How to setup a Custom extra Livery pack project or a project for livery artist

[MSFS 2024] Questions & Community Discussions Aircraft
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Dear Asobo,

I have been studying the 2024 documentation and although modular aircraft explanation about how to setup your livery folder is very good, I cannot find any example or way to do the following:

A) How to create an additional livery pack for an aircraft, let’s say I publish my FSR500 to MSFS 2024 native, modular. Now I want to create a livery pack for it, how I do this? and do I need to pack again the gltf files? if not, what’s the process?

B) Say I am in the process of creating a new product, called AirplaneNew123, it is a modular aircraft and contains only 1 default livery at this stage.

Now I have 3 contractors which sole purpose will be creating liveries, how can I give them some sort of project where they just replace the base textures after they use substance painter, etc. and they will be exporting .PNGs files for these.

They would need a project that is buildable so they can test properly live in MSFS, for example, they paint something in substance, export the PNGs to the livery texture folder, update texture.xml if required, click build, they see the changes.

Once they complete their liveries, they send these back to me, which I will merge accordingly to the main project as per modular aircraft documentation, build and use this to submit to market place, with the liveries embedded.

For obvious reasons, I cannot give them my full source files of the full project, so how can we stablish a workflow for Option B that works?.

These two cases are the most common scenarios encountered for small 3rd party developers in relation to liveries, liveries are very, very important not only for developers, but also for moders, the community, etc., so it would be great if you guys can help us to crack down how we can make this work.

Currently livery artist are stuck, by changing stuff in community folder and reloading MSFS 2024 every time, this obviously causes the workflow to be extremely slow and frustrating, pretty much a non workable scenario as it stands..

Thanks in advance,
Raul

4 Likes
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I agree. The livery aircraft sample seems to require the base aircraft Packagesources or it won’t conpile the livery.
Is there a way to compile liveries without the base plane Packagesources and we are doing it wrong? Or is the original plane source needed?

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I wanted to ask something similar, for different reasons:

In some cases, huge packages with thousands of files and lots of dependencies can take up to 2-3 hours to compile, even when changing something minor, that’s likely because of very complex dependencies between various objects. Note that, I’m referring to compiling with the fspackagetool, not from DevMode.

Is there any way to tell the build process that other assets required are guaranteed to be there, so it shouldn’t even check them, and just build the assets that has been changed ? Basically, a kind of “ignore” flag were we say we are 100% sure the relevant assets will be found in the sim, so don’t worry about dependencies when building, so we might bring down the compilation time significantly, if only minor changes happened in maybe one Asset.

This might possibly work also for the common case of building a repaint for an airplane, without having any of its PackageSources.

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This is possible, and I have the answer as I’m doing it currently.

The easiest way to set it up is to use the supplied sample “DA62_Mod”. effectively its just another aircraft package, but it loads after the main one.

really, the most important part is your PackageDefinitions “__”.xml, as long as your package order hint is set “SIMOBJECT_PATCH” it should just add anything you do to the main aircraft (assuming you’ve got the folder structure correct)

so your folder structure should look something like

PackageSources
->Simobjects
–>Airplanes
----->(NAME OF YOUR AIRCRAFT FOLDER,NEEDS TO BE SAME AS MAIN ONE)
---------->attachments
------------->(this folder can have any name, usually your creator name)
---------------->(any attachments)
---------->liveries
------------->(this folder can have any name, usually your creator name)
---------------->livery name (example “official_1”)
------------------->texture.exterior
----------------------->(your.png + your.png.xml)
------------------->(any other texture/model folder needed)
------------------->thumbnail
------------------->livery.cfg
---------->presets

When you build this package (ideally ingame) it will build the liveries, convert them, and add them to the main package. It takes about 1.5 seconds on my PC to do this, so I can see the changes about 5 seconds after I make them.

At the end, you can either keep them as a separate livery package, or you could just drag that liveries folder source into the main project to combine them

So the only thing you need to give contractors is the built package to go in their community folder. Then this Livery package that will add itself at runtime.

image
image1920×883 71.6 KB

as you can see, i added a black.png to replace this section and it has added itself to the stock FA-18E (ignore the thumbnail)

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You don’t even need the “attachment” or “preset” folder if you don’t have anything to go in them. If it is strictly a livery package, you only need the “liveries” folder.

I might as well add, you can overwrite ANY file in a package using this method. So if you want to mod the flightmodel.cfg, systems.cfg or a modelbehaviour.xml this works. Its probably best practice to do that with your own preset though, rather than changing stuff in the common folder.

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What this mean? Add them to the main package? My contractors will not have the sources of the main package, only the community file version.

So can you clarify a bit on this?

Best,
Raul

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Via the VFS, as in, the game will just think they are part of the main package, even though they are separate in the community/official folder.

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image
image2274×1263 149 KB

As you can see in my image, the liveries package I have made has been placed inside the default FA-18 package in the VFS, even though it is a completely separate package. I don’t have the default FA-18 source and I don’t need it, since I can place anything I want into the package using the VFS.

Within the “aerialsim” folder are the liveries I have created. In the sim, they just show as additional liveries on the aircraft.

9

Got you.. and to confirm:

–>Airplanes
----->(NAME OF YOUR AIRCRAFT FOLDER,NEEDS TO BE SAME AS MAIN ONE)
---------->attachments
------------->(this folder can have any name, usually your creator name)
---------------->(any attachments)

That folder structure had no GLTF or LODS in them right?

Best,
Raul

10

no, nothing at all, like i said, you don’t need the attachment or preset folder if its only liveries. If all the contractors are doing is painting .png then all you’ll need is:

->Simobjects
–>Airplanes
----->(NAME OF YOUR AIRCRAFT FOLDER,NEEDS TO BE SAME AS MAIN ONE)
---------->liveries
------------->(this folder can have any name, usually your creator name)
---------------->livery name (example “official_1”)
------------------->texture.exterior
----------------------->(your.png + your.png.xml)
------------------->thumbnail
------------------->livery.cfg

1 Like
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------------------->thumbnail is a folder by the way, it contains the 3 thumbnails a livery needs

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Thank you so much for this, just to allow others looking at this topic, can you post and example of where we set the above setting? the SIMOBJECT_PATCH?

You are a saviour, this is all undocumented.. haha

This would solve my question B. Would this process also work to publish a livery package via market place? my question A?

Best,
Raul
CEO FSReborn

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image720×1107 95.9 KB

For question A, you’d just publish this exact thing. Change the content type to “livery” and click build and export. That should be everything you’d need to do, there is no different between this and a normal aircraft package.

As for it being undocumented i wouldn’t be so quick to say so. Sure it not all in one place, explained step by step. But the SDK does teach you that this is how the VFS works.

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Is all over the place man, I read about liveries, etc. and I know how the merging works, however is hard to reach to the conclusion of everything you explained here today.

I still think Asobo should document this method, can I ask what’s you name? you just made a big contribution to the entire MSFS community, you deserve a medal..

If you going to FSExpo this year, let me know, find me and I will provide you with at least a couple of beers! haha.

Once again, many thanks for this.

Best,
Raul
CEO FSReborn

1 Like
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Not a problem, i do feel like some of the SDK page try to explain too much at times, so the essentials can get lost. And it could do with as many examples as possible. But its hard to cover everything.

Unfortunately no FSExpo for me, but thanks for the offer!

Cheers
Kade

1 Like