IV WIP Offscreen Characters & Younger Variations for Placeholder Texture Replacements in Interiors [INDEV]

[BrynnaDaRosa]

For the past several months, everything I've done in terms of mods for IV is the kind of thing I consider extremely self indulgent. As for something i spend my free time doing, if there's at least a few people who enjoy what I've been making here, I can't view it as a waste of time. Placeholder pictures bother me. Pictures of Manny in Tony's apartment, Anna Faustin up on the wall in the Irish bars, two instances of that blonde lady in the McReary living room, two instances of the same photo of Packie, Gerry, and Francis in the McReary living room,  I know the purpose that they serve is for the environment to be just believable enough— and these are all things in mostly inaccessible cutscene interiors you wouldn't be able to inspect closely in the first place, but they're rife with opportunity for me to replace these with whatever.

 

These aren't nearly all of them, and the possibility of them being implemented as actual in-game models is a bit slim, these are mostly used for show and for making these renders, but I'll keep posting the more progress I make— these are just the ones i think warrant being shown off just yet.

 

Here's Gay Tony Prince, circa about 1986(?)

I haven't rendered anything for him yet unfortunately, as i still have to solidify some ideas i have for his hair and his sense of style. While i was totally against having his hair be kept practically the same, or using anything stock the way i did here, this rather clean look isn't too "out there" at all for the time frame nor the club scene from the time. I've always believed that the ELEPHANT club was supposed to be some sort of club on the same stature as Studio 54, and one of your options to name your nightclub in GTA: Online being The Studio just registers as some kind of confirmation for me personally. This look really works, but I haven't finalized him just yet.

 

But now here's something and someone I've been thinking about for just as long as I've been playing GTA IV.

 

Pa McReary (199x)

 

 

Out of all the placeholder images, I think ah_oldcunts is the one that bugs me the most. On one hand, it's clearly meant to represent Mr. and Mrs. McReary, though her resemblance to how she appears in game is rather loose, and pretty clearly just f_o_rich_01 with painted over details and assistance of the canvas filter and image compression. While Mr. McReary looks... Eh... I know I'm looking way too far into these details, but he could be better. And not to mention, his resemblance to his children is close to none. If there's any, it's to Derrick, and it's entirely superficial. I'm pretty sure he's just like, a guy, though i haven't tried looking through all the peds for matches.

 

I've had a vague image of him in my head for some time, but some time recently I sat down and looked at the McRearys just to get an idea of their shared features.

 

 

You can see their resemblance to Maureen pretty clearly, especially with Derrick, and maybe Gerry, these big meatheads; while Francis, as we all know, is the odd one out, and to most people with eyes the awareness he's a Niko edit. (You'd recognize the "messy" but very particular topology on his nose from anywhere) But I noticed Packie & Francis's very similar structure of their brow, and i was able to suspend my disbelief a bit more, and really saw that Francis may not be too different looking... but I came to the conclusion, should the nameless Pa McReary resemble any of his spawn the most, it should be Frankie. I should use him as a basis.

So I got to work. But the whole time I made edits to him, it was always the nagging fear that I was making him look more and more like Niko. In the end, I had to draw some sort of an idea of what I wanted him to look like on top and follow that as a basis, and things finally started working out.

 

 

Then through a bunch of texture variations, and then attempted to make him older and sh*ttier looking, dressing him up in other characters' clothes:

 

 

 

I think the hardest part about making these renders is trying to mimic the look of the pictures seen in-game, trying to figure out how much or how little fancy lighting I'm supposed to use. Pictured below is my second go at a replacement of ah_oldcunts, and I think I'm just going to have to work on Ma's suit jacket and find an actual necklace to put underneath. (Her face texture is an edit I made, which I'll have more to share of later.)

 

 

I could have sworn there was some kind of light illuminating the picture above the fireplace, but it looks like that was in my head. I'll have to do something about that. I've already combined a lot of materials to turn most of the pictures in the room into one material, I don't have a great PC so i need to do whatever I can to optimize the place. (60 materials in the wdr for a bulk, but not even all of the living room... Horrific.)

 

 

Have this poorly looping cinemagraph.

