hello
the thumbnails for my saved liveries always show the car completely stock, same wheels, no lowered suspensions, no wide body kit… etc.
I’ve seen that the thumbnails for livery downloads do indeed show tuned versions of the cars.
Is there something I’m missing or is this some kind of bug? (i’m playing on PC)
No bug, just a bit of a fiddle…
I spent a few days pre FH3 launch working out if there was a guaranteed way for custom parts to show on the Storefront & this applies to the new Creative Hub too.
Try this:
(taken from my Horizon 3 thread: Save designs to your Storefront with visible customisation & body kits)
Get in the required car and remove any design that is on there. Now remove any Bodykits or Tunes so that you’re starting with a completely stock vehicle.
Now add the Bodykit/Parts that you want to eventually show in your Storefront & save to the car.
Go to the MY DESIGNS tab & load the required design on to your car.
Go to APPLY VINYLS AND DECALS. (You are shown the right side of the car with the cursor on Tile 1).
Press the X button to delete Tile 1 then press the Y button to insert it again.
Press the B button & select SAVE TO DESIGN CATALOGUE then press A to save a new file. You will get a prompt to name this new file, I recommend you rename this file TEST.
After performing the save the game immediately gives you a prompt to share this new file… press the B button to cancel - this is the important bit!!!
Go to MY DESIGNS & load the file named TEST.
Go to APPLY VINYLS AND DECALS. (You are shown the right side of the car with the cursor on Tile 1).
Press the X button to delete Tile 1 then press the Y button to insert it again.
Press the B button & select SAVE TO CURRENT CAR.
Go to the MY DESIGNS tab, scroll to the file named TEST, press the A button & select SHARE. Now fill out the required fields & press the A button to share the file. Your design will now show in your Storefront with the required Bodykit/Parts.
** Remember - Your design will always show as the stock version in the MY DESIGNS tab **
I did this twice as I typed & it worked perfectly 
Hopefully, it will have worked for you too… but you obviously don’t want a Design file with the name ‘TEST’ in your Storefront so go to MY DESIGNS & UNSHARE, then RENAME, then SHARE again (make sure you do it in that order!)
Good luck 
wow, that’s indeed quite a bit of fiddle 
But I’m sure after doing it 3-4 times it will become an automatic routine.
I’ll try it out on the weekend.
Thanks a lot for the detailed answer!
Yeah, it is a bit of a chore.
Believe me, I went through every possible permutation trying to work out the quickest guaranteed way to get the desired effect ie. using the fewest moves.
Bear in mind the above post was written for people to practice with (which is what I did). Once I was used to it I gave the file the correct name at Step 6 instead of using the word ‘Test’. That way I didn’t need to unshare, rename & share again.
The steps in themselves are pretty quick, it’s the wait for everything to save that takes the time…
There’s a different way to do it that will actually save you from having to do most of those steps. Once you finish your design, Hit B to exit and select to Save your design to current car. Go into Designs and “Rename” your Livery. Press B to exit out and go back to the previous menu (main menu). Go back into Designs and then select Share on the design that you just renamed. So now, if you go back into Designs it will still look stock to you, but will appear with the right body kit and wheels in your Creative Hub. To check, just go outside, hit Pause, go to the Creative Hub tab, select My Creative Hub, and then Designs Shared. Or, just select your Creative Hub right there in the designs menu, which I totally forgot was there lol.
The unfortunate fact of all of this is if you want the upgrades to show, you can not use the Save to Library function inside of the applying vinyls area, you must take the Steps above for them to show up. Credit for this goes to a redditor named GrndZero, and he did this write up for Horizon 3. I just edited it a bit so it better applies to the fourth game.
Apparently there are multiple ways to achieve the end result of having all upgrade parts, body kits and wheels show up in the Creative Hub thumbnails. I don’t use either of the methods posted above here and my shared designs appear with all parts intact 100% of the time. I believe the most important factor in the whole scenario is to apply the part upgrades and body mods before starting the paint work. That is my typical process and I never have issues with them not showing up.
I will add something else that I always do in cases where maybe I change part mods or wheels after beginning work on a paint. Once the paint is ready, I will go back to my paint library and load that paint onto the car again. Then I will go into the apply vinyls screen and move a vinyl and then move it back … normally just one click to the left and then one click back to the right, for example. This forces the game to recognize a change in the paint design to force a save of the design. Then I always choose ‘Save Design to Current Car’ or whatever the first option says. This seems to always update the latest version of my paint with the latest version of mods and wheels to ensure the thumbnail looks as I want it to look. I would suggest this last set of steps for anyone who is having issues with the thumbnail not looking as you want it to look. See if this doesn’t also work for you.
Okay these tricks are fantastic and they work In FH5 to get the thumbnail to show the wheels, bodykit, spoilers, etc. But I also got the “BLACK WINDOWS” bug when doing these methods. Anybody know how to have the best of both worlds? Properly rendered windows + properly rendered bodykit in the thumbnail?
