Okay, so last night I got obsessed with making Keyonte George look better in my NBA 2K25 game. The dude’s face in the default roster just ain’t cutting it – looks kinda stiff, you know? Saw some slick cyberfaces online and figured, why not try making one myself? Never done this before, but YouTube tutorials made it seem possible. Grabbed my laptop around 10 PM thinking, “Eh, maybe an hour tops.” Famous last words.
First Step: Total Chaos
Downloaded this modding tool everyone keeps talking about – forget the name, something like “NBA Editor” or whatever. Immediately hit a wall because the stupid thing needed three other programs installed first. Spent like forty minutes just downloading random zip files from sketchy forums. Half of ’em triggered Windows Defender warnings. Said “screw it” and clicked “run anyway.” Prayed my PC wouldn’t melt down.
Hunting Down George’s Files
Finally got the tools running. Opened up the game files, and man… it’s just walls of numbers and letters. No labels, nothing. How was I supposed to find Keyonte? Google-fu saved me: looked up his player ID number online (some forum had it listed). Searched that ID in the mod tool. Bingo! Found his face file – it’s called something boring like . Exported that sucker to my desktop.
The Texture Nightmare
Opened the file in a texture editor. Woof. His face was stretched sideways like some Picasso painting. Eyes weren’t even level! Grabbed a reference photo off ESPN, slapped it onto another layer. Started painting over pixels like a caveman with a mouse. Eyebrows were the worst – kept making him look either surprised or constipated. Redid the nose like five times. Noticed his real skin’s got these subtle shadows, so I dabbed some grayish-brown smudges hoping it’d look right in-game.
Shoving It Back Into The Game
After two hours of pixel torture, hit “save” and imported it back. Held my breath, started 2K up. Loaded the Jazz roster… and crashed. Of course it crashed. Remembered I forgot to back up the original file. Panicked. Reinstalled the mod tool, re-extracted George’s vanilla face, tried again. Game launched this time! But Keyonte looked sunburnt. Way too red. Went back, toned down the saturation.
Kinda Sorta Victory?
Third try: In-game, he actually resembled a human! Teeth still looked weirdly bright under stadium lights, and his left ear was kinda blurry. But hey – definite upgrade from vanilla. Could see his tattoos clearer now too. Not perfect, but playable. Total time wasted? Almost four hours. Worth it? Probably not. But now I wanna try Miles Bridges next weekend. Learned one big thing though: ALWAYS BACK UP FILES FIRST. My heart can’t take that crash panic again.