Edited November 8, 2021 by BrynnaDaRosa

[Chaos studios]

On 11/7/2021 at 9:59 PM, BrynnaDaRosa said:

For the past several months, everything I've done in terms of mods for IV is the kind of thing I consider extremely self indulgent. As for something i spend my free time doing, if there's at least a few people who enjoy what I've been making here, I can't view it as a waste of time. Placeholder pictures bother me. Pictures of Manny in Tony's apartment, Anna Faustin up on the wall in the Irish bars, two instances of that blonde lady in the McReary living room, two instances of the same photo of Packie, Gerry, and Francis in the McReary living room,  I know the purpose that they serve is for the environment to be just believable enough— and these are all things in mostly inaccessible cutscene interiors you wouldn't be able to inspect closely in the first place, but they're rife with opportunity for me to replace these with whatever.

 

These aren't nearly all of them, and the possibility of them being implemented as actual in-game models is a bit slim, these are mostly used for show and for making these renders, but I'll keep posting the more progress I make— these are just the ones i think warrant being shown off just yet.

 

Here's Gay Tony Prince, circa about 1986(?)

I haven't rendered anything for him yet unfortunately, as i still have to solidify some ideas i have for his hair and his sense of style. While i was totally against having his hair be kept practically the same, or using anything stock the way i did here, this rather clean look isn't too "out there" at all for the time frame nor the club scene from the time. I've always believed that the ELEPHANT club was supposed to be some sort of club on the same stature as Studio 54, and one of your options to name your nightclub in GTA: Online being The Studio just registers as some kind of confirmation for me personally. This look really works, but I haven't finalized him just yet.

 

But now here's something and someone I've been thinking about for just as long as I've been playing GTA IV.

 

Pa McReary (199x)

 

 

Out of all the placeholder images, I think ah_oldcunts is the one that bugs me the most. On one hand, it's clearly meant to represent Mr. and Mrs. McReary, though her resemblance to how she appears in game is rather loose, and pretty clearly just f_o_rich_01 with painted over details and assistance of the canvas filter and image compression. While Mr. McReary looks... Eh... I know I'm looking way too far into these details, but he could be better. And not to mention, his resemblance to his children is close to none. If there's any, it's to Derrick, and it's entirely superficial. I'm pretty sure he's just like, a guy, though i haven't tried looking through all the peds for matches.

 

I've had a vague image of him in my head for some time, but some time recently I sat down and looked at the McRearys just to get an idea of their shared features.

 

 

You can see their resemblance to Maureen pretty clearly, especially with Derrick, and maybe Gerry, these big meatheads; while Francis, as we all know, is the odd one out, and to most people with eyes the awareness he's a Niko edit. (You'd recognize the "messy" but very particular topology on his nose from anywhere) But I noticed Packie & Francis's very similar structure of their brow, and i was able to suspend my disbelief a bit more, and really saw that Francis may not be too different looking... but I came to the conclusion, should the nameless Pa McReary resemble any of his spawn the most, it should be Frankie. I should use him as a basis.

So I got to work. But the whole time I made edits to him, it was always the nagging fear that I was making him look more and more like Niko. In the end, I had to draw some sort of an idea of what I wanted him to look like on top and follow that as a basis, and things finally started working out.

 

 

Then through a bunch of texture variations, and then attempted to make him older and sh*ttier looking, dressing him up in other characters' clothes:

 

 

 

I think the hardest part about making these renders is trying to mimic the look of the pictures seen in-game, trying to figure out how much or how little fancy lighting I'm supposed to use. Pictured below is my second go at a replacement of ah_oldcunts, and I think I'm just going to have to work on Ma's suit jacket and find an actual necklace to put underneath. (Her face texture is an edit I made, which I'll have more to share of later.)

 

 

I could have sworn there was some kind of light illuminating the picture above the fireplace, but it looks like that was in my head. I'll have to do something about that. I've already combined a lot of materials to turn most of the pictures in the room into one material, I don't have a great PC so i need to do whatever I can to optimize the place. (60 materials in the wdr for a bulk, but not even all of the living room... Horrific.)

 

 

Have this poorly looping cinemagraph.

More like Sean bean. if you Keep messing around With it i'm sure you will have an Agent 47 Skin from hitman blood money

Edited November 17, 2021 by Chaos studios

[BrynnaDaRosa]

1 hour ago, Chaos studios said:

More like Sean bean. if you Keep mess around i'm sure you will have an Agent 47 Skin from hitman blood money

Cool, i don't know what any of those words mean. Thanks though. I think.

[Chaos studios]

8 minutes ago, BrynnaDaRosa said:

Cool, i don't know what any of those words mean. Thanks though. I think.

