well, I guess I'm making some progress - I stumbled across a reference to Pack3D, DL'd it and fired it up - found i could see inside the .dat file associated with one of Fubar's skins I had downloaded to play around with, and "exported" something ( I think it was one of .tga files/folders, but I'm not sure) into some "3d" folder. one of the files in that exported 3d folder was a .tga file with what looked like the main hull template, and I tried just painting some stuff on there and saving it back down.
After that though, I got stumped - I couldn't really figure out how to get the revised .tga file back into the .dat file - I figured it had to have something to do with the "import" button, but so far no luck figuring out the trick. Gotta go plow through the rest of the sticky threads and see what else I can find out about packing this changed file (actually both of the files I need to pack up - the deck and the hull templates/.tga files) back into the .dat file in question.
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