Installing a custom Vinewood sign

#What is in the folder

Open the archive and you will find a single resource folder. Inside it is a stream directory holding the drawables, the texture dictionary, the clip dictionary that drives the animation, the type definitions and the placement, plus an fxmanifest.lua and a short readme with the build id.

There is deliberately nothing else. No config file to edit, no Lua to require, no framework to match. Every choice you made in the editor is already baked into the files.

pityus_vinewoodsign/
├─ fxmanifest.lua
├─ readme.txt              <- your build id, keep it
└─ stream/
   ├─ *.ydr                <- the letters or logo pieces, and the frame
   ├─ *.ytd                <- the colour strip the animation scrolls across
   ├─ *.ycd                <- clip dictionary: the animation itself
   ├─ *.ytyp               <- archetype definitions
   ├─ *.ymap               <- where each piece stands on the hill
   └─ _manifest.ymf        <- tells the game the ymap depends on the ytyp

#The three steps

1. 01 Unzip it into resources

   Copy the folder into your server's resources directory, keeping the folder name it came with. The name was generated for your build and it is referenced from inside the manifest; renaming the folder is the one edit that breaks it.

2. 02 Add one line to server.cfg

   Add an ensure line for the resource. Put it anywhere after your other streamed assets.

   ensure pityus_vinewoodsign

3. 03 Restart the whole server

   Stop the server and start it again. Not "restart pityus_vinewoodsign" from the console — the full process. Archetype definitions and map data are collected when the server starts, and a resource restart leaves the previous set in memory.

#Why a custom sign sometimes does not appear

Two reasons cover nearly every report. The first is a missing manifest: the _manifest.ymf file tells the game that the placement depends on a particular type definition. Without it the entities are in the world but the game has no archetypes to draw them with, so you get the support frames and no letters, or an empty hillside. Every package we build ships one, so if you edited the folder by hand, this is the file to check.

The second is the client cache. If a player has already downloaded a broken earlier version, their cache still holds it. Because each build uses freshly generated file names, a rebuild normally downloads clean — but if you are iterating on the same build id, clear the FiveM cache before deciding the new one is broken.

#Does it clash with the stock Vinewood sign?

No. The stock sign is a separate set of props placed by the base game; your sign is placed on its own, at the position you chose in the editor. If you want the original gone, that is a map edit of its own — the usual approach is a small ymap that removes the base entities, which is covered in the guide on removing map props.

If you kept the default position, the two can overlap visually from some angles. Nudging your sign forwards or along the ridge in the editor is the quickest fix, and it costs nothing to rebuild if you still have the design open.

#Checking it worked

Fly to the Vinewood hillside after dark. You should see the letters lit and running the loop you chose in the editor. Daylight is a poor test: the emissive treatment is subtle in full sun, exactly as the stock sign is.

Look at it from a distance too. The sign is built with a long draw distance on purpose — being readable from across the map is the point of putting it on a hill — so if it pops in only when you are close, something in your own graphics settings or an entity-distance script is clamping it.