Hello,
simple questions, difficult solutions.

for my skill level, i am intermediate with unity, so i am able to try that solution path if its avaliable for some of these problems.

i have looked at example mods, to see how they work, and i can find nothing to do with pictures.

the most important pictures i would like to change are for majour fraction portraits, pictures, popuation pictures, etc. in all places (diplomacy, empire overview maybe)
diplomacy i feel is going to be hard to change, because the diplomatic overview might be 2d, but the negotiations feel 3d, idk how to change that.

i have looked arond quite a bit, multiple times over a long peroid of time for information but i thought id do a post.
for music (or audio) there is a pinned post explaining it, so ill try that.

pictures is more complex/difficult.  accordig to the modding manul (user manual)
found here:
https://medias.games2gether.com/forums/dagart/Modding%20-%20Endless%20Space%202%20[1].pdf

at page 17, at the bottom on icons-note, it says its not possible to import pictures. hoping there have been improvements in the field since that document was created.
at the very least i would like to replace the images in game with my own.

the things i want to change (or add my own images) are:

for majour and minor fractions: all of their pictures , (portraits, population pictures, icons)

icons are in the manual so ill look into them later, but i would like some help with using any means possible to change the pictures


also this mod will be for multiplayer.

edit:
more stuff i want to do and i will appriciate any help is
planet reskins or new unique planets or edit existing ones.
change icons (can you change icon colours)
UI colour or ui theme. bg and or other things as well

the color of space it self maybe

Hey kingaustin!

It actually is possible to add new pictures, I have no idea why the modding guide says it's not possible :/

The example hero mod for example adds the pictures for the new hero it adds.

The only thing that's not possible is replacing the animated portraits, this would require the game to load AssetBundles and stuff like that, and it isn't implemented in ES2. Instead, you'll have to settle for static images.

But other than that, everything's possible! You just have to create/override the factions, populations, traits GuiElements and reference your own images, just like in the mod I linked above.

In this mod, the GuiElements are listed in Gui/GuiElements.xml and the images are located in Resources/Gui.

I suggest looking at the (unofficial) Major faction example to see how it architectures the GuiElements, I assure you it's fairly simple (mostly creating a few GuiElements and having enough Icons with various sizes!)

a few additional questions,
[my end plan being just to replace all the images, but ill stick to faction leader, hero, minor faction images for now]
im having trouble finding where pictures are referanced, or how to repath them.

i have found that empire leader images are found in, GUI> GUIELEMENTS[affinities],
but i dont know how to change animated
<ModelPath>Prefabs/Gui/AnimatedPortrait/AnimatedPortraitCraversLeaders01</ModelPath>

to static image, i presume its just Resources/Gui/[imagename] inside the tags

to override the existing assets i also presume i just have to change the icon and [modelpath]

while tagging the name to be the same as the asset name

<HeroGuiElement Name="HeroSophons01">

i dont have to copy the whole tagset right?

edit:
sidenote,
what are the image (or animated image) resolutions?
so we can map them correctly

if i understand it again, i dont need model path but instead i just use icon for the static image replacements