Around a month back Miko and Suisei from Hololive hosted a week long GTA server which was pretty peak content. I previously had some experience working with Hololive MMD models to make a YouTube thumbnail so whilst watching, I got the idea to recreate the GTA cover art in Blender. I first outlined the black grid using the layout from GTA5 and got to work on creating nine scenes to fill each panel. For the poses, I referenced some iconic characters from past covers.

Some tips I learnt during this project

• After importing an MMD model, all of its bones are displayed by default which can be a bit distracting. They can be hidden by selecting the rig in pose mode and going to object data properties (the green man in the bottom right). Select a bone group to select all bones in a particular part (like in the coat a character is wearing) and hit H to hide them all.

• Items and accessories can be downloaded and used for free from the blenderkit online asset library which can conveniently be accessed from inside Blender through the use of their plugin. I used this for things like guns, cars and smartphones in my renders.

• Items can be stuck to any particular bone by first selecting the object and then shift-clicking bone whilst in pose mode. Hit Control P and Set Parent To Bone. This allows the item to stick to the bone which meant I could make the characters 'hold' weapons.

• The render view has some nice presets for the world lighting but these aren't typically available for the final render. However the data for the lights can be found in Blender Foundation\Blender{Version}\{VersionNumber}\datafiles\studiolights\world (This path is in the location where Blender is installed which was Program Files for me). This can be added in to the render by configuring the nodes for the World object in the Shader editor. Connect an Environment Texture node to the World Output and use the aforementioned file. Additionally to rotate the direction of the lighting, connect a Texture Coordinate node to a Mapping node before the Environment Texture.

After making the renders in Blender, I composited them in Photopea with various adjustments like color balance and saturation. I made the renders with a fairly neutral lighting so I tweaked each panel to have a certain color scheme to get a nice array of hues in the final piece. Below is the general order of progression for each panel.

I'm around three weeks late due to a wane in motivation towards the end of the project, you know how it is, but it feels good to be done.