Things I Been Doin // 17October2023 (Patreon)

Once again apologizing for the lack of regular posts!!! i should really remember the next time i go and bother my friends with really tedious and uninteresting progress i've made on random mods I should be WRITING ONE OF THESE INSTEAD!

Before I get started, my buddy Golden Saddle surprised me with a funny little video of his that he made. He does this series on Youtube where he does these 6 star wanted level shootouts and tries to escape them, and he just did one with the entire McReary Clan featuring my unreleased initial import attempt at IG Pa McReary and my pretty meh old IG Gerry model whose only impressive feature is his custom edited via text WFT skeleton that ensures he has zero issues with eyeball movement... But he's naturally wall eyed, and it felt wrong to alter that in any way. (At about 2:03, you can see Pa McReary shoot his own son in the face because he got caught in the crossfire between him and Liberty City's Finest.)

Anyways!

Forever ago now i guess, i did Dwayne threads for Niko, and that very same night i modeled that, I also tailored Packie's Dukes ensemble for Niko and utilized my Shirtless Niko's forearms, with the plan of baking them together to a new UV on a new hand drawable to be released... I just didn't think to actually FINISH DOING IT, a task that in itself took just one sitting (but at least one more sitting where I hand painted his spine weights... they were squirrelly because i just HAD to use Cutscene Packie's shirt to tailor to Niko instead of just using the IG version which would have already been mostly sized to his proportions. You know me.)

As I touched upon in this funny screenshot here, Shirtless Niko, who I may have posted here on Patreon before, has been impossible to get in-game unscathed due to his jarring drawable seams. (his chest and wrists). It's hypothetically possible to get seamless drawables in GTA IV the way you see them on protaganists in GTA V, but exporting my work to FBX in order to get it into Max, in order to send it through the only existing GTA IV i/o tools... These mesh normals get destroyed.

God help me if i really do go through with Stripper Niko.

Another thing I last worked on in May was a bowling shirt for Niko (and possibly all his friends??? his girlfriends too???) also utilizing Shirtless Niko's arms. (His strangely hairless arms... MAN I need to get this man some body hair... I'd imagine he would be much closer to Robin Williams in terms of body hair than he is this almost baby soft yet lightly sun-kissed state...)

But I think the cooler thing I've been working on has to be his Beta Perseus Shirt.

This shirt is made up of the SIX different texture variations of this one dress shirt you can find in the environment textures, mostly in Perseus shirt boxes.

The dashing blue and white and purple and black polkadotted ones are Tony's, but he hasn't actually worn them, you see him packing them up in the cutscene where he's trying to leave Liberty City in the crescendo of The Ballad of Gay Tony, everything else can be found in shirtboxes or folded shirts in the clothes props you can find in Perseus and various interiors in basegame IV.

Above you'll see screenshots of my first whack at Perseus Beta Shirt--- with some horrendous UV stretching on those textured buttons... I really, really wanted to keep the texture buttons for more of an authentic 2007 Beta, initial GTA IV Trailers feel, but I couldn't do it. i couldn't stand it. 

(super mega hi res Niko here) Just look at the bottom of that shirt! If I hadn't notice that I'd accidentally left the bottom most button be askew a bit too far off, I probably would have released it like this. Just awful!!!

When you see the final shirt (which will hopefully be in the next few days) it'll have geometry buttons, the same fucking mother of pearl buttons i keep using for all my geometry button needs... in the same faithful colors as the original texture buttons. at least, it'll be close.

Don't get me started on painting his UV seams... What a time. I'll get into it on my next post.

By the time you read this, Packie Threads for Niko will hopefully be approved and ready to download off of GTAInside.

Fun!!!

And an extra thank you this week to my new patrons!!! It means the world to me!!!