As one who has spent hours admiring Cloud's character model while playing FF7 Remake and has also considered getting into 3D modeling, I found this breakdown quite fascinating :) Thank you for this video
Awesome breakdown! Regarding the texture set breakdown, I would have loved seeing the character with a checker texture applied, to see the fluctuations in Texel Density and where it concentrates. It seems that there also is a gradual increase towards the face, and then the highest concentration on the eyes, when thinking about texel to occopied 3d space ratio. Which is also common I think, I am just surprised that these inconsistencies never really catch the eye, and the creators are totally not religiously adhering to a consistent texel density, but instead opting for a hierarchy of density on purpose, as a deliberate, artistic decision. There are other examples of course, like when looking at some models by Baj Singh, he often times has just one single sheet for his whole char and often times very consistent TD, even on the face and eyes. That wouldn't work though for close ups I guess, so me thinks that a setup like this one is like an allround battle plan to cover most situations in a 3rd or 1st person game with lots of dynamic cam work, running on PC/Console. Pretty awesome learning by looking behind the curtains. Thank you for this!
Yeah showing a checker would've definitely been a great idea, I'll keep it in mind for next time. My very humble opinion on texel density is that it should be higher on zones of higher importance to compensate for close ups, hence I expect a character's face (and by extension, the upper torso) to have a higher texel density than the lower body, and potentially a higher texel density for the hands. I've never been much of a fan of trying to match the texel density of a character to precise values and always privileged simply testing a character in-engine at a distance I expect the player to see it and judging whether the texel (and polygon) density is just right. What the player sees is what matters.
as someone whose main influence for 3d art style is nier;automata and final fantasy 7 remake, this is a very helpful learning video of the model breakdown. thankyou for this, really learnt so much
Wow I just want to say that I really loved your character breakdown. It was so fascinating to learn about awesome looking character from perspective of bloody fantastic artist! I can’t believe how generous you are to put so many valuable contacts on CZcams for free for all artists to learn and also the price for your website service is insanely low for the amount of things people are getting out of. So thank you!
Algorithm doing its thing again. Now this is something ive been looking for, a professional, detailed disection of a AAA character model, i cant even unsee the pants weird folds now lmao. The classes you offer fit right into what i was looking for improving my workflow. You got a new sub and member
Very Interesting, thank you for talking about that. I was examined Aurora character from Paragon, and I found the same results. I think it is important to mention that many times, the artists mirror the UVs and put the one on top of the other, for Arms or Legs, in order to save UV space.
Excellent breakdown of Cloud! Just started learning 3D design. I absolutely love Final Fantasy characters designs for a very long time and am inspired to create my own characters in this similar style because it's so beautiful. Thank you!
I have to comment, I saw good part of your videos. It is quite respectable given your industry experience to share this knowledge. Most youtubers are either entry-level Zbrush cowboys (such as myself) except they pretend to share valuable data. The thought process you put into literally every micron of detail is of great value. Thank you, and keep doing what you do, it will raise the bar to many aspiring artists and level up the industry on the long run! :)
Thanks for the sharing Laura~ It's rare to watch any streamer that can share the breakdown a model from AAA game which had been release quite some time (not so long ago). It is a great content and revision for us~
Such a great breakdown, I'm studying 3D in my third year at Uni and I learned so much from this. Thank you, I'm definitely subscribing. Where do you get the model from? Would love to have a look at it myself to learn a bit more.
AWESOME!!!!!! I'd love to see more studios give their models to you to give some breakdowns and feedback. BTW I think another reason they went with physically double-sided hair was the way lighting falls on lighter hair (they'd get some pretty horrible backlighting), and it also helps with shadow casting. They likely could have been put into the shader, but for whatever reason it's looking like they went with a lot of brute-force solutions to get their hair to work without relying too heavily on tech Art or programmer help (The back faces are probably only there in cinematic).
