PRISM — An aircraft livery viewer and rendering tool for IL-2

[Haluter]

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

 

 

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/

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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.

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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.

 

 

 

Edited October 1 by Haluter
Added public roadmap link.

[Juri_JS]

Wow, I'm impressed.

[MajorMagee]

This is amazing. Any chance it could provide access to the Tank Crew vehicles as well?

[Haluter]

2 hours ago, MajorMagee said:

This is amazing. Any chance it could provide access to the Tank Crew vehicles as well?

Definitely! I'm currently working on adding fuel drop tanks and loadouts, and will add Tank Crew vehicles after that. Timeline is probably within the next week.

Roadmap

Edited September 13 by Haluter

[Hanu]

Wow, this is really excellent tool already! Well done sir!

And if tanks can be used here, it would be spectacular! I guess it took 50 hrs or so to complete historic Finnish skin for StuG III, as you could not use the Viever for tank skins. 

[Haluter]

PRISM v0.1.74 — FORUM CHANGELOG

Since the previous public GitHub release, v0.1.34, PRISM has grown from an aircraft livery viewer into a broader IL-2 presentation tool. This update covers work through v0.1.74.

HIGHLIGHTS

TANK CREW SUPPORT

• Added an initial Tank Crew library for the 16 player-controlled Great Battles ground vehicles, including the Tiger I. PRISM now imports their hulls, turrets, guns, wheels, tracks and original materials for the viewport, Quick PNG and Blender/Cycles exports.
• Reconstructed the games' procedural track meshes for all supported tracked vehicles and corrected their surface orientation, eliminating the missing tracks and pale, inside-out-looking tread reflections.
• Restored the special tire meshes used by the Sd.Kfz.10-5 and GAZ-MM 72-K.
• Added Open crew hatches for 14 tanks and assault guns with authored hatch animations. The open/closed state is saved in projects and carried into both export paths.
• Corrected the M4A2 commander's roof machine gun so it uses its proper idle mount rather than the deployed anti-aircraft preview pose.

IMPROVED LIBRARY ORGANISATION

• Added dedicated Tank Crew and Flying Circus cards alongside Great Battles and Korea. Great Battles now shows WWII aircraft, Tank Crew shows ground vehicles, and Flying Circus shows WWI aircraft from the same installed game data.
• The shared inspector is now called Vehicle, which makes the interface and project/export wording work naturally for both aircraft and ground vehicles.

AIRCRAFT LOADOUTS AND ANIMATED DETAILS

• Aircraft → Loadout now exposes every resolved static authored loadout in the installed Great Battles and Korea libraries: 2,015 renderable configurations across 126 aircraft in the development catalogue. This includes tanks, bombs, rockets, mixed stores and armament variants.
• Loadouts are retained in projects, restored sessions and batch work, and are included in viewport, Quick PNG and Blender/Cycles output.
• Clean configurations now use the games' authored empty-hardpoint pose, removing unwanted default racks and pylons, including on the P-47D-22 and P-47D-28.
• Added Bomb bay doors open for 13 verified Great Battles aircraft. It works with compatible clean and internal-bay loadouts in both export paths, including both door rows on the He 111 H-16.
• Loadout cache management prevents repeated configuration changes from filling the drive; recently used configurations remain quick to revisit.

MORE FAITHFUL AIRCRAFT PRESENTATION

• PRISM now loads the authored detailed cockpits and Korea jet ejection seats where available, with improved canopy behaviour and no duplicate gunner canopy/station geometry.
• Korea pilots now include the helmet, goggles and packed parachute their models specify. A Winter gear option is available on aircraft with seasonal crew assets and is saved with projects and preferences.
• Blender/Cycles spinning-propeller renders use a swept disc when the shutter would blur a blade through a full circle, removing the former grainy prop blur.
• Softbox shadows in the live viewport are substantially smoother. Blender/Cycles shadow rendering is unchanged.
• Korea's original hangar now responds to the existing Daylight control: lamps fade as sunlight rises, and the visible sky brightens with the setting.

