My second livery-related question has to do with adding custom license plates.........

 

As part of "upping my game" with making liveries, I've started trying to add custom plates to match what the agency would be using.  I know many templates come with those small slots for "FRONT PLATE" and "BACK PLATE", and I can work with those as part of the actual livery design.  But, what about models that don't have plates slots as part of the template - is there anyway to add plates on those?

For example, I am currently working on a Georgia State Patrol livery pack for a guy.  He asked me to work with a specific vehicle pack.  A couple of the model templates in that pack have the plate slots - so, those I worked with as part of the livery itself.  Searched out GSP plates online, designed my own Georgia state plates (the "peach" and the "...on my mind" style), added the GSP logo and "STATE TROOPER" across the bottom, and then added text to match the unit callsign number (which is what GSP plates seem to be).  That works fine - looks great in OpenIV and in game..........maybe a bit flat, like a decal.  Although, I am working on figuring out embossed text in GIMP - that should help get rid of that flat look.

But, other models in the pack do not have plate slots on their template.  However, I was scrolling through those models .ytd files, and noticed that most have a plate texture in there - usually just one of the standard San Adreas or SA EXEMPT plates.  Got me thinking.........maybe I could just import my GSP style plate onto that texture - no different than changing a lighting texture from red/blue to blue/blue, right?  So, I did that - exported that plate texture into GIMP, brought in my GSP plate and scaled it to fit properly.  I even found the "normal-map" online tool, to create the bump(?) map/normal map to match my new plate.  Got the names to match, as "plate01" and "plate01_n" or whatever, and then moved those into the OpenIV .ytd file.  Should be set!  That worked and looked great in OpenIV.  But.........not so great in game.  Didn't work at all, actually.  Seemed like the game was generating and overlaying the standard vanilla plate texture - which made it unreadable.

On the one hand, it makes sense that the game will always put on the vanilla plates - and then a plate design that is part of the livery, will just overlay a "decal" on it.  But, I do have another add on car where there is a custom plate that is part of the .ytd - and, it works just fine in game.  It has a slightly diferent name - going with "plate1" instead of "01".  I did read somewhere to name a plate anything but 01 through 05, but I think that was more on the modeling side of things.   I know the base vanilla plates in the vehshare file are 01 through 05.   I tried renaming my plate to just "plate1", but that didn't work either.   I know I could probably replace one of the vanilla plates in the vehshare with mine - but, then that would become part of the pool the game draws on......not just the vehicle I want it to work with.

Any ideas?  Am I missing something obvious to add a custom plate into the .ytd for a model?  Or, are the plate textures in the .ytd something that can only be changed in the model itself?

 

Thanks in advance again!

 

Sad no one could help with this. I've been trying to figure this out for awhile.

Yeah, I hear you!  I never did figure anything out as a workaround.  My guess is that it would all have to do with what the dev of that particular model built into their design.  Thinking that whatever base model they used might have come with a slot for a plate, so that is why it shows up in the ytd.  But, if they didn't include a plate slot on their build of the base model.....then, it won't work.

I've moved on, lol.  Do what I can with the livery plates!

It's typically based on the modeler (not the base modeler for clarity). Some will use custom plates on the liveries (or their own custom YTD), which is rare in my opinion, and some more frequently use the vehshare.ytd file. In other words, this is also why you see people make plate textures and vehicle textures separately most of the time.

 

The vehshare file also shows how many of the more recent add-on vehicle packs have custom plates instead of doing it directly on the livery.