Convert ELS vehicles to non-ELS

ELS vs non-ELS in one minute

• ELS (Emergency Lighting System) is a script. The light housings on the model sit on extras, and the script turns those extras on and off in its own patterns. The .xml file in the els folder (the VCF) says which extras are lights and in which colour.
• Non-ELS vehicles use GTA’s built-in siren system: lights sit on special siren bones, and carcols.meta holds colours, flash patterns and light settings. The game flashes them itself on E, synced for every player.

So an ELS car on a server without ELS has dead lights, and turning it into non-ELS normally means hours in ZModeler: rigging every lamp to a siren bone and writing carcols by hand.

Convert it in the browser

1. Zip the resource exactly as you would install it: the stream files (.yft, _hi.yft, .ytd), vehicles.meta, carvariations.meta and the ELS .xml.
2. Open the ELS converter and drop the ZIP.
3. Pick the colours: keep the ones from the ELS file, or choose blue, red / blue, red or amber. Then the flash pattern, brightness and speed.
4. Press Convert. Every ELS light extra is found, each light head goes onto a native siren bone, and you see the layout from above with each siren slot numbered.
5. Download the resource and put it on your server in place of the ELS version.

What changes in the files

• Both .yft files get siren bones; the light geometry is moved onto them and keeps its textures.
• A new carcols file with the siren definition and a free siren ID (200 to 254, or one you pick), linked from carvariations.meta as sirenSettings.
• vehicles.meta gets the emergency class and police audio, so the siren sound works.
• is_els and the VCF are removed from the manifest, so an ELS script on the server leaves the vehicle alone.

Fine tuning

Want other patterns per light, LED lines or a different light layout? Open the converted car in the Vehicle Editor: Emergency lights has a pattern editor with 32 steps per light.