Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

1. INTRODUCTION

I’d originally planned to make a detailed post with templates and more in depth guide, but unfortunately other
things have come up and this has been pushed to the backburner so until I get the passion back to do a fully
indepth guide, this will do for now.

Editing the manager clothing is done by editing internal game files, unfortunately this means that we are
limited to one slot per item of clothing and stuck in the game’s limits of three colours (red, green and blue),
which limits the possibility, however generally you can make a pretty good attire. Finally, since the game only
has one slot, It means that opposition subs/managers will also be wearing your textures, however recoloured
to their colours.

Also, there’s a lack of a 3d model, and unlike other graphics require a game restart to see your changes,
meaning it’s an awkward and time-consuming process.
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

1.1 WHAT YOU’LL NEED

You’ll need an array of tools for editing manager clothing. All links will be below.
 Image editing program WITH DDS support. Paint.Net is a great, free bit of software that does this.
Altenatively, Photoshop also supports it with the Intel DDS plugin, however is a very expensive bit of
equipment.
 FM Resource Archiver
 Your copy of Football Manager
 Patience

Paint.Net: https://www.getpaint.net/download.html
Photoshop: https://creativecloud.adobe.com/
Intel DDS Plugin: http://gametechdev.github.io/Intel-Texture-Works-Plugin/
Resource Archiver: https://steamdb.info/app/2066760/

1.2 EXTRACTING THE NECESSARY FILES

Similar to skinning, you’ll need to extract FM’s default folders, so load up the Resource Archiver and press the
extract archive button. Navigate to your FM install folder, typically this is

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Football Manager 2023

Go into the data folder, and extract simatchviewer-pc.fmf. This features the majority of the textures that the
game uses. Extract this to a folder of your choosing, I recommend something easy such as a folder on your
desktop. Open the folder you extracted the files to, and find

Simatchviewer-pc/art/characters/male/manager/shared_textures
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

1.3 UNDERSTANDING THE TEXTURES

This folder contains all graphics related to the manager, in particular the clothing is as follows

File Name Description

track_m_jacket Track Jacket
track_m_jumper Jumper
attire_m_wengercoat Wengercoat
attire_m_polo Polo Shirt
suit_three_piece_blaser Three Piece Suit Blaser
suit_m_shirt Suit Shirt
suit_m_overcoat Overcoat
suit_m_blazer_shirt_tie Suit with Blaser and Tie
track_m_bottoms Joggers
track_m_warm Warmup Pants

Find the track jacket. You’ll notice there are three different types of textures for each part. This is typical for all
3d models and is one of the first things you learn about materials in 3d modelling.

The textures are:

File Name Description
track_m_jacket_[al] Albedo – This is the actual texture
track_m_jacket_[no] Normals – These are used to give the effect of more
detail in textures, for example in clothing its used to
create seams and wrinkles in the shirt. As it is only a
texture, it is easier for the game to load and uses
less memory.
track_m_jacket_[ro]_[me]_[ao] Roughness, Metallic and Ambient Occlusion – While
its not common in gaming to combine the three, FM
does.

Roughness – Also called a gloss map, determines

how glossier or shinier an object is, the less rough
the glossier the object.

Metallic – Details how metallic an object is, in FMs

case its used on the zip.

Ambient Occlusion – This is a complex explanation

so I’ll try to summarise it. AO basically determines
the shadows, again its often used as a texture to
save on memory usage.
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

2. EDITING THE ALBEDO GRAPHICS

Now we have a brief understanding of the textures, we’re ready to begin editing, we’ll start with the Albedo
graphics as they’re the most important. Drag and drop your file into your Photo Editor, we’ll be using
Photoshop with the DDS plug in.

This is what we’re greeted with, next we need to understand how the colours are used in game. In the track
jacket they’re listed as the following

Colour Relation
Red Colour
Green Stripe
Blue Highlight
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

As previously mentioned, we’re limited on colours so we have to be smart.

So we’re going to create our design, first off I’m going to create a blank layer with red on it, and I want a
horizontal stripe across the front, so referencing the default texture I’m going to add it in the colour green.
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

We have our rough layout, so we’re going to add logos, again using reference images to figure out what goes
where. We’re going to edit our team logo to be green and blue, meaning we can use the in game colour picker
to change the colours.
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

3. EXPORTING THE FILES

Once we’re finished, we’re going to go into our Football Manager folder in our documents. In our main folder,
you’ll need to recreate the file structure you extracted, so create the following folders.

1. art
2. characters
3. male
4. manager
5. shared_textures
They must be as above, no caps or spaces, your folder should look like this.

Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2023/art/characters/male/manager/shared_textures

Inside that folder, save the texture you’ve created, using the exact same name using the following settings.

So all together it will look like

Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager
2023/art/characters/male/manager/shared_textures/track_m_jacket_[al].dds
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

Load up the game, and we’ve created the file! It doesn’t look perfect, as the UVs aren’t straight meaning we
have a bit of distortion, however it is a great starting point.
Football Manager 2023: A (Basic) Guide to Editing Manager Clothing

4. CLOSING STATEMENTS

As previously mentioned, this is a basic guide as I don’t have the time or passion to create a detailed guide
with templates, however as mentioned I do plan to return to this at some point in the future.