Forza Livery Studio

A fork of Arstz's Forza Livery Studio that reworks the editor to feel closer to Adobe Illustrator.

A standalone C++/Qt editor for Forza vinyl groups (and, in the future, probably liveries). It does not modify game memory at runtime. We are not responsible for any damage done to your groups/liveries — use at your own discretion.

What's different in this fork

This fork keeps all of the original functionality and focuses on making the editing experience and interface behave like Illustrator.

Interface

• The .exe launches as a normal windowed app — no extra console window.
• Custom title bar: the minimize / maximize / close buttons sit on the menu-bar row next to the app logo. Native resizing, Aero Snap and maximize still work.
• App logo shown at the top-left of the menu bar.
• Tools moved into a narrow, icon-only strip down the left side.
• Panels rearranged: Layers on the left, Properties and a new Color panel on the right, Shapes full-width along the bottom. Each right-side panel opens sized to its content, with a thin divider between sections.
• A dockable Color panel (Illustrator-style): recent colours, R/G/B sliders with live gradient tracks, a hex field, and a hue/value spectrum. Double-click the fill swatch or a recent colour to open the full colour picker. Edits apply live to the selection as a single undo step.
• The Shapes browser shows flat tiles and scrolls one full row of shapes at a time, so a scroll never stops halfway between rows.
• A new flat dark theme in place of the default Windows look (grey chrome, blue accents).

Selection & editing

• One unified Select tool that selects, moves and transforms — scale/rotate/skew handles appear on the artboard around the selection, so there's no need to switch to a separate transform tool. The transform box hides while you drag to move and reappears on release.
• Click-drag on empty canvas draws a marquee selection; touching any part of a grouped object selects the whole group.
• Shift + click to add/remove objects from the selection.
• Ctrl + click to select a single object inside a group instead of the whole group.
• Pixel-accurate selection and hover based on each shape's real geometry (not its bounding box), with a blue outline of the shape under the cursor.
• Dragging a multi-selection moves every selected object together, and a selected object stays draggable even when another object overlaps on top of it.
• Arrow keys nudge the selection 1px (Shift + arrow = 10px).
• Eyedropper (I, or the button in the Color / Properties panels): click any object to sample its colour onto the selection.
• Right-click the canvas for quick actions: Group, Ungroup, Flip Horizontal/Vertical, Rotate 90° CW/CCW, Lock Selection, Unlock All.
• Flip Horizontal / Flip Vertical performs a true mirror (an unrotated shape stays at rotation 0), and Rotate 90° turns the selection about its center. A whole group flips/rotates as a unit.
• The Properties panel's transform fields (position, scale, rotation, skew) update live while you move, scale, or rotate a shape on the canvas.

Isolation mode

• Double-click a group to enter isolation: only that group's objects are editable, everything behind it is uniformly dimmed, and any layers stacked above it are hidden.
• Inside the group, objects select individually — no need to ungroup to edit a single piece.
• Double-click deeper to step into nested sub-groups; Esc (or double-click empty space) steps back out one level.

Grouping & organising

• Group (Ctrl + G) and Ungroup are separate actions — Ctrl+G only ever groups; Ungroup lives in the Edit and right-click menus (no shortcut, so it's never triggered by accident). Any two or more shapes that share a parent can be grouped, even if they aren't adjacent in the stack.
• Lock objects so they can't be picked on the canvas — clicks pass straight through to whatever is above or below them. Ctrl + 2 locks the selection, Ctrl + 3 unlocks everything.
• Ctrl + J duplicates the selection, and Paste always lands in front of the original.

