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Livery Mapper

The Livery Mapper puts a livery on a car in three steps. It lays the body panels out flat on a square sheet, writes the matching livery UVs onto the car, and saves the sheet as a picture for you to paint on. What you paint on the sheet then shows on the car.

Quick start

  1. Open the car.
  2. Materials > Livery Mapper... (or type livery in command search, Ctrl+Space).
  3. Pick the panels: the paintwork is already ticked (Suggested). Ticked panels turn purple on the car.
  4. Leave the layout as it is and press Map livery.
  5. Open the saved sheet (<car>_livery_sheet_2048.png, next to the model) in your paint program, paint the livery over the outlines, and save it as the livery texture.

That's it. The rest of this page explains each step.

1 Pick the panels

The list on the left is every piece of the car, named after the parts it covers ("Bonnet", "Body, Front door (driver) +2" ...). The paintwork comes first.

  • Tick a panel to put the livery on it. Ticked panels are tinted purple in the 3D views.
  • Click a name to see just that panel on the car.
  • Suggested ticks the paintwork again, All ticks everything, None clears the list.

Usually you want the body, doors, bonnet, boot and bumpers. Leave out the interior, glass, lights, wheels and engine.

2 Check the layout (optional)

The square on the right is the sheet. Each ticked panel is laid flat on it as a view of the car: top, bottom, front, back, left and right. The automatic layout is usually fine, so you can skip this step.

To change it:

  • Click a piece to select it, then drag it to move it.
  • Mouse wheel over it, or drag its corner, to resize it. Bigger pieces get more detail in the livery.
  • Rotate 90° (R) and Flip (F) turn or mirror the selected piece.
  • Right-click a piece to leave it out (nothing is painted there). Reset chart / Reset all put pieces back where the mapper placed them.

Keep the pieces inside the square: the status line under the sheet warns you about any that are off it.

3 Map livery

At the bottom:

  • Sheet size: how big the sheet is. 2048 suits most cars; 4096 for fine detail (bigger files).
  • Livery texture name (optional): the texture the livery layer reads, e.g. mycar_sign_1 (GTA calls a livery texture a "sign"). Leave it empty to use the car's own livery texture, or a standard name when it has none.

Press Map livery. Rivet:

  1. writes the livery UVs onto the ticked panels (one undo step: Ctrl+Z takes it back),
  2. saves the sheet to paint on, next to the model, as <car>_livery_sheet_<size>.png,
  3. tells you in the Assistant tab which texture the livery layer reads.

Painting the livery

  1. Open the sheet in Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET or similar. The outlines show where each panel is.
  2. Paint on a new layer above the outlines, then hide the outline layer.
  3. Save it as the texture name Rivet reported (e.g. mycar_sign_1.png).
  4. In Rivet, open the Textures Browser (Ctrl+T) and Replace that texture with your picture (or Add it if it's missing).
  5. Look at the car in the views with Textures shading on, then export (see Exporting).

Tips

  • Paint a little past each outline: it hides gaps at panel edges.
  • Before painting lettering, paint a quick test mark on each piece and look at the car: it shows which way round every piece is.
  • Want a different layout later? Run the Livery Mapper again: it remaps the UVs and saves a new sheet.
  • A livery template without remapping (just the outlines of the UVs the car already has) is Materials > Export UV Template....

If something goes wrong

  • The window doesn't open: the Livery Mapper runs through Rivet's helper scripts. The Assistant tab and the Console (F8) say what went wrong.
  • "Couldn't project those panels": untick panels one at a time to find the one that fails (often a broken or very small piece) and leave it out.
  • The livery shows on the wrong panels: some panels share one piece of the model; untick that piece, or split the part first.