NEW COMPOSITION AND SKIN TOOLS

• Added Transparent cutout backgrounds for true-alpha Quick PNG and Blender/Cycles PNG exports, with an optional soft ground shadow.
• Added professional Green screen and Blue screen backgrounds for compositing.
• Korea surface-finish tools can selectively restore the metallic, roughness or reflectivity channel from the original MRR map. Dedicated MRR viewing modes make those channels easier to inspect without affecting exports or saved skins.
• Fixed Blender/Cycles aircraft-shadow artefacts from inward-facing duplicate shells.

BETTER EVERYDAY WORKFLOW

• PRISM reopens the aircraft, livery and scene it was viewing when it was last closed; this is separate from, and does not replace, normal project saves.
• Restored-project startup avoids a first-load shader compilation pause that could previously hold the UI for around 35 seconds.
• The updater window now matches PRISM's light and dark themes more closely.

TERRAIN NOTE

The experimental muddy terrain surface was introduced and then deliberately removed while its visual treatment is revised. Existing saved muddy-terrain choices safely fall back to diamond plate; it is not being presented as a finished feature in this release.

Thank you to everyone testing PRISM and reporting aircraft, vehicle, livery and export edge cases. As ever, PRISM reads assets from your own IL-2 installation; game assets are not bundled with the application.

 

Edited September 19 by Haluter

[Haluter]

New update dropping soon...

 

 

[JollyJack]

Blender Cycles GPU-accelerated ray tracing; It seems that's only for NVIDIA RTX? Got an AMD 9070XT now SIQ. 😕

[Haluter]

7 minutes ago, JollyJack said:

Blender Cycles GPU-accelerated ray tracing; It seems that's only for NVIDIA RTX? Got an AMD 9070XT now SIQ. 😕

That's an small oversight from me 😅

I'm adding support for HIP for AMD and oneAPI for Intel in the next release.

Ps. send me a dm on Discord and I'll send you a new build to test.

Edited September 28 by Haluter

[JollyJack]

You're the best .... must get you a pint somehow.

 

PS i sent you my email on discord and got suspended .... 

Edited September 28 by JollyJack

[Haluter]

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

Edited October 1 by Haluter

[JollyJack]

Wow, what an improvement !  Guess i can dump Photoshop and Gimp to boot LoL. instantly swapped yellow with blue test:

Buy Mr H some more coffee! 

Edited October 1 by JollyJack

[Haluter]

[Stonehouse]

Not sure that it is possible for Korea as many of the DDS files seem unable to be opened or even be able to see their properties (eg resolution) but certainly there have been mods that repainted AI vehicles and ships and even hangars etc for IL2 GB and FC and possibly even for TC. 

Is repaints for non-playable units something that PRISM is likely to look at in time?

Edited 6 hours ago by Stonehouse

[JollyJack]

I've just adapted a general skin with the offical IL10 template, meant for tactical codes, 14 embedded here via the ME. Added camo and new USSR roundels to the blank_03 camo dds.

When Haluter has sussed out Korea in HSD i'll post a probably fixed version there. PS we need a skin viewer for Korea as well LoL. It works fine in PRISM with skins installed in your Korea skins folder however.

=============================

By looking at the way Korea handles the already working default IL10 skins there are some things i do not get yet. Each default skin has a 'name'#1.dds and a 'name'#1#1.dds file in Skins1.gtp. The same is for the Camo1.gtp file with the usual '_blank_ ' embedded there.

These are not in the official & zipped IL10 template file, and can only be created by selecting some combination of layers in the PSB, at least in photoshop it seems. BTW there's no Alpa, maybe this has to do with that?

Skins appear OK in the ME, and the *** #1#1.dds files look the same but have probably a totally different function than in GB. Alpha issue? See below.

My new skin with only a #1.dds file appears normally in the game.

The #1.dds skins work OK in the game without the #1#1 ones.

=========================================================

#1#1.dds file examples: 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by JollyJack

[Haluter]

3 hours ago, JollyJack said:

The second dds (#1#1) is the new MRR material map (metal/roughness). It replaces the alpha layer in Great Battles, and every skin should have it. HSD Online just got early support for Korea skins, so you can upload this skin when you're ready.

 

 

 

Edited 26 minutes ago by Haluter

[JollyJack]

Haluter saves the day ... more coffee on the way!