media Page to ensure your UV mapping and layout line up correctly. [1]

• Understand PBR Channels: An MRR material file controls properties like roughness, metallic sheen, and light reflection rather than flat color. Map out your channels (such as alpha or dedicated grayscale maps) depending on how shiny or matte you want specific metal panels, fabric, or markings to look. [1, 2]

• Export as DDS: Save your completed material/roughness map as a 4096×4096 DirectDraw Surface (.dds) file. [1]

• Rename with the MRR Suffix: Ensure the file uses the correct corresponding MRR naming convention required by the game's PBR engine so that it pairs automatically with your primary color livery file in the aircraft skin folder. [1, 2]

• Test in-game or via Preview Tools: Use community utility workflows or the built-in editor reload functions to verify how the light reacts on the aircraft skin under different lighting scenarios. [1]

Now what is missing is the exact file naming in order everything to work....

[actionhank]

I'll try and remember to comment here in a little bit once I'm done with work.

I was able to create my own "template" before using the extracted skin files from the game that I then modified and saved in game. Hopefully, they will provide something that creates a cleaner display for custom skin names, but I was able to at least get the custom skins to show up in the game. 

[FAW_Tromplamort]

I get custom skins show up in game but the "new" mrr file isn't taken into account. So I have the basic skins reflectivity on my custom skin...

[actionhank]

So my understanding at the moment is that you need to have your skin that's got the "paint" on it saved as "SkinName#1" and then the MRR file for the reflective mapping would be saved as "SkinName#1#1". 

I tested that out with one of my skins before they released the templates, and it appeared to work:

[FAW_Tromplamort]

26 minutes ago, actionhank said:

So my understanding at the moment is that you need to have your skin that's got the "paint" on it saved as "SkinName#1" and then the MRR file for the reflective mapping would be saved as "SkinName#1#1". 

I tested that out with one of my skins before they released the templates, and it appeared to work:

Nope dont work...😐

[actionhank]

1 minute ago, FAW_Tromplamort said:

Nope dont work...😐

Hmm, weird. How are you saving the file? And are you using Photoshop? (Gimp is fine, I just don't know much about it since I've been working with Photoshop since high school).
I played around with throwing together a quick F-51 skin for the RoKAF and it showed up in game and the reflectivity seemed to work correctly as well.

[FAW_Tromplamort]

Finally it worked! 😀I must be tired: one character difference in the names messed everything up...

Thank You actionhank... Now I can start working on skins seriously.

Edited September 10 by FAW_Tromplamort

[actionhank]

5 minutes ago, FAW_Tromplamort said:

Finally it worked! 😀I must be tired: one character difference in the names messed everything up...

Thank You actionhank... Now I can start working on skins seriously.

Happy to help! And yeah, there's always one little thing to trip you up. At least we don't have complex description files and 6+ template skins like in DCS! 😄

[Panthercules]

ok - what's the secret here?  I tried simply saving down my new skin as a dds file from Photoshop using the same settings I used for my GB/FC skins, and put it in the relevant aircraft skin folder. It showed up on the list of custom skins in game (without a preview picture of course), but it showed me in the default skin in game.  Then I saw this thread about MRR files (whatever those are - never dealt with them before), and tried creating an MRR file by tweaking various layers to get rid of some markings that were different from what I used on my custom skin, flattened the image and saved it down as a dds file using those same settings, named it the same as my first skin file except with a "#1#1" at the end and put it in the same skin folder as my first skin file (to which I added a "#1" to the end of the file name).  This time the skin again showed up on the list of custom skins in the game, but again it showed me in the default skin in game.

So, what am I doing wrong, and are there some instructions somewhere that explain exactly how skinning works for Korea?

 

Edited September 11 by Panthercules

[actionhank]

 

28 minutes ago, Panthercules said:

ok - what's the secret here?  I tried simply saving down my new skin as a dds file from Photoshop using the same settings I used for my GB/FC skins, and put it in the relevant aircraft skin folder. It showed up on the list of custom skins in game (without a preview picture of course), but it showed me in the default skin in game.  Then I saw this thread about MRR files (whatever those are - never dealt with them before), and tried creating an MRR file by tweaking various layers to get rid of some markings that were different from what I used on my custom skin, flattened the image and saved it down as a dds file using those same settings, named it the same as my first skin file except with a "#1#1" at the end and put it in the same skin folder as my first skin file (to which I added a "#1" to the end of the file name).  This time the skin again showed up on the list of custom skins in the game, but again it showed me in the default skin in game.

So, what am I doing wrong, and are there some instructions somewhere that explain exactly how skinning works for Korea?

