How To Create Custom Liveries in ACC: Ultimate Tutorial

In sim racing titles such as iRacing, custom liveries are a big part of expressing your personality on the track. iRacing isn’t the only title that supports custom liveries, with Assetto Corsa Competizione allowing you to use fully custom liveries.

Here at SimRacingSetup.com, our team all use our own custom livery when playing ACC, so I thought I’d share a complete tutorial on how to create a custom livery in ACC.

What you need to get started creating a livery for ACC

To create your custom livery for ACC, you do need to prepare a few things first. Make sure you have all of these before creating a livery, as you don’t want to get part way through the process to realise you’re missing something.

• Editing software: You’ll need access to an editing tool such as Photoshop or Gimp. This is where you’ll design and create the livery. Adobe Photoshop can be expensive, however Gimp is free and is more than capable of creating a livery. This tutorial will show me using Photoshop as it is my preferred option.
• Car template files: The template file will give you a wireframe and a document that is set up, ready for you to start designing into. I will share all templates below so you can download the template for every car in ACC.
• A text editor to edit .json files: You will need to edit some game files that are found in your ACC folder in order to use and show custom liveries in game. This can be done using the Notepad app on your PC, and I’ll show you exactly what to change in a second.

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The in-game livery editor vs custom liveries

Before jumping too far into this livery tutorial, I want to point out that Assetto Corsa Competizione has its own built-in livery editor. In the car selections screen, you can create a custom car from a range of preset designs.

The livery editor offers a few decent paint options, and you can choose from a huge number of colours and paint finishes. You can also change options such as your team name, driver number, and nationality and change a few small sponsor logos.

However, the customisation in the livery editor is very restrictive. To achieve a truly custom livery with sponsors and custom logos, you do need to create your own livery in a tool like Photoshop.

There is one big perk to using the in-game livery editor: Everyone will see your custom design when racing online. If you are using a custom-created livery like the Sim Racing Setups livery above, players online won’t be able to see your design.

How to create a livery using Assetto Corsa Competizione’s own livery editor

To use the in-game livery editor, get started by heading to the car selection screen from anywhere in the game. Then follow the instructions below to create your own livery.

1. Select the add button from the car selection screen.
2. Choose your design from the options at the bottom of the screen.
3. Customise colours and paint finishes.
4. Change the team name, driver number and nationality.
5. Save your custom design.

Read our guide on the best places to find custom ACC liveries if you don’t fancy creating them yourself.

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Downloading all car livery templates

After ensuring that you have photo editing software such as Photoshop or Gimp installed, the first real step to creating a custom ACC livery is to download the template files.

Thankfully, community member fdejongh has created a Google Drive folder where they’ve shared template files for every car in Assetto Corsa Competizione. The Drive also includes helpful content, including a range of sponsor logos and country flag graphics. These assets make it incredibly easy to add popular sponsors to your livery.

Templates for all GT2, GT3, GT4, and Open series cars are included and separated nicely into individual folders. In each folder is a file called EXT_Skin.psd, which is a Photoshop file type. Download this and open it in your editing software to see a complete wireframe for that car.

Download all ACC livery template files here.

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Creating your own team in ACC

Before creating your livery, we must set up a few things in Assetto Corsa Competizione. You’ll need to create a new custom team for each car you are going to create a livery for.

Using the Ferrari 296 GT3 as an example, I went into the car selection screen that I mentioned earlier. Then, I clicked the “Add” button to create a new team. This will allow us to select our team and custom livery just like selecting any other official livery.

After clicking the add button, give your team a name and choose the nationality and number of your car. Then, finally, save your new team using the bottom left button.

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Creating the required livery files

After creating your new team, you’ll need to back out of the game and head over to the documents folder on your PC. I usually leave Assetto Corsa Competizione running while creating a new livery so I can see updates to the design as I go.

Editing the custom team file

To do this, press ALT + TAB to exit out of ACC without closing it down. Then open the file explorer app and head to the following file location.

C: > Users > [Your username] > Documents > Assetto Corsa Competizione > Customs > Cars

In this folder, you’ll find all custom teams and cars that you have created in ACC. If you have multiple files, you can sort them all by date modified to see your new file at the top of the list. It will be named with a random set of numbers, so the first thing I recommend doing is renaming the file.

I like to structure my files by including the car and series in the file name so I can easily find it again in the future.

The file type will be JSON, which can be viewed and edited in any note editor or web editing software such as Dreamweaver. To make things easy, right-click the new file and select “open with” Notepad.

You should see a file like the below. Scroll down to the line that reads: “customSkinName” : “”, and add your preferred name in between the two speech marks. You can see in the file below for the Ferrari 296 GT3 that I have added the name “SRS Livery Ferrari 296 GT3”.

I recommend copying the exact name you choose, as you’ll need to name a folder with the exact same name for it to be recognised in the game.

Creating the custom livery folder

You can close the file above as we are finished with it. Then head back out of the “cars” folder and in the same folder, you should see a “liveries” folder. If this isn’t present, you can create it using the exact path below.

C: > Users > [Your username] > Documents > Assetto Corsa Competizione > Customs > Liveries

Within the liveries folder, create a new folder with the exact name that you used in the “customSkinName” : “”, section of the previous file. In my case, I named the new folder “SRS Livery Ferrari 296 GT3”. This allows Assetto Corsa Competizione to match up the custom livery inside this folder with your new team.

Inside this folder, we need to add two files, “decals.json” and “sponsors.json“. Both of these files can be found using the Google Drive link that I mentioned above. For now, copy those two files from Google Drive into the folder we just set up.