Outgang, if you want to utilize the second UV set for the hair, just activate ambient occlusion in Marmoset, activate the map option and plug in your map with the correct channel. Then under the Occlusion slider there is a drop down labeled UV Set. Set the this 1 to use the second UV set (It's 0 by default for the main UV set).
awesome tips loving these break downs - getting real areas the at improve like the eyshadow tip with tranapparcny map over layed on the other eye toemtry - top tips
Yes!! i was always wondering how to get such DEPTH in unity engine. But now i know that i should make seperate haircards that function as artificial AO.
Goodness I love seeing your videos. Every time I have a question in my head or I point out something you haven't I always end up either having said question answered shortly after or end up having the same points I made in my head done by you too. It's such a blast watch. I've been wanting to find a "CZcamsr" from the character art part of the industry for such a long time. When you mentioned the tricount for the whole body I was like, "Yeah, but I wonder just how many of those went on the hair itself because I can't imagine the entire outfit costing more than 70k tops" then you instantly moved to point out the fact that the hair has 50k tris, which was the amount I myself imagined it would have since other games such as Uncharted 4 has that same kind of poly distribution. Imma be sending this channel to all my char artists friends in the industry
Wow this is my first time running across this channel and I feel like I've already learned soo much like the separating uv textures. Thanks instantly subbed.
Don't thank me you broke it down and simplified alot of the aspects I'm a environment artist so the character side is a different monster which is why I follow tutorials alot
Oh god I never noticed how weird the lower baggy parts of the pants looked like until you pointed it out. (Despite me pouring over every detail at launch) Also, excellent video!
FYI, for the hair texture, beside AO the secondary UV is also used for the rim light normal map, so you will see a little bit of fresnel specular on the hair which will make the hair looks softer
I am sending much love for everything you're doing. Another very interesting video! I especially appreciate the part on how to make eyes more realistic.
This video made me question if I’m fluent in English, but the parts I did understand were very interesting. Didn’t notice the pants thing while I was playing cuz I was too busy looking at those 50k triangles in the face, head, and hair 😍
First time in your channel. Great video, great explanation! Learned a lot from what you explained and soon I'll check the other videos on your channel. More content on characters breakdown would be really nice! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!
That irregular texture at the bottom of the trousers reminds of mould lines that interferes creating irregular or ‘streaked’ shadows you see on action figures. Please do Sekiro character Model 🙏🏻
I really enjoyed this, awesome video! Will certainly subscribe. I don't work at square so I don't know the actual answers, but I can guess why they'd take particular approaches for certain things. I'm a technical artist, not a character artist though. For the hair specifically. Enabling doublesided rendering inside the shader in unreal is a little more expensive than doing it with polygons so thats the most likely reason for them modelling it in. On one hand that does double the number of vertices, but poly crunching is something modern consoles do really well (unless theres a lot of bone influence that is). Polygons aren't free but they're a bit cheaper than the math that you'd be doing in the shader, as even after enabling double sided you'd need to a few more nodes in unreal to get it looking the same on both sides. Plus the eyebrow thing you mentioned, as they're using the same material (at least from what I've learned taking the model apart from the source). The eyes are *most likely* for ease of animation, saves trying to do all the eye animation in the shader, which would be a bit painful to adjust given how animated the eyes are. Plus, translucency isn't cheap but it'll be cheaper than having a good 50 exposed Parameters in the shader that're being edited regularly. I'd guess similar to you, that its probably for ease of use, as opposed to being specifically for performance, it just has the added minor performance benefit. Their setup is very similar to the epic games standard eye setup in many ways, so that might also be a part of the decision. Textures: The textures you have there, are already converted from the original engine formats, and there are actually several textures missing, specifically packed textures and the BentNormal Map used for the hair, I wasn't too familiar with BNT's until about a year ago, but its essentially a normal map with the AO baked into the normals. I can't say I've ever seen a title outside of FFVII use it though. I've never made one myself either. I've noticed it with especially this game that there are a few textures that people haven't worked out what they're for, so they just ignore them in their conversions. I'm sure most of this you're well aware of and it gets a bit techy for the video to explain it, but I thought it might be useful for anyone watching the video.
