Modify Homie Appearances Like Your Own?

K

Kilyle

Having fallen in love with Saints Row IV since the moment I saw my friend sky-diving through an alien ship dodging lasers while the computer dared him to "Be a Badass," I have played through the game multiple times, and each cut scene I watch leaves me floored by the detail of the graphics and character customization (my earrings provide secondary motion every time I get hit! holy cow!). This game managed to revive my interest in making music videos, so I've captured a lot of footage and started messing around with it, to some success.

This got me to wondering if a machinima program exists that uses SRIV graphics - you know, create characters, create a set, tell the characters where to stand and when and how to move, fine-tune the lip-syncing and camera angles, all that stuff - but a search turned up nothing. (Really wish the creators would put out a program like this - assuming the price wasn't too exorbitant, I'd totally buy it. And they've already got the assets and plenty of the programming worked out, too, just to make the existing cut scenes.)

Now I'm starting to look into modding, and wondering how difficult it might be for someone to change the clothing different characters wear during cut scenes... or maybe even customize their appearances entirely, just like you can your own.

It sounds like a really big and difficult mod to pull off, even if it were possible. But I thought I'd at least mention it and see if someone here might have seen something that gets even close to it.

I don't have a clue how the cut scenes handle the other characters, but since there's multiple versions of the pre-Zin-invasion briefing (at least one for super-powered homies and one not; I assume the scene adds the characters independently so it has the correct version for each based on your progress through the loyalty missions), it may be that the cut scenes add the characters just like yours, which means that it might be possible to stick different clothes on them and have the cut scene render them with the new clothes - even, say, the scenes on the ship with everyone dressed in Puckish Rogue gear or something. Or have one character substituted for a different one. Or, wishful thinking, design each homie individually, giving them the desired appearance, hair, clothing, etc.

So... do any resources exist, or are there any resources now in development, that might possibly scratch this itch? Or is it just too insane a project to have a glowing CID's chance against a Saint?
 
Actually I seen mods where the homies wear the white house outfits and sr3 outfits and they work in the cut scenes really well so if mods that change the clothes of homies can effect the cut scenes it may be possible I don't know much about modding so I wouldn't know if u could make your own clothes.You maybe or maybe not have to wait for the sdk to do this probably some pro modder will come by this thread and answer this more then I can.
 
Oh, so there's some evidence of this sort of thing working? Awesome!

If I could just switch clothing on the homies, individually, that'd go a long way toward doing the sort of stuff I want to do. I wonder if it's possible to put e.g. Fun Shaundi in place of regular Shaundi during the plane nightmare scene?

And I don't actually want to create my own clothes (though I'd hope that whatever tools got created for this would also work with clothes other people create); rather, I want to be able to use some or all of the in-game clothing and put it on the homies. E.g. making them all wear mind-control hats or run around in werewolf costumes, whatever suits my fancy. It would drastically improve the versatility of the cut scene footage I'm able to get.

Of course, it may be that the homies are coded in such a way that there's only a limited set of wardrobes for them (that is, that the clothes I wear don't work on their models). In which case the overall project would probably be a lot more complex. I'm only a hobbyist programmer myself and have next to no experience with 3d modeling, but I understand that part.

I'm willing to wait for the SDK if that's what it takes. I just hope my enthusiasm for the art form doesn't die in the meantime.
 
Okay... so how difficult would it be to put the Boss in place of a homie in a cut scene? (I am quickly imagining scenes of clones. It amuses me.)

And, how difficult would it be to have the game store multiple Boss characters at the same time, each one customized differently? And how difficult to assign a specific Boss to a specific homie, replacing them in all cut scenes? So, e.g., I store three customized Boss characters, one of which is me, one Kinzie, and one Keith, and have them play through the "Don't Panic" cut scene right after you escape.

I'm actually assuming this would be pretty difficult, but I don't really have perspective on just how difficult it might be or whether any hard blocks stand in the way of doing it.

ETA: How about choosing a specific outfit and having someone create a homie variant that wears that outfit, is that more doable?
 
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