Things I Been Doin // 23Jan2024 (Patreon)

This TIBD post i've made available to everyone just to welcome all the free followers I've gotten recently, I just wanted to say HI! And to let you to know that I appreciate you too, and to tell you what I've got going on, and what to expect form me in the coming weeks!

My last post I was talking about my attempts in converting GTA Online heads into lore friendly GTA IV equivalents, and never ended up showing my results, so here's some pictures of these heads!

So some backstory, I started these attempts all the way back in 2021. I wasn't even THINKING of editing a standard GTA IV head to the GTAO head shape, instead it was my first foray into heavy UV editing, and I edited the GTAO head's UV into something that would fit a standard GTA IV head texture, initially, on my screen name namesake character Da Rosa. 

It was... Okay. At the time, this rocked my world. And I'd spent a thousand years editing that neck entirely by hand to match basegame Ashley's. And this was before I knew what the knife tool was, so i was licking between two vertices and subdividing until i hat a vert that was close enough. What a nightmare!!! I got started on my dear friend's GTA Online protaganist Elwood and decided, I'm not doing that shit with the neck again, I'm gonna paste this guy on Packie's neck and chest.

So I did. But I never went any further than that. Until December the 11th this past year...

Had a time finagling with his eyebrows. From the side, you can totally tell he's a GTA Online guy. I feel like that profile view is unmistakable. 

So he's got a pretty standard GTA IV style neck and chest as well as the ears, which are essential for looking the part. I've considered further edits to make his eyes a bit further a part, but I haven't gone through with it yet. 

My SECOND go at this was another friend's GTA Online protag, Aubrey, and I think this IV head is one of my greatest things I've done, not gonna lie...

There's zero dark skinned (storyline) girls in IV, so that beautiful forehead is from our main man Dwayne. I still need to take him bowling to thank him for it. Looking at this now, i think I'd make her a touch warmer toned and deal with the shadow on the tip of her nose that's making it look upturned. I think she's just fantastic. 

And then it took a while, but I finally made my way back to that first head... I was reluctant at first because i was like, man, all that hard work WASTED, but it wasn't really wasted when that was valuable training with UV editing. 

That head there used to be Mallorie, believe it or not. (Well, anyone who's already familiar with all the IV heads would know at the very least that's Mallorie's chest.)

I have a myriad of outfits planned for them, this first one isn't even finished, I just have to be bothered to model spaghetti straps and sculpt fabric wrinkles for normal map baking back to the original mesh... But this is low priority, as this is more of a personal project and not something the Greater Community would be interested in (though people in the Steam Community Hub for IV seem to like them) so I'll try to work on them some more after i get something significant out this month, or something.  

I was thinking of opening commissions for these, but... Getting these in-game is an entirely different ballgame. 

Despite having Mallorie's vanilla weights, despite NORMALIZING those vanilla weights, no matter what, GIMS IV and OFIO will spit out fucked up, distorted lips. We literally do not possess any tools to get this in-game unscathed. I can't describe to you how depressing it is to have zero solutions. Even Lore Friendly Alex has this lips issue, I almost didn't want to release her because of it. It's soul destroying to see a tool that hasnt been worked on in 7 years be basically broken and unfinished, destroying my work.

I've been sort of floating around working on multiple things. 

Kate's shirt underneath her cardigan being one thing!

Hopefully it won't be too much of an issue translating this to in-game, as she's already using her head drawable from cardigan dress. I'd love to make an expanded IG kate with the original cardigan, cardigan dress, this shirt, as WELL as the trench coat I have yet to release over skirt annoyance. You can actually see my HD hands for Kate there. I realized while making Da Rosa up there that Mallorie and Kate both have these tiny, ridiculous 128px hand textures and their nail polish color pretty obviously bleeds onto their fingers. So I made a new UV layer on Packie's hands, my suspicions were confirmed and it turns out his were really close to his sister's, and i was able to bake his hands to that UV, and with only a little bit of editing, i made a pretty nice hands texture for Kate. Maybe it'll get a small GTAInside release like the Niko hand seams fix. But I've attatched the PNG for you to replace in Kate's CS and IG model wtd's for yourself, up to yourself to size them down to a more normal 512 or 256px.

Something I'd been working on for some time before this was Shirtless Packie. Not for any particular reason. Just because. 

Used a base body for this instead so he's disturbingly high poly, but will be baked to a FAR more lore friendly mesh for delightful normal maps. It's a combination of a base texture, Brucie, and my agony in Blender texture painting, which crashes if you so much as look at it wrong, and doesnt autosave any texture work whatsoever. I painted those fucking pectorals THREE TIMES. This mesh is very close to being GTA V lore friendly, so if I ever come back to protagonist Packie, you'll be seeing this as well. Me and GTA V have beef right now over facial animation yed bullshit and Sollumz limitations fucking up my protagonist Niko work, which I don't understand at ALL because I got Packie's custom skeleton working just fine ages ago. 

Oh, and I started working on a hoodie for Packie in hopes of giving him a far more appropriate outfit for winter, then I wanted to roll up his sleeves because I thought it's be nice... and realized I'm defeating the purpose all over again. I'll get back to that at some point. 

I don't know, man, maybe someday I'll have swimsuits and shirtless drawables for everybody. Summer fun! Jacuzzi mod! Take your dates and your buddies to your Northwood safehouse and soak on that roof! Though it's not quite big enough to sit five feet apart... Oh well! 🤭

Anyways, back on the subject of things in development hell... But continuing on shirtlessness... A project very dear to me might be leaving development hell soon. Patrons and friends here will know that I've spent some time agonizing over Shirtless Niko's hairlessness as well as his drawable seams (at the expense of unfinished tools, of course...) But one of those things is on its way of being fixed. 

Patrons, followers... Avert your eyes, should you not want to see the wrath of the original speedo present on Dave The Mate, on Niko. 

Mind his slightly fucked elbow. I lost my more polished shirtless drawable rigging in a data loss back in July. And I'm just realizing here his knees aren't aligned with this fuzz. And what REALLY bothers me is that he has ZERO back hair on this body hair source I chose. I have a whole pack of it, so I'll have to go back into it and see if i can find something good. I'm still messing with it, and will of course come up with options lighter on the body hair for the weak, as well as including the original clean look.

I'm just glad to be closer to finally finishing shirtless Niko once and for all.

I hope you enjoyed this mammoth post, I didn't mean for it to be this long, even if it's mostly images.