 

Alright, this is just a self-reminder, but I'll try and get some settings from Photoshop and everything to show what I'm doing, and hopefully, it'll help you out! I should throw it on here in around 30 minutes or so once I'm done eating!

Edit: A quick thing to try. You mentioned using the same settings from GB, which I believe was BC5 for the DDS file type you saved as in Photoshop. Try setting it to BC7 and see if that helps.

Edited September 11 by actionhank

[Panthercules]

As far as I can tell, it may have been a file-naming issue (maybe my first name was too long?  are there any rules about that we need to know?), because now it seems to be working fine the way I described above:

The first unit of Marines from VMF-55 were still waiting for their complement of F9F Panthers to arrive, but were deployed to Korea early to begin FAC liaison training in preparation for the coordination needed between the Navy and Marine air arms and the ground troops they would soon be supporting.  For this purpose they were equipped with some surplus F-84Es from the USAF, which they had painted in their standard Marine/Navy color scheme so the ground troops would be used to seeing the naval airmen when they arrived in force with their Panthers.

 

[FAW_Tromplamort]

Here is what I've achieved in a short time... Nothing too complicated it is just a test bed for skin making in Korea...

[actionhank]

4 hours ago, FAW_Tromplamort said:

Here is what I've achieved in a short time... Nothing too complicated it is just a test bed for skin making in Korea...

Looks good! Lining up the K on the tail can be a bit of a pain.

8 hours ago, Panthercules said:

As far as I can tell, it may have been a file-naming issue (maybe my first name was too long?  are there any rules about that we need to know?), because now it seems to be working fine the way I described above:

The first unit of Marines from VMF-55 were still waiting for their complement of F9F Panthers to arrive, but were deployed to Korea early to begin FAC liaison training in preparation for the coordination needed between the Navy and Marine air arms and the ground troops they would soon be supporting.  For this purpose they were equipped with some surplus F-84Es from the USAF, which they had painted in their standard Marine/Navy color scheme so the ground troops would be used to seeing the naval airmen when they arrived in force with their Panthers.

 

Now I'm just even more anxious to get ahold of the F9F.

[migmadmarine]

I'm not sure I'm following how to set up the red green blue channels for export. Looking at the extracted. I recall how I would go about creating an alpha channel and binding it to a skin for Great Battles, but am not sure if the procedure is similar for these three. I am a Gimp user. 

Edited September 15 by migmadmarine

[FAW_Tromplamort]

The "mrr" file is just a dds just as you exported your skin file. In fact your skins is made of two files:

1- with the skin regular dds with your colors decorations etc....

2- another dds with all the reflectivity channels included in the mrr folder of the template.

Don't forget to name properly your two files in order to "link" them in the game.

Edited September 15 by FAW_Tromplamort

[gabuzomeu]

Hello

The question is  (i'm using gimp and the template) : how do you create/tranform the proper layers as color channels?

 

Thank you for any help

 

[FAW_Tromplamort]

18 minutes ago, gabuzomeu said:

Hello

The question is  (i'm using gimp and the template) : how do you create/tranform the proper layers as color channels?

 

Thank you for any help

 

In the official template you have a subfolder with all the layers for the mrr...

I cant help you more as I use Photoshop myself.

[gabuzomeu]

Merci!

I see the layers, in gimp, where I fail is in exporting into a dds where metallic is in the red channel, etc... i have no clue about the process to do this

Is there a mode for combination ? eg superposer, couleur 

How do you do this in photoshop? 

[gabuzomeu]

Well, I found a (clunky) way: 

create a file with 3 layers called red/green/blue , paste metallic etc.. in the proper place

THEN, go to colors/compose and make sure each channeles goes to the proper color... et voilà , you have a file with one layer and the proper channels. 

Export to dds with the correct name

[Panthercules]

In Photoshop I just clicked on the mrr layers to show them all, then flattened the image and saved it down as a #1#1.dds file using the same settings as I used to save the #1.dds file for the actual paint job skin.  I've never used GIMP though so I don't have a clue how it would work in that program.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

14 hours ago, gabuzomeu said:

Merci!

I see the layers, in gimp, where I fail is in exporting into a dds where metallic is in the red channel, etc... i have no clue about the process to do this

Is there a mode for combination ? eg superposer, couleur 

How do you do this in photoshop? 

What I did, is create a new image, then go to the Channels tab, copy the Metalness layer from the template and paste it in the Red channel, etc.

I think it should also be possible to have an additional layer per MMR channel with the colour, set to Multiply (e.g. a purely red layer for Metalness), then set all the layer groups to Add.