Naturally, using a different software means that we need to do a few things different, or not doing them at all. Also this guide is useful if you already know at least the basics of Illustrator.

1.1. Extra steps
While Photoshop allows you to "live editing" if you toggle "Skin editing mode" in your showroom, with Illustrator neither exporting .psd or .ai will work. To check your livery design, you will need to do an extra step that at first will result slow and tedious, but once you do it a few times you'll be pretty fast.

1.2. Results
To me at least, it's pretty much the same, there is no quality gap, they all look good.

Before you read the guide, make sure you have all the requirements.

2.1. Adobe Illustrator (2022 or newer)
Why? Because that's what I use, as of today, it's almost 3 years old and that's the version I've been using to work on my Assetto Corsa's liveries and iRacing's. If you have a version that comes before 2022 and have issues, I won't help you.

2.2. Don't ask for warez
Illustrator is part of the Adobe suite and it's behind paywall, they offer you 15 days for free to use the suite but if you can't afford it, I'm sorry I can't help you. I won't give you the link to download the whole adobe suite for free, but I won't tell you to buy it neither. Don't read further if you don't have it installed on your computer.

2.3. Photopea
Photopea is a free version of Photoshop that works in your browser, it has everything you need to use for this guide, of course if you're thinking to use it professionally you're better off using Photoshop, but for this guide works fine as it's part of our extra step.

2.4. Basic knowledge of Adobe Illustrator
If you don't know how to work shapes in it, then you should learn the basics, there is a lot of videos about it. Google "how to design a logo in illustrator", this might give you a lot of tutorials on how to use all the tools we need within illustrator.

2.5. A computer that doesn't become slow if you have lots of things open
Might look stupid but when you're doing the design, you have Adobe Illustrator open, content manager with the 3D viewer "cm showroom" open OR if you wan't better graphics, you probably have the car in the pits in replay mode (yes you cant edit the skins while the game is background), you have your browser with Photopea open. Your computer isn't idling and depending where you're from, it's probably hot.

You need to extract the file from content manager and save it as .png.

3.1. Open content manager and select your car
Select the car you want to design on, and then hover on the image, click on the third icon "manage car", the content manager will bring you to the car's browser, from there we will have access to the folder quickly, so you don't have to manually look for it in the game files.


Once content manager has loaded the car's information, click "Folder" on the bottom navigation bar, this will automatically find and open the car's folder.


3.2. Copy one of the livery folder and change its information
Folder open, click on the "skins" folder, you will now see every livery that this car is using, they usually have names like number_team_another-number. Click on a random folder and copy it, change its name with whatever you want. You're not forced to respect the file naming, it can even be random letters. What matters are the file within the folder, those need to have the same names as the original files.


Now, go in your new folder, click on the "ui_skin.json" file. Now, I don't actually rememer if every livery has this file name, but anyway it's always the only .JSON file. You can edit it with whatever text editor you have.


It contains the basic information for the simulator such as driver name (that you see in the leaderboard, or crewchief can call it, etc). What really meatters now is that you change the skinname.

Make sure you write it between double quotes and don't add/delete stuff, or it won't work. Don't touch priority. If you don't want to add information, leave blank (only double quotes).


Save and close.

3.3. Extract the texture file

If you kept the content manager open, then click on "CM showroom", you can find it on the same row that has "Folder" as well. If you didn't, click the first button that appears on the car's picture in the main cm page when you hover on the car.

A 3D preview will open up and then you select your livery from the sidebar (it spawns anywhere on the screen).


Now click on the car, make sure you click on the hood, or roof, but not on the tires or window, because those parts usually use other textures that have nothing to do with the car texture. You'll see that the content changes on the sidebar, you will see "txDiffuse". Click on the 3 dots on the right of that label


From here, you gotta click on "calculate AO" on the new window that appears on the center and click "Calculate 2048x2048". It will render for a few seconds then you will see the texture file.


press CTRL + S once you see the texture on your screen, and save it somewhere as PNG, then press ESC to close the texture preview.

Now, you should have the png saved somewhere on your computer. For a better organization, create a new folder anywhere on your desktop and put the files you gonna use for your livery in there. This will help you hold the files in one place and in case you want to work on your livery again a month later, you still have all the files that have been used on your livery. Otherwise, Illustrator will tell you that some files are missing and this might cause issues with the file. In this folder, also save your .ai in there.

This is how your folder might look like:

4.1. Drag and drop the .png in Illustrator
Alright, from here I'm assuming you know the basics of Illustrator, and you should know that Illustrator uses Artboards, and that you know how to use them. If you don't, I'm inviting you to follow a guide on youtube to learn the basics of Illustrators, you might want to google "how to design a logo on illustrator". Usually these tutorials use all the tools you need to know.

Now that you've imported the file in your Illustrator, most probably the artboard is smaller than the PNG file (from here we will call it "texture"). The texture is 2048x2048 while the artboard might me 1080x1920 or even smaller, click on the artboard tool and resize it too be 2048x2048, or as bigger as the texture layer. Make sure the texture is within the artboard and nothing goes outside.

