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Custom interiors are one of the most requested features on FiveM roleplay servers. Players want apartments, gang hideouts, police stations, and business locations that feel unique. The traditional way to get them involves hunting down MLO packs, dealing with downloads, and hoping they fit the housing script being used. Shells offer a simpler alternative and Shell Creator makes building them something any server admin can do.
A shell is a pre-built interior structure that exists outside the normal game world. It is placed in empty space, usually high above the map, where it does not interfere with anything. Players are teleported into it when they enter a property or location.
Shells are different from MLOs. An MLO (Map Level Object) is a custom 3D interior embedded directly into the game world at a fixed map location. Shells are more flexible because they can be reused. Multiple properties can share the same shell layout, and they are spawned and despawned dynamically rather than being permanently loaded into the world.
Most housing scripts support shells, and many use them as the default interior type for apartments and properties.
Before tools like Shell Creator existed, server admins had two options.
The first was downloading pre-made shell packs from the community. These come as fixed layouts with no customization. What you download is what you get.
The second was paying a mapper to build a custom shell using tools like Blender with the Sollumz plugin. This gets exactly what is needed but takes time, costs money, and requires the mapper to understand the FiveM streaming pipeline.
Neither option is particularly fast, and neither gives admins the ability to iterate or adjust the layout themselves.
Shell Creator is an in-game editor that lets server admins build custom interiors directly on the server, without any external tools. The full building process happens inside FiveM using an editor UI.
The script comes with a library of props to build with:
All props are under 12mb total, so players do not need to download large files to see the interior correctly.
Shells are saved to the database in a compressed format and spawned dynamically when a player enters a property. When no one is inside, the shell is despawned. The script runs at 0.00 to 0.01ms idle, so it has no meaningful performance cost on the server.
Shell Creator is not limited to housing. Any script that uses shells or IPLs can point to a shell built with it. Common uses include:
For housing scripts specifically, Shell Creator generates the configuration code automatically. Select the housing system from the list, copy the output, and paste it into the config. Supported systems are listed in the documentation at docs.kuzquality.com.
If the housing system is not in the list, the generated format can still be adapted manually.
Some housing systems go a step further. nolag_properties, for example, uses Shell Creator's export directly to automatically fetch the shells list. No copying or pasting config code needed. The integration is fully seamless out of the box.
Shell Creator includes a teleporter system for cases where the shell is not tied to a housing script. Admins can set up entry and exit points directly in the editor, which lets players access the interior without any additional scripting. Vehicle teleportation is optional and also configurable.
Each shell can have a timecycle applied to it. Timecycles control the lighting, color grading, and overall atmosphere of the interior. A clean apartment can look bright and modern. A gang hideout can look dim and gritty. A nightclub interior can have a completely different feel from a police station even if the underlying shell structure is similar.
The process is straightforward once the script is installed:
A full video walkthrough is available here: How to create a FiveM Shell using KQ Shell Creator
Shell Creator works on any framework: ESX, QBCore, QBox, vRP, TMC, and fully custom setups. It uses kq_link for framework and dependency bridging.