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Every aircraft in the fleet can be repainted by server owners and community artists. The UV maps are laid out cleanly on every helicopter, the example FBX files import the right way round, and custom liveries pick up the full visual damage system on their own.

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Two Ways To Paint

2D repaint — open the shipped body texture (the example pack has it ready as a PNG in its Textures folder) in any image editor, paint over it, and save. Your artwork sits on the same layout as ours, so everything lands exactly where the original livery had it. This is the quickest route and needs no 3D tools at all. Substance Painter / Blender — import the example FBX for that aircraft, paint in 3D, and export your textures. The FBX geometry matches the shipped models exactly, and its UVs are the same ones the shipped textures use, tidied into the standard tile so Painter’s baking and fill layers behave.
Finished artwork has to be converted to .paa (DayZ Tools → ImageToPAA) before the game can load it.
The example FBX files were rebuilt in v0.4.6. Copies downloaded before then were mirror images of the aircraft — they looked right in Blender or Painter, but in game the pilot’s door sat on the wrong side and lettering read backwards. Replace any older copy with the current pack. It now includes the CH-47D, the Mi-24, both Ospreys and every fitted wheel.

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No Substance Painter? Free Options

The example FBX files are standard files that any of these open. Paint one texture per texture set in the file (for example Body, or Body1–Body4 and Wings on the Mi-24), export each at the size of the shipped texture, then convert to .paa as above.
In Substance Painter, import with Auto-unwrap off and the UV Tile workflow off — the files already carry the shipped UVs, and letting Painter redo them breaks the match with the game.

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The Add-On Pattern

A retexture ships as a small mod of its own: a config.cpp declaring a new classname that inherits our aircraft, pointing the texture slots at your files. Nothing of ours is changed — your mod just adds another variant.
The texture list is positional — each entry has to line up with the aircraft’s own list of paintable parts. On the Gazelle, MD500, Black Hawk, Merlin, both Chinooks and both Ospreys the first nine are lights, the body texture is the tenth entry (index 9), and the four navigation-light slots follow it (the UH-1H is the same, with its tail texture in between — see below). The Mi-24 has five body textures instead of one: indexes 9 to 13 are Body1, Body2, Body3, Body4 and Wings, then its four navigation lights. Its shark mouth, stars and numbers are part of that artwork, so they stay unless you paint over them. The MH-6 and the Barrel Helicopter have a shorter list: headlight, dashboard, then the body texture as the third entry (index 2), then the four navigation lights (the Barrel Helicopter adds its cage, bolts and nails after those). On the MH-6 the landing light is painted from the body sheet too, so put your body texture in the first and third entries (indexes 0 and 2). Copy the list from any shipped livery of that aircraft and change only the body paths.
The UH-1H is the one aircraft with a separate tail texture. Its list has camo at index 9 and camotail at index 10, then the navigation lights, so a UH-1H livery supplies two textures. Every other aircraft paints the whole thing, tail included, from the single body texture.

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Doors And Wheels

Doors are separate items with their own classes, and they use the same texture layout as the body — a door painted with your body _co matches the aircraft seamlessly. On the Mi-24, the two cockpit doors use Body4 and the four cabin door halves use Body1. On the two Ospreys each crew-door half takes the body texture for its outside skin; the inside of the door keeps its own stock finish and is not repainted. Declare your own door classes the same way, inheriting the aircraft’s stock doors (for example CZ_UH1H_Nasa_Cargo1) — never a class ending in _base, and point their hiddenSelectionsTextures at the same artwork. Wheels are separate items too, each with one texture entry. The Black Hawk’s wheels are painted from its body texture, so a Black Hawk livery repaints them as well. Every other aircraft on wheels has a wheel texture of its own: the CH-47D, MH-47G, Mi-24 and both Ospreys share one, and the Merlin’s wheels are painted from part of its interior texture. Repainting wheels is optional — declare wheel classes that inherit the stock wheel (for example CZ_CH47DChinook_FrontWheel) and point their hiddenSelectionsTextures at your artwork. The retexture example pack includes the wheels in each model; their textures are inside CZAutozHelicopters.pbo (the pack’s Textures README says where to find them). DayZ 1.30 needs a burst partner for every wheel class you make. When a wheel is destroyed, 1.30 swaps it for a class with the same name plus _Ruined. Without one the wheel can’t swap and the server log shows No config class entry for wheel entity ..._Ruined. So next to each repainted wheel, add <your wheel class>_Ruined, inheriting the stock burst wheel (for example CZ_MH60LBlackhawk_FrontWheel_Ruined) with your texture and the same inventorySlot[] line. The example pack’s Black Hawk wheels show it.

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Damage Looks Come Free

Your livery picks up all five damage looks with no extra work. The paint always comes from your textures; only the damage layer on top — dents, grime, the burnt-out finish — is swapped, and it falls back to ours when you have not supplied your own. If you do override hiddenSelectionsMaterials with your own material, you can author the damage tiers yourself: put <YourMaterial>_worn.rvmat, _damage.rvmat, _bad.rvmat and _destruct.rvmat next to it and the mod will use them stage for stage. Any tier you leave out falls back to ours, so nothing ever renders broken.
On the UH-1H, the NASA roundel and N418NA registration are pressed into the surface detail, so they stay faintly visible under any repaint. To remove them completely, override hiddenSelectionsMaterials with a material pointing at your own _nohq detail map — or simply borrow the White scheme’s materials, which are smooth there (the example pack’s config.cpp shows how).

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Checklist

  1. Paint — 2D over the shipped body texture, or in 3D from the example FBX
  2. Convert to .paa
  3. Write the add-on config: a new class inheriting CZ_<Aircraft>_ColorBase (never one ending in _base), with the textures in the right slots (UH-1H: body and tail)
  4. Do the same for door classes if you want matching doors
  5. Add your classname to types.xml and your trader files, like any other variant