Why? Everytime we export, we need too make sure that the texture is 2048x2048. IF you put a shape on the texture and part of it goes outside the artboard (aka outside the 2048 bounds) it becomes, lets say 2048x2063, this will result in "the texture not respecting the shape of the car". For example, if you have the number on the door, you will probably see it on the roof. You need to respect the bounds because working on the texture like this is a difficult task and sometimes, if you wan't to be precise, you will spend lots of time and with the things being out of bounds it will become more hard. Note that rules are ignored by the export settings so you can use them as much as you want.

What do you mean with out of bounds?
I told you that we will use artboards. And we need to respect the sizes, so the artboard can't become more than 2048, and if we have things out of the artboard and want to export them, the file wont be 2048x2048. You're out of bounds.

How do I know if something is out of bounds?
Select everything on the artboard (CTRL + A), then zoom on the borders. You will notice it if something is outside. Tip: The shape tool can be very useful.

That's how the texture shouldl look like in your illustrator:

As you can see, the artboard is respecting the texture size.

4.2. Design on it
At this point, we can design on our livery. We can create shapes, type on it, place logos... Probably some textures will look very messy and we will need lots of time to figure out where is the roof, the hood. Some are very easy to understand, like the MX-5. I'm assuming you already know how to use Illustrator and pretty much know what you're doing, how to do a clean work, how to organize your layers. If you don't, lock the texture layer, and create new ones for each part of the car. All decals one layer, perhaps make sub layers for each decal, a layer for the roof, a layer for the hood, etc. If you add lots of things on the livery, name the layers with better names, that will help you a lot if you pause the design and resume it the next day, or week.

For the tutorial, I won't design the livery. I will add a text on it and call it a day, but I will showcase how a complete livery might look in another step.


4.3. Export as .png
Assuming you want to check how your work looks so far, or you're done, click "file" top left, go export -> export for screens... or ALT + CTRL + E.


You should see a new popup with exporting settings. Now, this might look slightly different depending on your Illustrator version, but the procedure should be pretty much the same. Click on "Artboards" and make sure your artboard is selected, you can also change its name. Either leave it like this or name it like the .dds file. In my case is "Skin_00". Once you're done, export it.


Exported, Illustrator might have opened the folder (name is 1x if you didn't change any settings), with the texture inside.

4.4. Put it in photopea and create the .dds
This is the extra step, we need something that can create us the .dds file. This is your price for not using Photoshop, you will have to do it everytime. It'll be boring but the more you do it, the faster you will become.

Drag and drop the exported texture in Photopea. If you want to be faster, drop it in there without creating a new project, otherwise you will have to resize it again.

FROM HERE, PHOTOPEA WILL USE MY NATIVE LANGUAGE, ITALIAN, FOR THE MENUS. BUT THE PROCEDURE SHOULD BE THE SAME.


File -> Export as... -> more -> .dds and export.

If you can, have the default download folder as the livery folder, this way you will be faster. If you don't want to do it, go in the download folder and drag and drop the exported texture in the livery folder and delete the old one. Go in the simulator and you should see it:


From here, you will repeat 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 until you are done designing.

That's it, with an extra step you can also use Illustrator. If it was for me, I'd use paint or figma as well. If you want to do something, you will find a way to do it. but...

Is Illustrator the correct software to design them?
Whether Illustrator is the "correct" software really depends on what you're trying to achieve. Both Illustrator and Photoshop have their strengths, and the decision comes down to the type of work you're doing.

Illustrator is indeed great for vector work—clean, scalable graphics like logos, illustrations, icons, and type-based designs. It’s perfect when you want crisp lines, and the scalability of vectors means your designs won't lose quality, no matter how large you scale them.

Photoshop, on the other hand, is ideal for raster-based design—anything that involves pixel manipulation, such as photo editing, textures, or more complex imagery that doesn't need to be scaled indefinitely.

II can't see my work, why?
Probably you didn't rename the .dds with the correct name. A different name won't be used by the simulator.

Can Illustrator be used for iRacing as well?
Yes, but the .tga has to be exported in 24bit. Not more or less.

Can I edit the livery logo, and other things related to the car?
Yes. You need to export the things the same way I've told you to export the main texture, that's why I specified that you need to make sure you've clicked at least on roof or hood. Other files use .png extension, so all you would need to do is put the .png in illustrator and export it as png again. Things applies on the .dds files too, do the same thing I told you to do and you're gucci.

To assure you, here is some of the liveries I've designed using Illustrator. Both from AC and iRacing.

MX-5 Savanna (available on trading paints, iRacing. Just look for the creator "Alessandro Buonocore")
texture:

result:

MX-5 Fanta (assetto corsa)
texture:

result:


For more results, please check my instagram page @ab.simliveries
that's where I post all the results and liveries I do.