Adding custom unit sprites/images Thread - Machines at War 3

I've been looking into making Machines at War 3 mods; I already know how to edit the schema.xml, but I was wondering how I'd go about adding image files?
Any help would be much appreciated.

Also editing current image files.
I just can't seem to locate them.

Images from the game are compiled into a special format and file to drastically reduce their load time. For example without this special format loading the unit data takes 2-3 minutes, with the format its about 10 seconds. Because of this none of the images are accessible via normal means. You can use all of the game's graphics in your custom units, you just cannot edit or see them outside of the game.

To remedy this (if you want) I can create an index of all the graphics and their names. But if you are familiar with the game you can just go to the units graphics you want to use in the XML and copy and paste it to your new unit.

To add custom graphics simply put them in the games install directory under a directory called data:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Isotope 244\Machines at War 3\data\units\ship 0000.bmp

and an icon for the unit here:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Isotope 244\Machines at War 3\data\icons\ship.bmp

Icons can be any size, but 100x100 bmps will look best. Icons are named with the base of the name of the first animation in their XML, or you can override this and use a custom name by giving the unit a class and defining the Icon property, see Saboteur for an example.

The game uses images which are a sequence of rotations, this can be anything from 4 rotations to 128 rotations, specified in the NumAngles XML variable. The bigger the unit, the more angles it needs to look smooth when rotated in the game, 1x1 tile units use 16-32 rotations, mega units use 64 rotations.

For each rotation there is 4 files, 1 of the image you see, 1 for the shadow (s), 1 for the players team color (c), and 1 for the wreckage (o). Which is why units are created by 3dsmax, creating all of these images by hand would be very time consuming, but possible. Buildings can be much simpler, only requiring 4 images total.

To get you started I have posted a zip file containing:
3dsmax setup file
one frame of graphics of headquarters, wall corner, drone
full graphics of the challenger tank and turret (224 images)
challenger icon
isotope244.com/mw3/mod-custom-units.zip

All of the unit graphics in the game are rendered in 3dsmax, to get the perspective to look like the game you need to have a slightly off center perspective view, I have included the max setup file, so the lighting will match as well.

Thank you!
I can't wait to mess with it more

I've noticed the file "data.pak".
I'm intrigued as to how I might view its contents.

Its a custom format, not viewable by any utility, I don't even possess a utility to view it as the game directly loads the files contents into memory.

Ohh, I gotcha.

hi thanks for the information but... i have a mac and i dont know how to install new image plz help me