I have Spark IV and I know how to install car mods, I just can't figure out how to install car skins. Need help please. Thanks in advance.

If you are just downloading texture images (.pngs):

Use sparkIV to open vehicles.img, find the vehicle that you are editing the skin of, press the edit button with the texture file of that car selected, on the left pane find the texture you are replacing (if it's a main body for the car, it's probably called police_sign_1/2/3/4) and then press the import button, find the image you have downloaded and select it and it should replace what was there. Then save and close.

If you are downloading layered/mapped texture files (.wtd) then you just use sparkiv and import the new file.

Edited February 10, 201214 yr by Ekalb

you are very good help, Ekalb

what is a layered mapped texture? i just wanna make my local police depts. skin, can you please guide me? ill try your instructions in your post first, though!

Okay so every vehicle has 2 files that make it a vehicle:

The wft is a 3D model (gives the object its shape, proportions, etc.)

The wtd is a file that contains all of the textures that go on the model to give it colour and essentially something to look at.

The wtd file is basically a number of images that are mapped onto the 3d model and each part of the 3d model has a 'layer' in the wtd file for its texture.

Depending on what car you are editing, the image layer that is used for the main body texture of police vehicles is normally called police_sign or police_sign_1/2/3/4 if there are variations.

When people make custom skins for cars they normally just edit the police_sign texture so the car has a different paintjob and decals. You can see them in the gallery section of this website fairly frequently.

Other times, people who make custom textures will release the entire .wtd file which is much easier to replace.

So if you want to make your own textures for a vehicle, you need to use sparkIV to open the texture file, then find the image layer that you want to edit, then export it and save it onto your computer, edit it and then save it as a .png then import it back with sparkiv to replace the original.

I pretty much never see a .wtd released without a .wft to go with it. The template is often the only texture in common between 2 versions of the same car. If someone releases a Charger skin as a png, it works on all Chargers (as in, police Chargers based on Caine's model, which is all the ones you're likely to see as cop cars); if it's a .wtd, it's extremely dependent on the specific model to work.