Firstly, You must understand that you cannot see all patterns in a shield decal texture_array in the Unit Editor - and a texture_array can contain multiple patterns.

Do you know to use PFM as well?

No, I don't know what that is. I came across it a few times in forums, but I have not idea since I'm not really into modelling and graphic designs. I figured that there were multiple patterns, but I had no way to check. Where should I start?

PFM is a Community Modding Tool. Useful to complement the official Assembly Kit (Assembly Kit is much better at creating mods, but PFM can edit finished mods - useful for small fixes or studying how other modders work)
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?680538-PFM-3-5-2-Updated-string-handling

Question:
How did you apply decals and patterns? In Unit Editor, Did you just pick the available definitions in the shield pane, or apply it through properties Decal Diffuse?

EDIT: You seem to be able to do decals in your mods, how did you do that?

Pack File Manager? I do use PFM if that's what it is. I just paste in the shield patterns that I want from other units. When I do, other shield designs that I didn't see were also applied. I can edit the chances of patterns, but that doesn't achieve what I want. I want to know if it's possible to seperate the different patterns into individual files.

It goes like this:

Shield Patterns are inside variantmeshes>_variantmodels>man>patterns, further divided into cultures, e.g. roman, germanic, etc
Inside the cultural folders there are 2 kind of files: the decal_diffuse and the texture arrays.
The decal diffuse are the actual patterns in .dds. Texture arrays lists them in .txt.
In turn, the texture arrays are referenced by variantmeshdefinitions.

You can make your own texture arrays. Simply copy a texture array, rename, then edit using notepad to include the decals you want. Furthermore, you can make it to be referenced directly by the unit's variantmeshdefinitions, or referenced by your own shield variantmeshdefinitions (which in turn referenced by the unit's)

So the reference is not calling for the dds file but the texture array file instead? I didn't even touch them because I didn't think I had a program that can open them. Now that I realize that texture array files can be opened with notepad, I feel dumb. Thank you so much. You solved my biggest modding problem.

I am having the same issue, I spent around 10-15 hours learning to use Variant Editor from videos and tons of reading and I cannot solve the initial issue, I can mod units make them etc but cannot change the shield patterns which was my initial goal . I can see my changes in Variant but not in game everything else is fine.

take this mod and open it in pfm, there you can see what i changed

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1351739203

@David Cheers fella

welcome, looking forward to your shields

Hi All,

I'm quite unsure if this is the same issue that I have, but as I see there are some competent people in the discussion so I think it worth a shot anyway.

So what I did, was to set all textures (apart from diffuse, specular, normal and gloss) to test_mask and made all the changes in the diffuse file.

The shields look cool in-game, when the units are standing separately, however when I move the camera close to an other unit that has shields with regular pattern, my newly created shields just take this pattern - from certain angles.

I don't know what am I doing wrong, I have checked many other mods that edit shields and mine does not look different.
Could someone help me out please?

Many thanks!