Razr v3 Creating or Editing DRM Icons Part 1

From Guides

by poetic_folly

Ah, DRM. Now we are getting into a little more hard-core hacking stuff. MotoX originally brought up the DRM topic. What is it? Its all the icons across the top of the screen (both inner and outer)--battery level, signal strength, ring-style icons, GPRS icons, SMS icons, and most other icons in your phone!

All right, lets get into a little base knowledge about DRM icons first. They are made of RAW files, which are basically two BMP files--an image, and a mask. The full images are rectangles of some size, and the mask determines which area is shown, and which isn't. If you are familiar with masks from Photoshop, Gimp, or your graphics editor of choice, this is nothing new to you. For some, though, its completely foreign. When creating a mask, the image will be the exact same size as the actual image, but only be two colors--black and white. Basically, the mask is layered above the image, and whatever is white in the mask is shown through, whatever is black is not shown. Here's an example:

Notice how since the mask is black where the guitar should be, in the actual "what you see" image (the RAW file, the combination of the image and mask) it is not visible.

Now, in order to create custom icons, you need to know a few things. Namely, which icons you want to change, which number they are in the DRM set, and the icons' sizes. A list of the most commonly modded icons, along with their attributes, can be found here. Thanks, dark_hacker_exe!

So, the time consuming part comes now--creating the actual icons. Check the DRM icon table for the dimensions of the icons you want, and their corresponding numbers. Then, using your photo editing program of choice (I use Photoshop, but if you need a quality free alternative, try GIMP), create 2 new images for each icon you want to change (one will be the actual icon, one will be the mask).

For example, say we want to change the inner battery signal. According to the icon table, we see that the images which make it up are 313-320, and that their size is 22x15 (pixels). So, to create the first icon (313, the empty battery icon), we simply make a new image in our photo editing program (name it in the format icon#(widthXheight).bmp, or 313(22x15).bmp), with dimensions 22x15. Then, design away!

When you have designed the image, create a mask image (same dimensions, named icon#(widthXheight)_mask.bmp, or 313(22x15)_mask.bmp), as well. The mask image should be ONLY black and white--make it EXACTLY black where you want to be transparent on the icon, and white where you want the icon to show through on the phone! (For an example, look up the page a little to my masks image).

Nicely done, now repeat that for all the icons you want to create! Its a loooooong, fun process, and it can get a bit annoying with all those little tiny images, ha. But you'll be all right, experiment, check it out!

All right, before we get started, you're going to need some software. Go ahead and download SHXCoDec, Raw2BMP, and qtintf70 (put it in the Raw2BMP folder).

Now, open Raw2BMP, click in the window, and select all the .BMP files ONLY (not the masks) that you created, and hit "Convert" (or what have you) to change the files to RAW files. Don't select the _mask files, just the regular icon .BMP files, but make sure they are all in the same folder. A little hex editing never hurt anyone...

One thing to be aware of--some of the icons need a tad bit of hex editing before you can put them into a flash and get 'em on your phone. The DRM icon table can tell you which ones need it (some of the more popular ones are the outer battery and signal strength icons). If you have created new icons which need hex editing (per the icon table), then open up the RAW file in xvi32 (or your hex editor of choice). Read the icon table to see what hex editing needs to be done (generally adding one offset, and changing the value a bit), and do the hex editing.

Whew! Now that you have all that... Lets get started! Unzip and open SHXCoDec.

Now click File>Open & Split (or just hit F3 to shortcut this).

Choose any reflash file you have (just has to be in .shx format) uncompressed in your computer somewhere.

Once you see the file open (there will be a list of different parts of the reflash file), double-click the "DRM (graphics)" segment, so we can get to these icons.

In the new window that opens up, click "Parse" to open up the list of icons.

You will see a message saying "Structure saved in file: (your reflash file name here)CG15.cds". Click OK.

Nice. Lets move forward...