ReTex – Live Retexture Preview

An Eden Editor tool for retexturing objects live in the viewport — no PBO packing, no game restarts.

Select an object in the editor, open Tools → Live Retexture (or press Ctrl+Shift+R), point it at a .paa texture, and see the change instantly. When you’re happy, bake it into the object’s init so it sticks with your scenario, or copy a ready-made config snippet to drop into a mission or addon.

Built for iterating on retextures — uniforms,backpacks, vehicles, crates, props.
Where the normal loop of "edit texture → pack PBO → restart Arma → check" is painfully slow.

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ReTex is not a magic "recolour anything" button. It drives Arma’s hidden selection system, and that system has hard rules:

• It only works on models that have hidden selections. If an object’s config doesn’t define hiddenSelections[], there is nothing for ReTex to retexture, the tool can’t add selections that the model author never made. Many objects (especially older/simple assets) have none. Use List selections to check before you start.
• You supply a finished .paa texture. ReTex swaps the whole texture on a selection — it does not paint, tint, or edit images. Make your texture in GIMP/Photoshop/TexView first.
• Live preview only reaches a unit’s UNIFORM/BODY and standalone objects (vehicles, crates, props, etc.). This is the part Apply and Bake can touch.
• Worn gear and weapons are CONFIG-ONLY. Headgear, vests, goggles, backpacks and weapons are each a separate model that the engine reaches only through a new item class with hiddenSelectionsTextures[] — they cannot be previewed or baked live. For those, ReTex lists their selections and hands you a config snippet to paste into an addon/mission; the actual retexture has to live in a config.
• Bake writes to an editor object’s init, so it only works on editor-placed entities. Config-only gear can’t be baked.
• One object/unit at a time currently.

In short: ReTex is a live iteration tool for hidden-selection textures, not a universal skin editor. If a thing has no hidden selections, or it’s worn gear/a weapon, you’ll be working through a config. ReTex just makes that far faster to figure out.

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• Apply (preview) — live setObjectTexture on the selected object, instantly in the viewport.
• Reset — revert the preview back to the originals.
• Bake to init — writes setObjectTextureGlobal into the object’s init so the retexture persists with the scenario and shows for JIP players. Warns you about loose/absolute disk paths that won’t exist for other players in multiplayer.
• Copy config — copies a setObjectTextureGlobal line and a hiddenSelectionsTextures[] snippet to your clipboard, ready to paste into a mission or addon.
• List selections — dumps a model’s hidden selections as index → name (and, for a unit, walks the whole loadout — body, headgear, vest, backpack, goggles, weapons) so you know exactly which index/item drives which piece. Output goes to chat and the clipboard.

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• CBA_A3 — required.
• Launch Arma 3 with -filePatching — this is what lets the game load loose .paa files straight from disk, so you can edit a texture and re-apply without packing anything. Without -filePatching your textures must already be inside a loaded PBO.

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Baked textures use setObjectTextureGlobal so they replicate and survive JIP — but a loose disk path (a .paa sitting in your local folder via -filePatching) only exists on your machine. For anyone else to see it, the texture must ship inside a loaded mod or the mission file. ReTex warns you when a path won’t travel.

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Also a handy (windows) desktop app ive made to make configuring retextures easier:

A Windows desktop app for retexturing Arma 3 mods. Browse your installed Workshop mods, find every retexturable asset (weapons, gear, vehicles, props, glasses), pick the hidden selections you want to reskin, and ReTex builds a ready-to-load retexture mod for you: it copies the source textures, generates a correct config.cpp, and packs the whole thing into a loadable @mod PBO.
No manual config writing, no unpacking PBOs by hand.
https://github.com/NicoTn/ReTex