That’s a good way to start a sentence when your name is “Sky-High”. Also, never heard of them. Like i said -“OG”. Strop, Deskyx, Starfish, Koolkei, NormanVauxhall, Pyrlix.
In any case, so the more stuff you slap on the car the “better” it is for some people.
Strop is busy with shifting jobs and such, he is a doctor anyway and in the midst of this it’s obvious he’d be busy. Before all this, he used to be very active on discord.
I see Koolkei every now and then on discord as well. Though quite recently I haven’t seen him.
Norman is still in the community and occasionally pops up in discord, he’s currently working on making mod bodies for automation.
Pyrlix is the Super-Administrator of the Automation discord server. I see him online and conversing every day.
It never was and never will be. The way most of us see it, if you use 50 fixtures to craft a high detailed part that would’ve required 5 or even 10 fixtures at most, that’s fixture redundancy. It’s not any better than a non-spammed design.
The line between highly detailed and redundantly detailed can be a bit thin, but to each their own. But yeah, saying that a huge car file size is inherently better styled is nothing but a meme to most of us.
Hope that clears up everything for you
Edit: Riles up a convo and tries to make a scene, and when gets a full answer, doesn’t reply anymore. Nice!
A bunch of those guys are still on the discord, they pop on occasionally.
The whole kb thing was like, essentially flexing really. Generally people have tried to increase the file sizes cause apparently bigger = better. What Yang’s trying to prove is that it’s not always the case, and that time should be more spent on overall design rather than putting needless details (these details are the ones that help the file sizes become bigger).
For anyone who wants to simulate a true convertible, a Targa roof or T-tops on a fixed-roof car, your guide is a godsend. Enough said.
(Alternate title: bxDroid is attempting to find other ways to put shit on other things)
Want some cool chromed door handles but not fancying slapping chrome or metal paint on the handle like this? Well, I got you covered here.
Firstly, take a door handle fixture like this.
Then, slap the straight LED sticks from the LED glowsticks mod on this link to the car.
Make sure you pick the ones that look like this:
Not these:
And then adjust it until it’s enough to slap on the door handle without covering it. After that, put the fixture in a way you like.
Also, make sure to change the color of the LED strip to chrome/metal for the looks.
OPTIONAL: If you have a car with 2 rows of doors, make sure you do the same things on the rear doors as well.
This guide is only for the basics to create a fancier-looking door handle. Make more experiments, and you can have your cool-looking door handles to a whole new level!
While you may see chumps like yang running around, telling people to save their time, I’m here to instead say: cool beans bro. A good design is obviously based around unique features and not good looking fascias or smart fixture usage, something that these “professionals” who “play the game for fun” and “don’t cry after getting less than 20 nuts in #car-showcase” haven’t grasped yet. Today, let’s have a look at some very cool and fun detailing ideas!
What we have here is a tow hook cover, made with a fuel flipper flap. Nothing fancy here. Except for when we open it up…
That’s right ladies and women, hiding behind the cap is an 8kb hole with an actual tow hook in it! What you need:
This trick is particularly useful in the event you pass the .car file to someone else and they check whether there is something behind the tow hook cap.
Much like an actual van, do you want to place some grooves on the roof of your mode of vehicular transport? With this trick, it’s as easy as 2-3-4! What you’re gonna need:
Your first step is to cut out the position of the grooves with a bodycutter of your choice. Personally I prefer Patchwork to DogTape but this is all up to you.
Next, use angled patchwork shaping tools 
and fill in the grooves which you cut out in step 1. After that, you’re done! The results speak for themselves, as you can see below.
The final detailing suggestion I’ve got for you mortals is pretty self-explanatory; the round pattern you see on car windows in real life. Their purpose is to hide the glue with which the window is fitted to the car. Except, obviously, their purpose here is to hide the fact you haven’t felt the touch of a woman since you moved out of your mom’s house. You may have believed that it would turn your life around, give you new opportunities to meet people and get a real job but in reality, you can’t handle the chores you’re required to do on your own accord now. Your room is filled to the ceiling with clothes you’re never going to wear anyways considering the shirt you’ve got on now is permanently stuck to your body, after months and months worth of grease has filled up between the shirt and your skin. That garlic-y smell you’ve become accustomed to? It’s causing the neighbors cat to scratch up their walls, as it’s desperately looking for the source of that putrid stink. You try and you try to get out of your mancave to search for a partner in life but every single time, the same wild call keeps bringing you back: “damn, that custom panel gap sure looks nice!”. You can’t help it. Those compliments feed you. You have become one with the game.
