Crowd sourced detailing guides

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:

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This is the Bridgell Joy. Because it’s based on a Ford Fiesta. What do parties bring you?

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This is the Duhen Elsinore. Elsinore was one of the proposed names for the Honda Passport, one of the cars that inspired this one.

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And this is the Duhen Shonen (good old 5 fixture wonder). That means young male in Japanese. Guess who are the intended customers?

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Thanks for the helpful tips m8, that would work for model names as well.

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A smol guide on how to not use MDHL

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!


I'll admit it, MDHL is a lot more flexible in what you can do with it. You can make really good looking headlights using MDHL, however, damn if it isn't frustrating to use at times. Furthermore, its pretty easy to make headlights that look worse with MDHLs compared to just using regular headlights. So before I hear people on discord saying this guide is bad and I'm just bad at MDHL, here's a disclaimer:

IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH USING MDHL, THIS GUIDE IS NOT FOR YOU.

Let’s begin!


Vanilla Headlights and why they aren't as bad as people say they are.

So the real reason I’m making this guide is that I saw this on discord.


(sorry Docro)

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?

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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)

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Oh and the same stuff applies to taillights too

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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 :pensive:)

So if you still think vanilla headlights should be thrown away, think again :wink:

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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.

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Deltariuns's Quick and Easy Guide on Database Editing and Swapping Fixtures between Bodies

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!

To show you the power of database editing...

I took this SUV:

And sawed it in half stretched it!

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.

Disclaimer: I have not tested this extensively. I'm guessing that this works best between body families with different wheelbase variants OR between two similarly-sized bodies. Please be sure to back up your database in case you make a mistake. Do this at your own risk; I won't be responsible for any damage you do to your database if you mess things up.


Step 1 - Backing up your database.

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.

Step 2 - Selecting the "donor" car and the "recipient" car.

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.

Here is what I have so far; my goal is to transport the fixtures from the "HT V8 Donor" car to the "HT V8 Recipient car.

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Step 3 - Opening your Automation database with SQLite!

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.

Step 4 - Locating the donor and recipient cars, and copying the fixtures!

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!

Step 5 - Open Automation

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.

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gods work



Custom Panel Gaps
@2021 CorsicaUnknown. Do not steal.





That is all.



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Very small, very useful. Nice, I’ll probably use it a lot.

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I was making this with 3d plastics bars all this time, and this simple trick does the work 10x better :sob:

HOW TO PLACE PUSHBUTTON DOOR HANDLES CORRECTLY


Pushbutton door handles were the most common type of handles from the early 50s to the early 70s, and even though they went out of fashion some cars used them well into the 90s, as well as some more recent retro cars like the Chrysler PT Cruiser. So, chances are that you are going to use them sooner or later, at least if your brand has a lore that harks back to the 70s or earlier. And I have seen one thing that many people are doing wrong when putting them on.



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Here, we have three examples of cars using them. Do you notice one thing they do have in common? Yes, the pushbuttons on all of them are facing towards the rear, and there is a good reason behind that too.


But what about this Lincoln then? The pushbuttons on the rear door handles are facing towards the front, and ONLY in the rear, why? When they had the chance to put on the handles symmetrical and nice, it would have looked better and made more sense, right?

Truth is, pushbutton door handles are ALWAYS mounted with the pushbutton in the opposite direction from the hinges. Most cars have doors that is hinged up front, and that means that the pushbuttons on the door handles are facing towards the rear. But when the doors are rear hinged (“suicide” doors), like the rear doors of that Lincoln, the pushbuttons are facing towards the front.

The reason for that is very simple. Lets say that the car have front hinged doors, like most cars have. Then the natural thing will be to open the left door with your left hand, and the right door with your right hand, because you then will open the door away from you instead of towards you. And, since you only have one thumb, that means that the pushbutton has to be placed in the spot where your thumb will be. All other placements will be ergonomically awkward.

It is a small detail that is easy to forget (especially if one rarely gets into a car with pushbutton handles, which are getting more and more rare), but that breaks the realism, and since I have seen this being done wrong on more than one Automation car, I thought that an advice could be helpful.

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This post may or may not be related to the weird design choices made by MTA during the early years lol.
Great guide to such a simple thing that is a door handle

No, absolutely not your fault, it was only that I saw multiple examples when browsing through the site today, since your example was quite fresh I mentioned it to you because you probably still had the chance to fix it. After that, I thought that why not put that little tip in here.

1 Like

Crypt’s guide to…
Opaque interior materials!

We’ve all been there. You are making a complex 3D interior, but the windows and soft top are all see-through, and it messes with the aesthetics. Well, I have a solution!

Step one: Place a patchwork mesh fixture on your window/softtop

Step Two: Drag the depth slider until it just “pops” out of existence.


Step three: You now have a fixture visible from the inside, which will mostly follow the contours of your window/windshield/roof. Change it to a suitable glass material.


This technique can be used for any parts of the body which are transparent from inside but not outside. It is important not to scale the depth too much - this will make the patches float in midair and be visible outside your vehicle. -0.01 is the ideal, and you can just type this in on the gizmo too. Particularly curved sections of windows may require multiple fixtures or some tweaking to look good, but this is an improvement over having nothing at all.

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Did you knew that on the old days of NFSU and U2, the cars had a flat mesh that started at the base of the windows with only the top of the seats and the steering wheel modeled, and with dark windows and environment, it was really hard to notice?

Did you knew you can do the same in 3 min. tops on cars you’ll not add a full interior?

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Did you knew it will look better than black windows with a low photo angle and darkened windows?

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Now you know.

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Virtual version of what is done in many toy cars. I might do it on the few cars i will crank out before the update. Making full interiors in something that will be wiped out soon feels pointless.

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What’s getting wiped out? :grimacing:

The next update will make all existing cars incompatible with the current version. Then again, it could be the perfect opportunity for you to remake them, but with an even greater level of detail than previously.

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That SUCKS!!! I’ve got some new designs brewing RIGHT NOW lol.

But, I’m finally starting to understand how fixtures can lap over each other and what-not, and how to use PATCH which for me were HUGE breakthroughs.

Still can’t figure out how to erase original body lines or if that’s even possible :thinking:.

I seem to remember (but being of an old age it could have been my squirrel…erm imagination!!) that the next update will be the last time that the cars will be wiped.

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