Creating Your First Vehicle Mod

Creating a vehicle mod for GTA 6 takes roughly four stages: model preparation, material setup, handling configuration and packaging. Plan ~25-40 hours for your first one; veterans ship in 8-12. The tools you'll need are listed in Best Tools for GTA 6 Modding.

1. Prepare the model

Start with a clean base mesh under 100k triangles. Separate parts into body, wheels, glass, interior, lights and door dummies. Use the dummy naming convention from existing vehicle add-ons - Rockstar's parser is strict about exact names. Browse the Most Sold vehicles to see how shipped packs structure their meshes.

2. Set up materials (PBR)

Set up PBR materials using GTA 6's shader library. Metallic, roughness and AO textures need to be packed correctly or the vehicle will render matte. The Best Tools guide covers texture viewers and conversion utilities - most of them ship in the Tools category.

3. Tune handling

Handling data lives in handling.meta. Copy the stats from a similar real-world car (or an existing add-on) to get authentic behaviour - weight, traction curve, drive type, brake force. Iterate in-game with a trainer like MenyoV so you can spawn-and-test in seconds.

4. Package and ship

Pack everything into an RPF archive using OpenIV, test in-game, iterate on handling values, then upload your mod. Free uploads need zero setup; paid pricing unlocks once you finish Stripe onboarding (~3 minutes). See Selling Mods - Creator Payout Guide for pricing strategy and the creator tier ladder.

Stuck on something specific?

The Vehicle Modding forum is where most active vehicle modders hang out - show work-in-progress, ask about handling curves, get feedback on your model before shipping.