A livery UV template for any GTA V car

A livery is only as good as the UV under it. Most addon cars ship without a livery UV, so there is nothing clean to paint on. The Livery Mapper unwraps the panels you pick into one readable sheet and writes it into the car for you.

What a livery UV is

Every GTA V car body has a first UV for its paint, dirt and detail textures. A livery uses a second UV — TexCoord1 — and a shader that draws the livery texture, <model>_sign_1, over the paint through it. The sheet you paint is that second UV laid flat.

Vanilla emergency and race cars ship with it. Most addon cars do not: the second UV is missing, or it is a copy of the first one, so a logo painted once shows up on the wheels, sills and grille too.

Why a good livery UV is projected, not unwrapped

Run an automatic unwrap (Smart UV Project and similar) on a car body and you get well over a thousand tiny islands. Technically correct, impossible to paint on.

A livery UV is projected per side of the car — left, right, top, back, front — so each piece on the sheet is the outline of that side as you would see it. Lettering painted the way it reads on the sheet reads the same way on the car.

The Livery Mapper does exactly that for the panels you pick and packs the sides as large as they fit. The underside is left out: nobody paints it, and it would only take texels away from the sides.

Getting a sharp livery in game

Sheet size 4096. Twice the pixels on every side compared with 2048. Chosen before the car is mapped, because the size is part of the layout.
Give the sides the room. In Panel sizes → Arrange on the sheet, scroll over a side to make it bigger and drag the small panels out of the way. More sheet for a side means a sharper livery on it.
Logos and text as decals. For lettering that has to stay crisp up close, place it as a decal in the Vehicle Editor — a decal carries its own texture instead of sharing the sheet.

From car to finished livery

Load the unlocked car. The .yft files plus .ytd, or the whole resource .zip. Escrow (.fxap) cannot be edited.
Pick the panels. Doors, bonnet, roof, boot, bumpers — click them in 3D.
Paint the UV template. In the browser with layers and a live 3D preview, or download the template PNG and paint it in Photoshop.
Export. The car comes back with the new UV in both the high and the base model, the livery in its .ytd and livery slots in carvariations.meta.

Frequently asked

What is a livery UV in GTA V?

It is the second set of texture coordinates (TexCoord1) on the body panels. The livery texture (<model>_sign_1) is drawn over the paint through it. Cars that never had a livery have no usable second UV, so a livery has nowhere to land.

Can I get a UV template for a car that has no livery?

Yes. The panels you pick get a fresh projected UV, the template PNG is generated from it, and carvariations.meta is patched with livery slots.

Why does my livery template look like scattered triangles?

That is an angle-based automatic unwrap. It is a valid UV but impossible to paint. A livery UV has to be projected per side of the car, so each side reads as the outline you recognise.

What size should a livery UV template be?

4096 × 4096 for sharp lettering and logos, 2048 × 2048 for a lighter car in game. Pick it before you map the car — the size is part of the UV layout.

Can I paint the template in Photoshop?

Yes. The export includes the flat template PNG in the same orientation the game uses. Paint on layers above it, hide the template, and save as PNG with transparency.

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