What? i just made a petty miss spelling all I'm saying is Your Character you've created Pretty much Resembles the actor Sean bean & if you reworked it a bit more you would have a Character from that game i just mentioned.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Chaos studios

[BrynnaDaRosa]

...Anyways!

 

Anybody reading this right now, you and I both know what's coming, just looking at my profile, looking at my gif icon, of which i don't know if i can ever bring myself to change, and knowing that most of my work already revolves around him. I just want to say: he's coming. I've already made him, my friends have already seen him, but i feel like i gotta do more with him, make my post about him more of an event. 

 

For now, here's something that I've been meaning to do for sometime, and knocked out in a single evening when i brought myself around to it.

 

 

Not even a particularly heavy edit of Kate, and I think I gave her this hair a million years ago it feels like, but I always imagined her grad photo up in the living room in place of that insufferable blonde lady. 

 

 

I guess i'll have to remake the cinemagraph gif of the living room as soon as i replace the photo of Sergei's. 

 

Video here. Mind my frame drops as soon as I enter the house, I'm on integrated graphics. The big square one in the corner of the room is going to end up being a different photo, like i said, going to be combining materials so all these photos are gonna be on a big 1024x1024 sheet, probably— and i'm going to be replacing the duplicates with different pictures. 

 

I'd gotten rid of Kate's blonde highlights a long time ago to give her an even red all throughout, and i think i might just make more edits to her face texture, i just... Out of all the wonderful things in this game, how much i love how this game looks, i really don't like how featureless most of the face textures on women are in this game. Except for older women. And Mallorie's texture looks a bit better than most, more like she has skin on her face as opposed to like, rubber.

 

That's it for now. More in a few days?

[BrynnaDaRosa]

Here we are, a month later. Lately, I've realized that all of my posts on all of my threads i've authored are not dissimilar to that of a recipe blog making you scroll through a long-winded story written by the Mormon housewife out in Utah that's sharing it that you don't really care about, just trying to figure out how to make some God forsaken lemon squares. I can't help it, but I can at least be decent enough to put it behind a spoiler.

Spoiler

Birthday happened back on the 24th, and a lot like the rest of you I'm sure, the passage of time has been kicking my ass in a major way. All I've really been doing is making more renders and models for this thread, except for the past couple days with that GTA Online update because narrative is the only goddamn thing i care about. And I really, really like No Diggity. I'll try not to be as slow as I've been with updating the thread, especially since I now have a backlog of not only my eventual Packie update, but Ma, and finally getting back to characters other than the McReary family- the actual render I've had in mind of Tony in 1986, and it only feels right to shift focus back onto Milica, as well as the rest of the Bellics when she was the first one of these models I made, and like... You know. A bit more story relevance, and I really want to remake that frankly disturbing picture of Roman & Mallorie.

 

 

That's just unsettling. But yeah, these are just heads pasted on people. Funny how Mal's wearing what looks like Amanda's Yoga outfit. I don't wanna remake any other pictures, especially when all the others seem perfectly fine, and I don't wanna take away too much of the charm from the game or altering the ambience too much. Which is exactly why I'm trying not to make these renders too polished and using mostly flat shading.

 

But yeah. I'm going to try to resist working on that wedding portrait I've been wanting to do, and Derrick at the time of leaving home, so I can FINALLY be rid of those two random pig portraits, and mix things up like I said. You can usually find me posting the occasional update in the #showroom of the IV Modding Server.

 

Francis McReary (1991)

 

f*ck this guy.

 

 

You don't wanna know how much time i spent hand painting this asshole's upper lip. Up there is my first go at him, but I'd come to the conclusion i made him entirely too smooth for 1991.

 

 

I'd added back some age to his face, as well as made him a less half-dead color, or else he'd just stick out like a sore thumb in the family portrait that'll be replacing the desk photo that currently has Francis & the LCPD. I was thinking about that, actually, how weird and sad it is how there's mostly pictures of Frankie and the bacon up in the place when its apparent the guy doesn't really come home or interact with the family beyond Ma's calls.

 

The real issue is how young he looks compared to Gerry when this asshole is just barely taller than Packie. I figure it's also the fact that he's gotta be 28 years old here and apparently willingly wore this sweater vest, but would you put it past him? I should honestly give him sideburns or give him his mustache back if this still bothers me.