What you’re gonna need:
Patchwork
I’m afraid you’ve got some of those fancy Yang’s pills 
Cool addition.
While you may see chumps like yang running around, telling people to save their time, I’m here to instead say: cool beans bro. A good design is obviously based around unique features and not good looking fascias or smart fixture usage, something that these “professionals” who “play the game for fun” and “don’t cry after getting less than 20 nuts in #car-showcase” haven’t grasped yet.
After reading this post, I have nothing to say except… wow. I am astounded… astounded at the ABSOLUTE REVELATION I am going through right now.
The incredible detail going into each millimeter of this car has made me approach this newfound nirvana in car design, that is, I have been doing this wrong all the time. I shouldn’t be a good student studying for my midterms or hunting for jobs right now. I shouldn’t be fulfilling my responsibilities as an adult at all either.
Instead, I should be dedicating all my willpower towards making the absolute NUTTIEST car I could in this game which I have already sunk 1100 hours into. As a result, I am now pursuing to get the most nut reacts in #car-showcase and sink my mortal enemies into the ground pursuing this numbers game.
Using my first year knowledge as an “engineer” I have already derived the first formula based on Riemannian manifolds and Hopf algebra antipodes adding to the bialgebra axioms. This will correlate and causate the radius of gyration of each flowing line (more on this later) with the polynomially-based size and eigenvector projection of each individual fixture in order to find the optimal combination of .car file size and socioeconomic trends for nut reacts in #car-showcase. This is done because everybody knows numbers are better than anything holistic. ESPECIALLY in the engineering realm.
I already have multiple designs in progress right now that I will invest the rest of my school term into, displaying the absolute magnum opus of good line flow and ONLY good line flow. Not to mention inCREDIBLE detail that will blow the pants off of any Automation veteran.
Thank you, Corsica for this revelation, I am now your biggest fan and idolize everything from your cool cars to your even cooler respiratory system. I will sooner contribute to this thread again and hope that you will be astonished at my absolute capability.
Thank you,
Yang
cOOLANDRADIMPORTANT.zip (8.9 KB)
Based on what???
So I did mention yesterday that lineflow is one of the most important things to know if you want to get better at design, but to prevent any confusion on what I mean by lineflow, let me clarify.
By lineflow, I’m primarily talking about how fixtures flow together. They don’t have to be exactly parallel and be ±0.005 degrees within each other, but as long as things are generally lined up then I consider it good lineflow. Things like lining DRLs up with individual grille slats or headlight cutouts exactly with the contours of a body also constitutes good lineflow but this isn’t as important as just making sure fixtures are placed and oriented in such a way that they flow well.
And yes, you don’t necessarily need perfect lineflow everywhere for a design to be good; just look at the Genesis G70, you could say the headlights’ lines don’t line up with the grille’s lines, but it still works. My point isn’t that everyone needs to follow lines exactly for each fixture on each design across the entire body, which is where some of us got confused. Rather, I’m really just saying that lineflow is a paramount skill that all designers should know, and breaking it in such a way that the design still looks coherent comes naturally with practicing good lineflow.
It’s just one of many ways to design cars, but whether or not you choose to follow it, lineflow/fixture flow is absolutely necessary for every good design, and it’s there in all the good ones I’ve seen. Interpret what I said yesterday however you’d like, I just wanted to clarify my own stance on this so it’s not exaggerated or taken too seriously.
I’m perfectly okay with people holding this opinion, and this is where I should probably address yesterday’s discussion.
I’m sorry if my post came off as a personal attack to you and our discussion yesterday. That was not my intention and I apologize if it appeared that way. We both have strong opinions and the grey line between whether it’s a back-to-back shit slinging fest or a heated debate starts to fade away as our words are put into text on a computer screen. Once again, I apologize. This was not my intention.
Albeit appearing intense, yesterday’s discussion brought up a lot of good points on each side. Hell, you managed to remind me that the rulebook is always to be taken as a good guide as a beginner before you go breaking them. That completely breezed by my head through the duration of the discussion and honestly it probably shouldn’t have.
Where the stickler comes in however, and where this:
I already have multiple designs in progress right now that I will invest the rest of my school term into, displaying the absolute magnum opus of good line flow and ONLY good line flow. Not to mention inCREDIBLE detail that will blow the pants off of any Automation veteran.
…comes in, is not personal but instead a bit of fun regarding some recent trends in the automation server. It was to make satire out of the recent resurgence of people drawing arbitrary lines on other people’s cars as advice of “improving a vehicle’s line flow”.
