http://soase.x90x.net/?i=modding/UI-ResearchButton.html this tutorial took me from knowing nothing about UI modding to finishing my first mod. really helpful. 

For first time go's  : download GIMP http://www.gimp.org/downloads/#mirrors and then get the DDS File extension viewer  http://www.aljacom.com/~gimp/gimp-dds-2.0.9-64bits.zip  window files are still above me at the moment. (understand the concept) just haven't read any tutorials on how to open them yet. ill try to figure it out in the next few day. 

"all m0d files open with notepad (if converted to text from bin). I highly recommend notepad++."

thanks, got the window files down. how do you open .brushes files? i'm not trying to do much just move the buttons on the main menu to the left of the screen and out of the center. 

I've been able to open them in Note Pad and NotePad ++ , but its an illegible grouping of letters and numbers. i have searched the forum and google but couldn't find a tutorial to ( converting to a readable format, edit, then convert back. )  found the thread with the "text converted Reference Files" though. may be helpful to have an link to it in this thread.   https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/378266/page/4

just wanted to show of some of my UI Mod (or why i haven't been sleeping) it WORKS in Rebellion 1.0 thanks for all the helpful post and tutorials. 

         other than making the UI minimal and clean, lots of transparencies, I re-sized the race planet modules so the planet modules overlays don't take up the majority of the gravity well( you can actually see whats going on, on a busy planet.) fighters and bomber unit main overlays are much, much smaller so you can see more of the ship icons in battle. some ship re-sizing. star bases are defiantly much smaller icons overlays. undiscovered worlds don't block your view, some more really small details. i tried to look at everything with a lot of thought to usefulness and cleanliness. the only image i used was the gray box background in the menus (from SUNs MoD)  i did the  star cluster mod too. 

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/558692204732329690/72970A897D7D1978F2CC7C4F23D67B809ACE30CF/

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/558692741792168860/2E5CC1620B191B985F532EEA4EC8068C2A4E1CD6/

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/558692741792169529/5F3E0F3820BAEFDBFBE3E2957213CEBFAE2349A3/

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/558692741792170111/6A6D03F84381229B3E559D5F7BD89D4773D6A19B/

*other note* i got the Alex planet skins and effects to work in Rebellion. (i couldn't get his mineral planets to load without dumping.) i also got his "don't play into videos at start up" patch to work. also got the stars to work from Max Tael's "Texture Pack 1 - Stars and Planets"

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/419564

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/178003/page/3/

  i'm still trying to remove or "turn down the brightness" of the white aura/cloud thing that shows up around a star mid solar system view (cant find the file). and i was going to try to get the unit main icons to be color coded by frigate / ship. not just one color for your entire fleet. i tried changing the color in the Tga file, but it changed all the colors and really messed with the other color overlays