Allow uploading custom decal/vinyl in vector format (SVG)

Honestly I’m like 60/40. I’d prefer they kept the shape system and preserved it as an art form because people have worked hard to master it and spent so much time working on their art. But I wouldn’t be mad if they added SVG. I just wish they would tell us what the plan is because I’m currently working on art in preperation for the new game. I’d rather make the switch now than find out later I’ve been wasting my time…

Adding an .svg importer doesn’t mean the base livery editor gets removed. It can and should stay, just that it requires improvements to be functional. If UV mapping doesn’t change for example then the .svg importer will be a massive time saver but the bigger underlying issue won’t be resolved, and many cars will still be painfully difficult to work on. Just look at racing prototypes in FM, all of them have terrible mapping which puts layers exactly where you don’t want them to be, on top of stretching them all over the place.

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It would mean most people wont use it anymoe, self included, and that means the art form and appreciation for the talent and patience required to use it is gone. Nobody will be as impressed by amazing art work even if it is made from shapes because they’ll all just assume it was done the easy way. We already discussed this mate. UV mapping is a separate issue that an SVG importer will not fix.

Nah, more people will use it, people who doesn’t want to spend hours creating a logo or custom decal. Spending 5 hours to create a vinyl that will take 15 minutes in vector editor is nothing to be impressed about, it’s actually kinda stupid. People who download the vinyl don’t care whether it took 5 hours or just 15 minutes

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You still need to know how to use a vector editor to convert an image. It’s not as easy as it sounds. At least, I tried looking into it but it’s quite difficult still.

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The “easy way” is not as easy as you think it is for artwork. You still need to put loads of time into layering, colouring, making sure that everything looks right, the general idea of what you have in mind, etc.

Vectors work very differently compared to Raster, if they have an Upload Limit (which they’ll likely have), you’d need to split the Artwork up for use with the Livery Editor afterwards, it’s not just “take artwork, run through program, get Vector artwork out”, you still need to put in the effort for that.

What this system would take out is the part where those creators would have to spend ages on Logos.

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Everything you described is something that people already do now with shapes, an SVG option would make all of it easier. And it is very easy, you can learn it in minutes. You can even convert a jpeg to vector at the click of a button, which a lot of people would do, barely any work involved.

Upload limit or not, it would still be 10x faster to make things with SVG. Not complaining about it. But a lot of people who spent hundreds of hours making things will be left knowing their time was now wasted. So basically kicking the dedicated artists in the teeth so that less dedicated people can have an easier time. And it will make it harder for talented people to get master painter status because lots more untalented people will be flooding the game with copy/pasted designs.

BTW a raster is a baked image like a jpeg. Both SVG and the current forza shapes editor are both vector based systems.

I have tried that, the results usually look… less than stellar from doing that.

To the point where someone who puts in the effort to do it manually beats the conversion 9/10 times.

Not what i said, shame for the people who dedicated time to this, but having a vector-based system for this would bring in more people than it loses due to the lowered barrier to entry + it’d allow the devs to grab livery makers from IRL who aren’t restricted to the shapes of the game and have the files for their liveries ready-made, therefore making it faster for them as well in implementing collaboration liveries with brands. And it would also allow people from other games that have strong livery communities (Assetto Corsa at minimum) to have an easier time to bring the stuff they made already into Forza, which is a net positive again because of extra variety.

Well even more sensical then to make SVG importing happen, if it’s already Vector, again, massive speedups that benefit everyone.

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Less than stellar results aren’t going to stop hoardes of kids from uploading SVG files to try and get their accolades after some youtuber shows them how to do it. The logos will probably look right in thumbnail form, so people will be downloading all sorts of logos just to realise they’re all wonky when they use them.

Bringing in more people is not necessarily a good thing. It’s only good for people who want easier/faster results and as someone who enjoys the current editor and the exclusivity it brings, I would prefer they didn’t dilute the reach of my work and my ability to gain master painter status.

I highly doubt the devs are using the forza editor to make the baked in liveries.

What does that even do? You can put up cars for 20mil CR on the AH and that’s about it. A lot of master painters today already make less than stellar work, so why should that be a shut-out criterium? (Keeping the original quote)

Sure, but less than stellar results also doesn’t stop people from uploading bad quality logos already, just need to type in some popular brand to see the bad recreations come in.

I think the gifted ones were made with the editor at one point or another.

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I have never reached master painter status, but you also get accolade points and other rewards like quick chat phrases etc. I know the current system is flawed. In theory it should be something that only genuinely talented people can achieve. An SVG editor is just going to make it even more of a mess where people that deserve it aren’t able to, and people who don’t deserve it and know how to game the system will be able to. Why do anything in the game? Why win a race?

Yeah the current bad versions of logos are easy to spot because they’re way off. One that’s a wonky copy/paste is not gonna be easy to spot, so people will be wasting time sifting through ones that look right as a thumbnail but aren’t perfect when you zoom in.

Image Importer With Smart Moderation*
An image import feature would open huge creative possibilities. Since Microsoft and Xbox are investing heavily in AI, this could be paired with an AI moderation system that automatically scans uploads for TOS violations before they’re approved.

This keeps the system safe while giving creators much more freedom.

Absolutely no reason to gatekeep creativity. This isn’t AI generated content, a human hand has to do more than just type in a prompt. Those who appreciate quality will eventually get more quality content as more people learn how to make good liveries.

Remove master painter status then, or make it even more difficult to obtain.

That is correct. Every single car that comes equipped with decals (excluding gift cars) has them in much higher quality than anything you can possibly make with the current livery editor, they have no jagged edges and weird deformations in places where layers would deform. Which is exactly why the livery editor should not remain in the current state.

This is literally happening right now, with like 80% of cars in the game having top downloaded liveries be just applying a colour that’s a recreation of a factory colour that’s not available in the game. Once again pointing at myself having a Midnight Purple II recreation on the G87 BMW M2 with over 1k downloads. A way to alleviate this is making colour codes become shareable as well, but it wouldn’t eliminate already existing “factory colour ““liveries”””.

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I personally think this would open the door for bad actors to run rampant. It takes time effort and skill to make good liveries with the current system, and that’s a good thing.

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It would still take time, effort and skill with the ability to import vectors, what it would cut out is tedious busywork that pushes away people who would participate in the livery economy because of the massive time investment that you have to make for stuff that’s been made many hundreds of times.

Plus, if a bad actor wants to make a livery, it doesn’t take much time at all to make one that qualifies which also signifies what they want to show.

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I have mixed feelings about importing vector art.

Pro: It would improve game effiency.

Con: Having put in the work to figure out how to create some good vinyl groups and then taken the hours it takes to create some of them, I actually think there is a sense of accomplishment and respect for well-crafted designs. The skills to transform jpg to svg are not actually that hard to acquire and would detract from people who have learned the craft.

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