 

Gerald McReary (1991 + 1998)

Now Gerry's just entirely too f*cking tall. He looks older than Francis because of just how Goddamn tall he is. You know, ever since I started working on all this McReary family stuff, me and my friends stopped joking about that line with Francis telling Niko he reminded him of himself- sure, that really is  himself, with Francis being a really obvious Niko edit, but now looking at the family all together, Francis is no longer the outlier, it's f*ckin' Gerry. I guess you could vaguely see Maureen in him, but man. I'm starting to think she had some sort of affair going on with Old Man Boccino instead.

 

He unintentionally looks much squarer in the face without any of his facial hair. I also somebody else's hair texture for that youthful, tousled sorta whatever. And made it fuller on the sides.

 

 

You try telling this guy who's like 6 foot 8 he has to wear a sweater vest. Not happening.

 

But yeah, I was at a loss of what to do with Ger in 1991 because I'm struggling making this meathead look younger when he isn't as baby faced as anybody else here in terms of bone structure. But 1998, however...

 

 

 

That's him. That's a guy who totally may or may have not allegedly killed his own father for good reason. The real issue is, I was planning on giving Young Ray/Ray if he was actually 32 like the LCPD says some big sideburns like this, but Gerry looks great in these, and then they'd REALLY look like secret half brothers.

 

And I'm sort of in the middle of making a new uppr for him.
 

Spoiler

I feel like it's fitting a guy this big's gotta be some kinda athlete just because, right?

More from 1991...

 

 

I could have sworn something like this had already existed in IV, but I couldn't find it if it does. So I made this out of Niko's uppr 007 & uppr 015(?) and made the jacket more of a blazer than a full suit jacket. If i get around to reinstalling max and buying a stupid $28 plugin to be able to export older ASCII fbx so i can actually work between blender & max more seamlessly I should release it for Niko, because I feel like making something this nice looking only to exclusively use it for Pa McReary in this one render would be some kind of crime.

 

these in-game screenshots are actually slightly outdated as I made small edits to Gerry and Francis, I'll remake the in-game texture and update this post later, but i wanted to get this out before Christmas.

 

I'll go more in depth about Ma in another post, and I'll learn to become less embarrassed about how Packie & Katie came out eventually. I really just have to keep looking at f*cked up kid Franklin and tell myself that I've done at least a little better than that.

 

Spoiler

 

Jeez...

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by BrynnaDaRosa

[BRONXBX]

So sick

[Datalvarezguy]

Wow can you believe I posted something for my own thread here? Good luck with your stuff!

Edited March 16, 2022 by Datalvarezguy
whoops!

[BrynnaDaRosa]

I haven't updated this thread in some time, but many things have happened, I've made many things since, but something important happened the other night. 

I've achieved what I previously thought to have been impossible.

 

 

This is IG_PaMc.

 

With my Maxless state, as soon as dear friend @Datalvarezguy got a hold of it for himself, we tried some time ago to get him in game but failed. 3DS Max 2023 released at the end of March, meaning, if I wanted to get my what, third or fourth trial? I could. And I did. Breaks OFIO, by the way, if anyone wanted to know, so all I had was GIMS. Turns out I was just the fool who'd forgot to triangulate a few quads on his hair.

 

 

So I did that, and he finally exported correctly. It's important to note that I've successfully made ped edits before, I made it so Kate's earrings were tied to her teef drawable and made an additional teef drawable that gave her hoop earrings.

 

 

I lost these edits however in a forced verification of my files, but I'll be able to do them again now. The thing is though, after exporting Pa, it was abundantly clear that his normals were boned.

 

 

I'd thought, maybe i could import this into max, export him to fbx, fix the normals, and put him BACK in and export him AGAIN... But I thought, let me get his clothes in first. Upon *that* export,  I'd discovered it was far more simple than that.

 

 

It just took a re-export to fix his face, and then after this, another one to fix his clothes.

 

 

I won't be releasing him just yet, and for that he'll be getting his own thread while this one remains as an archive of all of my development. not until I UV edit and make a new texture layout for uppr_000 that isn't just the sweater and the suit textures side by side, because I'm an adult, and that's lazy, it's embarrassing. What I'm TRULY excited for is showing you all the new models I've been making related to this series, and finally getting my optimized version of the McReary Living Room working, somehow. It'll be harder than peds, as I'll have to know what I'm actually doing with materials as opposed to the simple material swapping I've been doing. The actual interior edits will be released here in this thread. God knows what I'll do to the original post though, this layout feels like such a mess. Here's a video of IG_PaMc in action.