Editing the menuSettings.json file

The final file change that we need to do is to a file called “menuSettings.json“. This can be found in the following location.

C: > Users > [Your username] > Documents > Assetto Corsa Competizione > Config

Once you’ve found the file, right-click it and once again choose to open it with the Notepad app. Then navigate to the line called “texDDS”. I would recommend using the shortcut CTRL + F to search for the line, as this file is pretty large.

Once you have found the line, change the value on the same line from 1 to 0. This will let us to see live changes to our livery in the showroom within Assetto Corsa Competizione.

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Creating your custom livery design

After making those file changes, we can close down the Notepad app, open Photoshop or your editing software, and start creating our ACC car livery. This is the fun part, as we can see our livery and design come to life.

The only file you need now is the file called “EXT_Skin.psd” for the car you’re creating a livery for. If you have downloaded all the files from the Google Drive linked above, you will need to go to the following folder to find this file. I’m using the Ferrari 296 GT3 as an example.

C: > Users > [Your username] > Downloads > ACC Skin Templates > 1. GT3 > Ferrari 296 GT3

Remember to use the correct EXT_Skin.psd file for the car you’re creating a livery for. Each file contains the specific wireframe for the car in the folder name. Using the wrong wireframe template will result in an incorrect-looking livery.

When you open the file in Photoshop or your editing software, you’ll see a complete wireframe for your car. You will immediately be able to spot certain car parts; however, some smaller parts can be tricky to identify.

How you identify parts of the car is personal preference. I would like to start applying colours to the file and leave the wireframe visible as a top layer while designing. This lets me see how the car looks in ACC as I go. I normally set the top wireframe layer to either multiply or screen, depending on how you want it to show.

You will also see some layers on the right of the screen. The files named Carbon and Carpaint will show you which areas of the livery are normally carbon fibre. You can choose to use these as a guide or delete them completely.

I try to keep this file organised by applying my design in a folder called called “Custom Decals”. This is where I paint my block colours onto the design. Then I add individual sponsors to another folder just above called “Custom Sponsors”. This is where I add my custom logos and sponsor logos.

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Saving and adding a livery to ACC

Once you have your livery as you wish, or if you want to see how your livery is progressing, you need to export two PNG files from your main Photoshop file. Remember the two .JSON files we created in our custom livery folder? We now need two .PNG files that match the file names of those .JSON files.

Do this by exporting two images from your Photoshop file. Save one image as “decals.png“, and the second as “sponsors.png“. Save these two files to the custom livery folder that you created, and you should end up with a file structure the same as in the image below.

I tend to export all of my base patterns and colours in the “decals.png” file and all of my logos and sponsors into the “sponsors.png” file. This makes it easy to adjust either part of my custom livery design in the future.

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Viewing our livery in Assetto Corsa Competizione

With the two .PNG files created and added to your custom livery folder, your new livery will be visible in ACC. To see your livery, head into the showroom and select your custom team from the car selection menu. This will show your custom livery within the showroom.

Now, you can inspect the livery and note down any changes you wish to make.

How to see changes in real time

Remember that I said at the start that I’d recommend keeping ACC open while creating a livery. This is because we can quickly switch between ACC and Photoshop to see our edits in real time.

You can ALT + TAB out of ACC and back into Photoshop, make any changes to the design and resave the decals or sponsors.png files. Then head back into ACC and click on the racing number to quickly reload your updated design onto the car.

Switching between Photoshop and ACC lets you make speedy changes to your livery in real time. Below is how my livery looks with the wireframe enabled and the sponsors temporarily removed. This is how I design the custom blocks of colours for each livery.

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Advanced tips

Reaching this point means you have the tools and knowledge to start creating your own liveries. You can stop reading now if you’re excited and want to jump into editing your perfect ACC livery. I do want to share a few extra tips that can help you elevate your liveries to the next level.

Changing paint type

You can change a couple of options to adjust the paint finish from gloss to matt or anywhere in between. This can be useful if you want your whole car to appear matt, or you can set this, so your sponsor file is matt, and the rest of the paint is gloss.

In both the “decals.json” and “sponsors.json” files, you will find four different values. Each value adjusts the paint’s finish. Again, I recommend editing these JSON files with the Notepad app.

Opening either file will show you the following options.

Each of the four options can be changed from 0 to 1 or anywhere in between using increments of 0.1. Changing the four options will affect the paint finish in the following ways.

• baseRoughness: 0 is gloss and 1 is matt. Opting for somewhere in between will give a semi-gloss or satin finish depending on the value.
• clearCoat: Adds a clear coat to the base layer. Setting this to 1 will make your car glossy no matter what the baseRoughness is set to.
• clearCoatRoughness: Adjusts roughness to the clearCoat adjusting the level of gloss the clearCoat applies.
• metallic: Setting to 1 makes the paint finish metallic.

Combining a custom livery with the in-game livery editor

One issue of using a completely custom livery is that online players won’t be able to see your livery. However, combining a custom livery with the in-game livery editor will allow online players to see your in-game livery, just without the custom parts added via your decals and sponsors files.

To do this, you will want to leave certain areas of your decals and sponsors logos transparent. Any transparent part of the file will allow the design of your in-game livery to shine through.

In the image below, you can see that by leaving the black part of my livery transparent in the decals.png file, I can change the main colour of my car in the Assetto Corsa Competizione livery editor. I can also use this method to change my base paint to a matt finish while my custom livery over the top is set to gloss.

When racing online, players would then see the in-game colour (mint colour in the image below), but they wouldn’t see the custom red and white design I have over the top.

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