In a surprise move by Kibble, it seems he decided to take pity on us mortals and has released the Best Boi model a day earlier than stated. People are already hard at work, making their own Best Bois. As for myself, it wasn’t really fun for me. It started with the zip that includes the model having a .psd file. I assumed that you would need Photoshop to retexture the model.
But after extracting the package, I was relieved this was not the case (and I can use GIMP). However, as much as I hoped retexturing would be “simple enough” (since knowing how to retexture smaller models), it really wasn’t. I didn’t know that the shader had five tones of color (I thought it was the natural lighting that was causing it). I did my best to change the orange-yellow color to a more red, but it was just.. ohh so wrong. There were bits that weren’t being properly textured.
I was on the verge of giving up and just settling with the default color, and then someone quite unexpected (to give me help) gave me an alternative, claiming it’s “very easy”. It’s a program I’ve never heard in my life, named ‘FireAlpaca’. Seeing how this might be my only option, I went with it.
With it installed, I asked them of how you get this going. Was told there’s a feature to set the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. With a few adjustments, I saw a red Best Boi (which I proudly call ‘Red Boi‘). But the shader change didn’t go well with a few people, saying it’s hard on the eyes and stuff. This really made me feel bad, that I can’t even retexture right. I told them “I’m not going to upload it, it’s going in the trash”. I was hoping they would encourage me to try again, but all I got was silence.
Creepery saw this and tried to tell them that I tried my best. And they claim they’re all “people to help provide advice/tips”.. *cough* Okay, so making me feel bad is ‘providing advice/tips’? Also, I have no idea what suddenly convinced me not to give up, and ask the person for this. I was also fucking clueless what the hell they were bitching about. And the person is all “trial and error”. So much for ‘easy’ huh?
Nearly 10 minutes of wishing there was a fucking Randomize button (while playing with the settings, confused at what I was doing), I took a picture of what I saw and asked.. slightly praying it’s ‘acceptable’ with the others; “is this good enough?” Shockingly, I was told it was better than before. This understandably boosted my confidence in myself, and tried to show it to the ones that criticized it. Then I saw what the problem was (that they could had told me sooner, instead of allowing me to give up). It was too bright. It didn’t show much detail. With this darkened version, it shows more. And I like it (being my first retexture of a player model).
Uploaded it to VRChat without an issue, and showed it off in the Best Boi lands.
One of my friends is saying “but I wanted a red Best Boi!” Surprised it’s that popular.
With this done, I wanted to take this a step further and finally support my hyena clan (by wearing their banner). How this got started (in the Hyena Discord server), is the ‘Yeengeneer’ rank eventually got phased out (because of a lot of people able to make their own yeens). Darn turned this into something, to raise awareness for ‘The Hyena Project’ in a place called ‘Ngorongoro Crater‘.
This island has 8 spotted hyena clans (which are now the 8 new ranks in the server), named and colored; ‘Airstrip‘, ‘Forest‘, ‘Munge‘, ‘Shamba‘, ‘Engitati‘, ‘Lemala‘(the clan I’m in(because red)), ‘Ngitokitok‘, and finally ‘Triangle‘.
All of these clans have a banner (some made by Darn, others made by the clans themselves), which is optional to put on your avatar. The only rule, is that it’s visible. I wanted to put the banner on my Red Boi’s leg (where I felt it would be the most visible).
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But finding where the leg is on the texture sheet, was quite tricky. I literally had to go with a process of elimination, of what looks more like a leg (and put a plus). Eventually I had pinpointed where I wanted the banner to go. All there was to do, is figure out how to paste the thing in, move it to where I want it to go, and resize it to fit. This took a lot of trial and error, readjusting the location of the banner and checking in Unity to see if it’s where I want it.
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But I wasn’t done when I had it locked in place. I wanted a baby version of my Red Boi. Though I also needed to do some duplicating, renaming and and rearranging of texture files (while I lined up all the models as I remembered Kibble doing(with the original on the left)). With the models named the way I wanted (and properly textured), I played around with the model and made the baby Red Boi. It was as easy as I was told; it’s literally the same thing, of resizing a prop for my world.
In addition, uploading the model with the Lemala logo (and the baby Red Boi) was surprisingly easy. However, I noticed the original Red Boi I had uploaded, was no longer available. I believe I accidentally replaced it with the Lemala version (as I forgot to clear the Avatar ID), but it’s not really a big deal. Though I do plan to make a wiggly version of the model (and hopefully it turns out better than Wiggly Steve).
Speaking of Steve, with this Best Boi model, I now have access to all of Kibble’s animations of it. I could easily snag the Float & Splat and use it with my other downloaded avatars.
Do still need to work on the baby Red Boi, though. I want to make it roughly the same size as GearBell’s model. Though I would require cooperation with someone (to be in the model and stand next to me, to get an idea on the scale).
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If I had VR, I would likely add some kind of weapon to his back (to be able to use it).
I also have been shockingly told that I won’t have to use Blender to do it. According to multiple people, I can simply attach it to a bone (like on the back). But as for pulling it out, I would have to make an animation of holding the weapon.