MSFS Livery Toolkit (BETA)

Create MSFS liveries the visual way. No config files, no command line.

MSFS Livery Toolkit is a free, standalone Windows desktop application. It walks you through the whole livery creation pipeline: pick an installed aircraft, repaint its textures, check your work in 3D, and compile a sim-ready package. It’s the successor to my earlier ImageToMSFSKTX2 script - but it does a lot more! It works with MSFS 2020 and 2024 (simple/monolithic and modular aircraft).

Beta, under active development

It works and is usable today, but you may hit rough edges. Feedback from real users is exactly what shapes where it goes next, so please let me know if anything doesn’t work as expected (see below).

Note that support for the Steam version of MSFS 2020 / 2024 is somewhat untested. There is an option in the Settings page to use the Steam version for the MSFS SDK compilation process. If Steam users run into problems please share as much feedback as possible so I can investigate.

What it does

• Automated livery setup: scans your installed aircraft, detects the profile, and builds a correct, sim-ready package structure for you.
• Works with stock and marketplace aircraft, not just add-ons in your Community folder, once you switch on the sim's Virtual File System projector in Dev Mode.
• Limited support for encrypted aircraft: some MSFS 2024 aircraft are partly protected by the simulator. Modular protected aircraft now appear with a padlock indicating they are protected, but have limited support in the toolkit; you can make liveries and texture paintkits for them. 3D previews and UV maps aren't available for these aircraft, because the toolkit never decrypts, bypasses or reverse engineers protected files: it reads only the files the simulator itself leaves readable, the same files any livery artist works from.
• One-click texture extraction: decodes compiled KTX2/DDS art back into editable PNGs, even specially compressed files other tools can't open.
• Built-in 3D preview: see your own artwork on the aircraft as you paint, in a separate window, with no compiling and no sim launch. It also answers the question a texture name never does: which part of the aircraft is this? Select a texture and the part it covers lights up, so you can see what you are taking on before you paint a single pixel. Click a part to add its texture to your livery, or take it out again.
• Instant UV wireframes: generates a paint-alignment UV map straight from the aircraft's own 3D model.
• 3D paintkits (experimental): exports the parts you are painting as a 3D model you can open in Blender or other 3D painting software, so you can see your artwork on the aircraft instead of working it out from a flat UV map.
• Create ready-made paintkits: builds a layered Photoshop file from any aircraft's own textures and UV layout, even when no paintkit was ever published.
• Fine control over modular aircraft: choose exactly which of an aircraft's configurations each livery appears under, and change it later without deleting your artwork.
• Rendered thumbnails (experimental): writes every thumbnail image MSFS expects, at the right size and with the right transparency, drawn from your own paint. No trip into Developer Mode and the Aircraft Capture Tool.
• Seamless compile and package: builds a sim-ready package with the official MSFS SDK. No command line.
• Compile MSFS 2020 liveries without MSFS 2020 installed: 2020 liveries normally need the 2020 SDK, which means keeping the older simulator around just to build them. The toolkit can compile them on its own instead, using a bundled converter rather than the SDK. Select it in Settings, and you can keep making 2020 liveries long after you have uninstalled the sim.

What it does not do

This isn't an image editing tool, nor will it paint a livery for you, that's still the job of livery artists using your normal livery painting tools and workflows!

Getting started

The download is the complete, self-contained app. Everything it needs to run is included.

1. Unzip the download anywhere.
2. Double-click MSFS Livery Toolkit at the top of the folder. (Everything else lives in the "app" subfolder, which you can ignore.)
3. Windows may warn about an unsigned app; if you are comfortable running it, click More info > Run anyway

First-run setup (SDK paths and aircraft folders) takes a few seconds, then you are ready to go.

Found a bug or have an idea?

This is the most helpful thing you can do during the beta:

• Preferred: open a GitHub issue here. Please say what you did, and attach your log file if you can (in the app: Settings > Diagnostics > Open session log file).
• Alternatively: just drop a comment right here on this page.

Documentation

You can find online documentation here. To see which features work on which kind of aircraft (2020 or 2024, monolithic or modular, encrypted or not), see Supported aircraft.

Free for the community

This app will remain free for the livery-artist community. It was built in my spare time and will never be monetized beyond optional donations, and there will be no paid tiers. The coding was done with AI assistance (Claude Code), but all the requirements and logic design were painstakingly created by me, with countless hours of work to test, refine and enhance it based on my own experience as a livery creator. See here for more information on how it was built.

If you like it and it saves you time, an optional coffee is always appreciated and helps fund a Claude Pro subscription to drive more enhancements.