Frankly, drawing these lines are stupid, completely arbitrary, and essentially strays away from the actual concept of line flow we understand subconsciously. This is a big point I missed in my discussion, and it is my fault for not getting this through through the fast-paced nature of Discord. Unfortunately part of it is one of the roots in our confusion and conflict.
Here I can take my time to re-iterate exactly what I meant, just briefly. Line flow is arbitrary and subjective by nature. It cannot be defined by drawing concrete, tangible or objective lines on the picture of a car. A lot of other aspects are more important and sometimes consequently lead to good lineflow, but this is a very strong opinion which I’ll talk about later.
I’ve mocked earlier renditions of the very first post in here (sorry Quotex I’m putting you on the spot) as early as last year…
…and some others have too, and that’s why things have recently tipped the scale for me holding back regarding this stuff. This is also why I decided to directly make satire out of how overgeneralized this concept has become recently.
I agree with you, that line flow (the subconsciously-obtained, and in fact very volatile understanding of it which we gained from the world around us, not the tangibly drawn-out version of it) is important, but I disagree that it is a fundamental part of design that will imply good fixture placement and proportions. To me, it is a product of good fixture placement of proportions.
It is perfectly okay to hold the diametrical opposite of my opinion. Design is subjective after all, and yesterday’s discussion was a good display of just how subjective it really is. Yesterday’s discussion was great. It’s the kind of debate I love seeing from time-to-time. However, I wanted to have a bit of fun with how “telephone game’d” this concept has unravelled through a brain-turn-off kinda post I’ve been… unfortunately doing a bit more than I should recently.
In the end, I apologize if any of mine or your stances have been blown out of proportion. I just felt like I needed to vent it out through a low-effort post. I hope we can make up for these misunderstandings, and set our differences aside.
I think fundamentally we both agree on the same thing, and that expecting lineflow to be perfect for all fixtures on every surface and every curve like Smol’s hatchback is unnecessary. Even I don’t go that far.
You do bring up a good point with lineflow inherently resulting from good fixture proportioning and positioning, which is something that I take for granted. I think I partially blew this out of proportion myself, but I’m glad we could come to an understanding.
I haven’t seen mentioned discussion, so I won’t refer to that, but I’d like to add my 3 cents anyway - that we all have our own, different ways of getting results that satisfy us, and even if we support, present them and advise their use to others it doesn’t necessarily mean that we want them to be the only correct ones. Let’s just approach it as “works for me, maybe will work for you”. Also all those are just guidelines, not rules, they are meant to help, not restrict. No idea for what to do? Then go along lines, focus on details or whatever else one might advise you. Got a clear vision? Then design away across and against any “rules” that don’t suit you.
It’s ok, It was a dumb guide and I regret going too overboard with it.
I don’t think I can just reply on this thread, but I have a good model naming tip. Look for synonyms of the names of the cars you’re using as design inspiration, or something related to their history. Also lifestyle. For example:
This is the Bridgell Joy. Because it’s based on a Ford Fiesta. What do parties bring you?
This is the Duhen Elsinore. Elsinore was one of the proposed names for the Honda Passport, one of the cars that inspired this one.
And this is the Duhen Shonen (good old 5 fixture wonder). That means young male in Japanese. Guess who are the intended customers?
Thanks for the helpful tips m8, that would work for model names as well.
Have you ever been told that the only way to make good headlights on a car is to use MDHL, but you really can’t be bothered to spend the time making said headlights look the way you want them to?
Have you been frustrated selecting the tiny MDHL parts only to find that you can’t select it and have to cycle through the +1000 detailing fixtures just to find it?
Do you with there was an easier and simpler way to make headlights?
Well have I got the guide for you!
IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH USING MDHL, THIS GUIDE IS NOT FOR YOU.
Let’s begin!
So the real reason I’m making this guide is that I saw this on discord.
Now I’ve seen plenty of people there echo similar sentiments towards vanilla headlights and while to a certain extent, vanilla headlights aren’t as good as well-made custom MDHL headlights, they shouldn’t be thrown away.
So you might be asking then. How the fuck do you make a good headlight using this?
The answer?
Okay, so this isn’t the full answer, but part of it. The problem I think people have with these vanilla lights is that some of the variants just look bad. For example, the variant used above. It just doesn’t look good, but on the bright side, there are other variants of said headlight that look much better. As for what I’ve circled, the scale and rotation adjustments you can do to vanilla headlights are what make them look like that to looking like this.
Now that’s looking much better. Ofc, this works with any headlight (including MDHL) so its best to experiment with the scale and rotation to see what works best.
But that’s not all! You can combine these vanilla headlights together to make even more complicated shapes!
