Creating Kits

Kits are the most important and recognizable part of aesthetics. They're what gives a team their look, it's what sets them apart from the other 11 mooks on the field. This guide will help you create a kit that looks good on paper, but most importantly, works in the game as well.

Background
A kit (sometimes referred to as a strip, like in the PES pre-game menu) is the soccer/football/divegrass term for the pieces that make up a team's uniform. Generally, a kit refers to a player's shirt, shorts, and socks. For the purposes of PES, a kit is made up of a player's shirt, shorts, socks, long sleeves/undershirt, and cleats/boots. For PES goalkeepers, gloves are also considered to be part of their kit. Kits usually feature a team's colors, team logo, and player name & number prominently, while also leaving room for sponsor logos, as well as tournament badges and league logos. Teams will generally use multiple kits over the course of a season, the most common setup being one kit for home and one for away. Depending on the team, they may also pack a number of alternate kits, for special games, or tournaments, or simply just to have other kits to choose from.

The Basics of Creating a Kit
Creating a kit for your team in PES is actually quite easy, if all you wish to do is design it. The picture at right is a basic kit template for PES 17. This one outlines the boundaries of different kit features. It is not advised to actually use this as a base, rather as just a guide while you work on the easier template further down the page. The different segments serve as a guide to let you know where certain elements will begin and end. Some divisions do not need to be observed if you do not wish it include them in your kit. For example, the sleeves do not need to be a different color than the main portion of your kit, they are just noted there in case that's the stylistic choice you'd want to make. Similarly, the side stripes (stripes that run from a player's underarm down to the hem) are also optional, and can be ignored if you don't want that design element.

The image below is a clean version of the image at right. Each major portion of the kit, main body, sleeves, collar, shorts, and socks, are differentiated by color to retain that sense of where parts begin and end. This the ideal image to base your team's kit on, and can be used in your favorite image editor as a base to draw over.

The Advanced Parts
Simply designing the kit is enough for the inexperienced manager, but actually getting it into the game is a different story. Images need to be in a specific format, specific sizes, and follow specific naming conventions. Since you've already designed a kit, let's move to designing the other elements of the kit before we worry about PES's file formatting conventions.

Designing the Numbers
The number element is the part of the kit that displays a player's designated number.

Player numbers in PES can go in three places: On a player's back, chest and shorts. Back numbers are required by the game, leg and chest numbers are optonal. The easiest way to make the numbers for your kit is to pick a good font, then open an existing number file and work on a layer above it. (A sample number file can be found here, note that the number 1 is shifted slightly to the left.) The numbers need to be sized and spaced out properly, otherwise PES throws a small fit. An incorrectly built number image will glitch out your team's kits, looking as if a layer of tv static was layered over the shirt. If this happens, check your number file again, make sure there's clear spacing between each number, and no stray, semi-transparent pixels that encroach on the gaps.

Designing the Namebar
The name element is the part of the kit that spells out the player's name on the back of the kit. A name file is all 26 letters of the alphabet including one special character at the end. PES makes things work by picking out the individual letters from the name file and placing them on the back of each player's shirt. The easiest way to create your own file is the exact same as the number file, by working on top of a pre-existing name file, which can be found here. The spacing required between letters is much more strict than the one between numbers, so you're actually a bit limited with which fonts you can use. Watch out for stray pixels and use the sample image as your guide, and you should be fine.

Designing the Mask
The kit mask is a non-essential texture in a PES kit. It's basically visual gravy, that gives certain portions of the kit a different surface texture depending on how they're highlighted in the mask. Each effect corresponds with an exact color, anything else will not work.
 * For a portion of the kit to have a reflective look, like it was sublimated on, fill in the area with a light purple color (HEX#9682FF)
 * For parts of the kit that are supposed to look elastic (for example the captain's armband), fill the area with a light blue color (HEX#31DCFF)
 * Parts of the kit that get no special effects are covered in a puke/mustard brown color (HEX#968200)

A mask file is supposed to be the same size as the kit file, so PES can properly layer over the visual effects. Again, the mask is optional, and a simple 1x1 image with the puke brown color can suffice as a placeholder for it.