Aligning, arranging & snapping

• Align & Distribute (Edit menu / right-click): align the selection by left/center/right or top/middle/bottom edges, and distribute spacing evenly. Each object or group moves as a unit.
• Arrange / z-order: Bring to Front (Ctrl + Shift + ]), Bring Forward (Ctrl + ]), Send Backward (Ctrl + [), Send to Back (Ctrl + Shift + [).
• Smart snapping (on by default): while dragging, the selection snaps to other objects' edges, centers and corners, and to guides — with a magenta indicator line. Center-to-center snapping makes centering easy. Hold Ctrl to bypass. Skewed shapes snap by their real transformed corners.
• Rotate: hold Shift while rotating to snap to 15° increments.
• Preview opacity (right-click → Preview Opacity): dim a group or objects on screen to work around them — a visual-only aid that never changes the exported in-game colour. Dimming a group flattens it, so overlapping members don't compound.

Rulers & guides

• Ctrl + R toggles rulers along the top and left edges. Drag out from a ruler to create a horizontal or vertical guide line; drag a guide back onto a ruler to remove it, or Options → Clear Guides. Guides are editor-only and never exported.
• You can also bring in a raster image as a guide/template layer, then lock or hide it to make it a passive backdrop — it won't block selecting or marqueeing objects over it.

Navigation

• Scroll pans up/down, Ctrl + scroll pans left/right, Alt + scroll zooms toward the cursor.
• Space-drag or middle-mouse to pan.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl + G	Group selection
Ctrl + J	Duplicate
Ctrl + 2 / Ctrl + 3	Lock selection / Unlock all
Ctrl + ] / Ctrl + [	Bring forward / send backward
Ctrl + Shift + ] / Ctrl + Shift + [	Bring to front / send to back
Shift + H / Shift + V	Flip horizontal / vertical
Arrow keys (Shift = ×10)	Nudge selection
I	Eyedropper
Ctrl + R	Toggle rulers
Ctrl (while dragging)	Bypass snapping
Double-click group · Esc	Enter isolation mode · exit one level
Y	Stamp (duplicate in place)
Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Y	Undo / Redo

Features (from the original)

• Import/export to Forza's proprietary binary format
• Save/load projects to JSON files
• Full transformations, for groups as well
• Custom, reusable groups (Save Custom Shape)
• Raster image overlay as a guide layer
• Direct shape parity with the game engine
• Written in C++ (blazingly fast)

Install

1. Download the latest release and unzip it somewhere.
2. Run ForzaLiveryStudio.exe.
3. Arrange the panels how you like and save the layout with Window → Save Layout.

The manual lives in docs/MANUAL.md. Default shape names can be edited in assets/vector/shape_names.json. Settings and custom groups are stored in the registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ForzaTools\ForzaLiveryStudio.

Building from source

Requirements

• Windows
• A C++ compiler — MSVC works well (e.g. Visual Studio 2022, or the standalone Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop development with C++ workload)
• CMake 3.24 or newer
• vcpkg to provide Qt 6 and zlib

Steps

1. Install vcpkg (skip if you already have it). The build scripts default VCPKG_ROOT to C:\vcpkg\vcpkg; set the VCPKG_ROOT environment variable if yours lives elsewhere.

   git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg C:\vcpkg\vcpkg
   C:\vcpkg\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

2. Install the dependencies. ⚠️ vcpkg builds Qt from source, so the first run can take a while.

   C:\vcpkg\vcpkg\vcpkg install qtbase:x64-windows qtimageformats[webp]:x64-windows zlib:x64-windows

3. Clone and build:

   git clone https://github.com/ttolerantss/ForzaLiveryStudio
   cd ForzaLiveryStudio
   powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools\build.ps1

   The built app lands at build\Release\ForzaLiveryStudio.exe.

4. Run it:

   powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools\run.ps1

Status

Group import/export is fully supported and the core functionality is in place. Liveries can currently only be imported, not exported. The app targets Forza games generally; compatibility may still vary by title, since not every game/version has been verified.

Credits

• Arstz — original author of Forza Livery Studio, which this project is a fork of.
• Fr4g3z - cool guy, helped a lot, complained a lot, format reversing.
• Mixbob - lazy bastard, tested ingame, usage feedback
• Zloysvin - shape renamer
• Pengyss - non-uniform group tranform algorithm
• Eaterrius - big money man, provided tokens

This fork is maintained by ttolerantss.