Niko's Zipped Up Hoodie

Started this mod because I NEEDED a proper sweater for Niko. There wasn’t anything online that really hit that was looking for, so instead of settling, I made one. This was mainly made for my own playthrough, but figured I’d share it.

The original base asset came from Max Payne 3, but it honestly doesn’t resemble it much at all anymore. At this point it’s closer to a rebuild than a port. It started as a pullover sweater no zipper, no tab so I ended up converting it into a full zip-up. That meant adding the zipper from scratch modeling a proper 3D pull tab, and reshaping parts of the front so it actually made sense structurally.

There was a lot of resculpting and reUVing to get it sitting right on Niko’s frame and behaving properly in IV. New normal maps were baked, new textures done, and I adjusted a ton of small details so it wouldn’t feel like a straight port.

Textures were completely made from scratch. The inspo mainly comes from late 2000s athletic hoodies era like Adidas/Puma with simple color blocking and sleeve stripes. I wanted it to feel like something you’d actually see in 2008 Liberty City.

Normal maps and textures made in 2048x and finalized in 512x to match the rest of IV’s clothing so it blends in naturally with Rockstar’s assets. Didn't want to overdesign anything. Just something believable that Niko would realistically wear.

As usual everything was put together using Blender/Substance and finalized in 3ds Max to get it properly in game.

If anyone experienced with IV clothing workflows has suggestions on how I can improve things further, I’m always open to learning more.

Hope you enjoy.