Tutorial: Making A Custom Part For A Vanilla Car

I dont know if anyone has done a thread on this but I thought I would make a "super simple" tutorial on how to add a custom part to a car.
Note: for this tutorial to work you need a IQ of above 10. If its below 10, then well, too bad.
For this example I will be adding a custom front bumper to the sunburst
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How to get to the game files:
Go to steam and press this and it should open the game files.

Then you can go to the vehicles folder to access all the stuff

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Tools you will need:
- Notepad
- Blender

Step 1: Creating your mod folder
Step one is to go to your mods folder which you can open by clicking manage user folder in the launcher and opening in explorer.

Now go inside mods > unpacked (create the "unpacked" folder if you dont have one)

Now right click the empty space and click "new" then click "folder"
Now rename the folder to whatever you want your mod to be called. Heres mine

Now in that folder, create a folder called "vehicles"

In vehicles, now create a folder with the codename of your car. If youre unsure check the vehicles folder in the game files (look at the top of the page to learn how to get to it) > content > vehicles or just ask below. The sunburst is simply called "sunburst", so I will create a "sunburst" folder.

Now go to the game files and find the zip file of your car, for me I will be opening "sunburst.zip".
Now go inside and find the .jbeam file of the part you want to make. I will be using sunburst_bumper_f.jbeam

Now make a copy of this file and add it to your mod and name it to something different.

I have added fl after it for facelift.
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Step 2: Preparing your model for BeamNG

Here is my bumper that I will be adding to the sunburst. Now make sure to name it to something you can remember with f2 or fn + f2 (or just go to the top right list and name it there), I named it sunburst_bumper_f_wide_flsport. (since the original name was sunburst_bumper_f_wide)
If your bumper is just a edited version of the original, you shouldn't need to worry about texturing, but if it is a custom model, you need to material properties and assign a texture, eg "sunburst" or "grille" I wont go into too much detail about texturing and modelling in this tutorial. I have made a new texturing tutorial here

Now you can export the model to your mods folder, you can name it anything you want.
If you have multiple parts in your mod, you can keep them in the same .dae file.

I have put it inside my mod and named it faceliftsunburst.


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Step 3: Editing the Jbeam file
Now open the jbeam file in your mod folder with notepad.
It should look like this.

There are 2 steps that you need to do. First is make sure you only have your part in the jbeam. For example, in the sunburst bumper jbeam, the fog lights and sport RS bumpers are also in here, at the bottom.

So to delete these, delete the section from the part name to the 2 endings. Like this:

After doing that, the ending of the file should look like this:

Make sure the endings look exactly like that.
Now the second step is to edit the code.
There are 3 spots that you need to change. This applies to pretty much every part.
The 1st spot is the name at the top

You can change that to anything
The 2nd spot you need to change is the display name in the game parts selector

The 3rd thing you need to change is the flexbodies.


Make sure to change that to the name of your part in blender, so for me its sunburst_bumper_F_wide_flsport
As you can see I also changed the fog light frame but normally that wouldnt be there on other parts.
If there are multiple flexbodies in the body, eg fog light in my case, then you can just leave it or delete the line. If your part involves glass, just ignore the lines that start with {"deformGroup".
Now click save and close the file.

If your mod has multiple parts, the jbeams should still be in the same folder, as a different jbeam file.
Now you should be done! Check if your mod appears in the mod manager. If not, try pressing Ctrl L.

Now you should be able to find your part in the parts selector, as you can see, I named my part Facelift Sport Front Bumper.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful, you can ask for help by replying to this thread.
Do let me know if i forgor anything.
Note if you want to publish your mod, you can just unpack your mod through the game mod manager.

 

cool but this is just meshslapping

 

you're doing too much

 

Well, this is for people who want to start modding, this is the first step

 

Yeah Its pretty good.
But I'd suggest add things like editing the jbeam, glowmaps, etc

 

I think I'll make a seperate tutorial for that later (and also idek how to do glowmaps)

 

yeah.
But editing it to fit is better. And its needed when its really different. dunno

 

Nice, can you make a tut on custom textures?

 

I can do a tutorial maybe on putting vanilla textures on your models lol, but idk about custom textures

 

Not sure if I'm a bit stupid but how do you import the front bumper to blender?

 

Open the .dae of the car in it's zip located in content, every part it uses will be here.

 

I know this is technically bumping, but I just want to say this really did help me to make my first project in-game, however; How do I make a custom JBeam? Thank you!
Must've messed something up;

 

You probably renamed something or you could try clearing cache. With jbeam, if its just a bumper, you can try just going into the node postions and moving them, you can get help from the Modding for Dummies discord server https://discord.gg/39dvN7z

 

Thank you man, I will try playing around with it, could it also be that it isn’t picking up my blender .dae file? Thanks man I’ll have a look

 

Hey. How should i make a led lightbar on midsize? (1996 to 2000 Ibishu Pessima.)
Because. It wasn't on the BeamNG.Drive game last time.

 

There’s a guy on Beam forums who can help. His name is Kemro. Nice guy and there is a lot of work like texturing etc. Making light bars is his speciality, so he could help

 

I don't know. He said. It's hard to make the lightbar.

 

Yes. Okay about your quote.