# What a custom Vinewood sign costs

> What a custom Vinewood sign costs a FiveM server: roughly nine small drawables, a few hundred kilobytes of texture, no script, and draw distance.

Source: https://fam-tools.com/guides/fivem-sign-performance · FAM Tools · published 2026-10-12 · updated 2026-10-12 · about 7 min

**Short answer.** A typical eight-letter sign is around nine small drawables and one texture dictionary of a few hundred kilobytes, with no script and no per-frame work. The only setting worth thinking about is draw distance.

## Key points

- No script, no NUI, no per-frame work — the animation is engine-side.
- Roughly nine small drawables and a few hundred kilobytes of texture.
- Draw distance is the one lever that matters, and it is a deliberate trade.
- Streaming memory cost is negligible next to one add-on vehicle.

Server owners ask this before they ask anything else, and the honest answer is that a sign is one of the cheapest things you can add to a server — provided the animation is in the map rather than in a script. Here is what it actually consists of.

## The numbers

A typical eight-letter sign is nine small drawables — one per letter plus the frame — and one texture dictionary of a few hundred kilobytes. There is no NUI, no script and no per-frame work, so the only ongoing cost is drawing a handful of objects you can already see.

For comparison: a single add-on vehicle with a livery is routinely ten to thirty times the download and considerably more geometry. If your server streams even one custom car, the sign is noise.

| Component | Typical size | Ongoing cost |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Drawables (.ydr) | 8–12 files, small | Drawn when in view |
| Texture dictionary (.ytd) | A few hundred KB | Streaming memory only |
| Clip dictionary (.ycd) | A few KB | None — engine-side playback |
| Type definitions + placement | A few KB | None after load |
| Script | None | None |

## Draw distance is the real lever

The sign is built with a long draw distance on purpose. Twelve kilometres means it is drawn from across the map, which is the entire point of putting your name on a hill — but it is also the one setting that can show up in a profiler if everything else on your server is set the same way.

A handful of long-distance objects is fine. A hundred of them, because somebody set every prop in a custom map pack to the same value, is how a server ends up rendering half the city from the airport. The sign is not the problem there; the pattern is.

> **If you do want it shorter** — Draw distance is set when the asset is built, so it is an editor setting rather than something you change later. Pick it before you export, or rebuild with an edit if you change your mind.

## Where the cost is not

There is no thread. Nothing appears in your resource monitor, because there is no resource doing work — the folder contains no Lua at all. A sign cannot cause a hitch warning, cannot leak, and cannot be the reason a restart takes longer.

There is also no per-player cost. Twenty people looking at the hillside cost the same as one, because the animation is a property of the asset rather than something each client computes.

## Streaming memory

Streaming memory is the budget worth watching on a busy server, and a sign uses a small, fixed amount of it. The texture is a narrow colour strip rather than a large bitmap, and the drawables are simple extruded shapes with few polygons.

If you are close to the streaming ceiling already, the culprit is almost certainly vehicles, clothing or an MLO pack — the texture budget guide covers how to find out which.

## Questions

### Will a custom Vinewood sign cause lag?

No. There is no script and no per-frame work: the animation is played by the engine from a clip dictionary, and the geometry is a handful of small objects.

### Does the animation cost more than a static sign?

No. The clip dictionary is a few kilobytes and the playback is engine-side, so an animated baked sign and a static one cost the same in practice.

### How much does it add to the client download?

A few hundred kilobytes, once. After that it is cached like any other streamed asset.

### Can I change the draw distance after buying?

It is baked at build time, so it is set in the editor. Changing it means rebuilding the sign.

## Related

- https://fam-tools.com/guides/ymap-vs-script-signs
- https://fam-tools.com/guides/install-a-custom-vinewood-sign
- https://fam-tools.com/guides/fivem-texture-budget-streaming-memory
- https://fam-tools.com/guides/fivem-client-fps-optimization
- https://fam-tools.com/guides/fivem-server-performance