(and you can even use glowsticks for that “LED” look)
Oh and the same stuff applies to taillights too
While ya’ll can argue whether it looks as good as a custom headlight/taillight made with MDHL, just remember that these probably take a quarter of the time to make and probably a eighth of the fixtures and without the pain of having to move the tiny MDHL parts. (with the exception of the glowsticks those are still a pain to move around in these headlights 
)
So if you still think vanilla headlights should be thrown away, think again 
This is definitely a must read
As for glowsticks, it’s best to first lay out the shape with the poking out variants and then switch them to those behind the body line - they will keep the shape and placement.
Based off an exchange between @Dorifto_Dorito and @Secrane
Here’s an older guide on database editing.
Let's say you have a car and you want to copy its fixtures over from one body to a longer variant. Maybe you have a C-class and you want to make an E or even S-class. You have two options: painstakingly recreate the car fixture-by-fixture on a new body and mindbreak yourself in the process, or literally copy and paste one thing and have all the fixtures from the old car on the new car, all for a fraction of the time!
Incredible, right? To do this we’ll need to use DB Browser for SQLite. You don’t need any coding experience to do this, but follow my instructions closely because if you make any mistakes here it won’t be pretty. Let’s begin.
In case you screw up, you risk losing all the cars you've made. This has yet to happen to me but I'm not gonna find out for myself.
Open your file explorer and go to Documents > My Games > Automation.
Make a copy of Sandbox_openbeta.db and put it somewhere safe. This contains all your cars.
Find the car and trim you want to make a longer/shorter clone of, and name the trim something you'll remember. This original car will be the donor, or the car from where I will "copy" the fixtures.
For demonstration's sake, I'll start with this SUV and name it "Donor."
What you want to do now is make a new car. Select the body you want to use (again, ideally it would be the same body family but a longer/shorter wheelbase for the best compatibility) and finish engineering/building it. For example, my original car has a 133" wheelbase and I want to make it longer, so I would select the 148.8" wheelbase version as seen below.
Remember to name the trim of this new car something you will remember. This is the car on which you will "paste" the fixtures you "copied" from the other car. Once you've selected the new body and finished engineering it, exit the game.
Open the DB Browser for SQLite and you'll see a screen that looks like this.
Click "open database."
In the file explorer window that opens, navigate to Documents > My Games > Automation and select the Sandbox_openbeta.db file.
It should look like this now:
Click "Browse Data." There should be a drop-down table under it, and what you want to do is click "Trims."
Once you click "Trims," you should see a bunch of stuff that looks like this.
You'll see a bunch of numbers but if you look at the fourth column, you'll see that these are just all your cars and bunch of data associated with them in the columns further down to the right.
The cars here are listed chronologically based on when you made them, so the most recent stuff will be at the bottom, including the recipient car you made earlier in step 2.
I scroll down to the bottom and lo and behold, there are the two cars I'm looking for.
Next, take the scroll bar on the bottom of the screen and scroll all the way to the right. What you are looking for is a column named “fixtures.”
I've marked it here, and I have also circled in blue the cells for my donor and recipient car in this column. The top cell is my donor car, and the bottom cell is my recipient car.
This fixtures column contains what I am assuming is a list of all the fixtures on the car, and their location.
Follow these next steps carefully.
First, locate your donor car, or the car with the fixtures you want to copy. You can click on its associated number on the left side, and it will light up the entire row, which makes things easier to see.
Now scroll all the way to the right and find the cell in the "Fixtures" column.
Right click it and hit copy.
Now, locate your recipient car, or the car which you want to paste the fixtures onto.
Now scroll all the way to the right and find the cell in the "Fixtures" column.
Right click it and hit paste.
Once you've done that, click "Write Changes" at the top.
Now we need to see if it worked. Hopefully it did, and if it didn't, hopefully you backed up your database, which is the first thing you should've done; it's the first step!
Moment of truth. Everything we've done so far will be put to the test right here.
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, it worked!
Why does it look weird? Well, we’re copying the exact positions of the fixtures from the previous body and pasting them onto this new, bigger body. Therefore, the fixtures will have to re-conform to the new body, and fixtures you have on the side of the car will most likely be out of place. So you still have some work cut out for you in repositioning these fixtures onto the new body, but it’s still far less work than remaking the design from scratch.
Another thing to note: since 3D-placed fixtures do not conform to the body by nature, they might be stuck inside the body, so remember to drag them back out manually.
I hope this guide was of use to you! I tried my best to make this easy to follow, and feel free to ask me any questions you may have about this process, but keep in mind that it's something I don't understand very well myself, and I won't know how well this will work on drastically different bodies.
