GTA 4 RTX Remix Mod Gets a Visual Upgrade With 18,000 New Auto Generated PBR Textures
A few months after the public release of the GTA 4 RTX Remix mod, modder xoxor4d has shipped a new add on that dramatically upgrades material quality by injecting roughly 18,000 PBR textures into the game. The pack focuses heavily on roughness and normal maps, with a smaller number of height maps, and the end goal is simple: make Grand Theft Auto 4’s surfaces respond more convincingly under modern lighting, especially when RTX Remix path tracing is in play.
What makes this release technically interesting is how it was produced. xoxor4d clarified that these textures were not handcrafted one by one. Instead, the workflow uses a custom build of the GTA 4 RTX Remix mod called AutoPBR, which can dump textures at runtime whenever they are actually used for rendering. With the help of RTX Remix API data, the mod can gather additional metadata per texture, build associations, and then generate a USDA file containing overwrites. From there, additional processing converts DX9 era normal maps into RTX Remix compatible normal maps, and specular maps are converted into roughness maps through Python scripts.
Because this is an automated pipeline rather than a studio art pass, there are tradeoffs. xoxor4d notes that some textures may look broken in certain spots, which is an expected risk when you are algorithmically translating legacy material data into modern PBR conventions. Still, in most scenes, the improvement can be substantial, since you are effectively giving RTX Remix more accurate material definitions to work with, reducing the number of surfaces that look flat, overly glossy, or inconsistent under aggressive lighting.
When Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto 4 in 2008, PBR had not yet become a mainstream standard in game rendering. PBR began appearing in shipping titles around 2013, helping materials behave more realistically because roughness, normals, and other parameters are interpreted in a physically grounded way. That is exactly why PBR is a force multiplier for RTX Remix, since path tracing benefits enormously when materials are authored to react properly to light transport rather than older approximations. It still will not match the quality ceiling of a handcrafted artist pass from the original developers, but as a community scale uplift, this is a meaningful step that makes a 2008 world read more naturally in 2026 lighting conditions.
Looking ahead, this mod also lands at a moment where RTX Remix tooling is expanding, including newer systems aimed at dynamic event driven visual effects. If creators start combining PBR upgrades with runtime triggered lighting and atmospheric shifts, classic PC titles could begin to feel less like static remasters and more like interactive reinterpretations.
What do you want most from RTX Remix mods like this, cleaner material realism for that definitive replay, or bolder cinematic reworks that intentionally reshape the game’s mood and atmosphere?