That's an amazing comment, thank you for it. Bent normals aren't something I'm that familiar with either. I know they exist but haven't seen them used in practice. How did you come across your info about their use on FF7R? Did you just unpack the models yourself and look at them or is there another source of information out there? Cheers!
Unpacked the models from the original game files. No special insider information sadly. Its a hobby, i love learning and seeing how other studios do things. If you’re the same try to grab the original files, as people tend to remove/edit/mislabel the things that aren’t standard or are confusing (texture packing being the most commonly removed). Thanks for the reply. Again, awesome breakdown.
Great breakdown as usual! I came back to this video and rewatched it. I really want to get my hands on the model if anyone knows how/where It will be very helpful :)
Also, for cinematic scenes, there's a lot of precomputed and precooked camera angles, so you can afford to have a pretty detailed LOD0 model (in fact, that's even desirable for cinematic scenes). I'm really impressed how detailed these characters are, even from a distance! Though, some LODs have like a noticable difference in facial features, so when playing on my PS4 Pro in 4K, it can look quite noticable and jarring even moving the camera and Aerith for example changes LOD model. Still, not bad at all!
2:19 i think i know what is wrong with the pants. the guy who made it probably used md 2d plane retopo workflow. that workflow is not good enough for big folds. because you can't possibly retopo the the mesh in the flow of those folds with that workflow. you just make basic humanoid retopo to a 2d plane of your cloth mesh and just wrap it around of the 3d version. while it s good for a lot of clothing like tshirts that are not baggy, clothes with small wrinkles etc. it is not good for big droops, folds etc. so you have to manually retopo it by hand with a mix of humanoid topology and a custom fold topology that *does* follow the big folds.
And By the way, I created a 3d tribute to Alice from the game Alice: Madness returns a little while back, and did an outfit redesign of her "royal suit" from the game. It was fun-fun, and I don't get to do much of the likeness work anymore so it was a nice break from the "from scratch" work.
Another benefit of multiple texture maps instead of a single sheet, is memory draw calls for the game engine. A large 4k texture sheet will require more memory and demand more on the engine than 4 individual sets of 2k textures, which still has the same pixel density.
I think it would be cool for me to invite a game programmer at some point to break down draw calls, but from what I know, I'm pretty sure a single 4k is more optimal than 4 2k textures. 4 2k textures means 4x the number of draw calls, for what winds up being the same memory "weight". The problem with a single 4k texture is that it's not modular, so if you only want to replace part of a character, like the pants, then you have to bring in yet another texture on top of the 4k texture.
Hmm. I haven't ever had a problem with the normal maps on Clouds pants. Haven't you ever seen cloths that have set-in wrinkles that don't match a fabric's natural folds? I don't know if thats what they are going for, but when you pointed that out thats what I thought about. We don't know what material Cloud's pants are made out of, but I was never bothered by it. Furthermore, in some parts of the game where there is striking lighting going across the character model and hitting the pants, I think it looks so very cool!
Fun fact: after scrapping all of Cyberconnect2's work to build the remake in house, Square reused Noctis' Luminous Engine model to save time on Cloud's model.
To be honest you’re amazing from personality to your skills ( beautiful and gorgeous ☺️) but I am just saying this as a fan or a friend or I don’t know just someone who cares about your channels. Based on my experience companies or character artist usually enjoyed if you just cheers them even for nothing but in any cases if you try to talk about their mistakes or weaknesses usually they don’t like it. And if in the future they didn’t give you any access to their models like this one please just remember that it’s not your fault and you did it great but accidentally you talked about something they didn’t want you to do. Anyway I just see a great artist and specialists and I am sure you will make one of the best CZcams channel in the future. Keep up and good work!
Yeah I mean it's done in an educational context and I hope that people will appreciate that. I believe in a world where we can study commercial work in an effort that's beneficial to developing ourselves. I know it's a risk but it's taking a risk for something I believe in. Your comment made me pause and think, thank you.
I'm in the early part of this video, but another thing I noticed was his birthmarks/beauty marks on his arms are the exact same on each side... it wouldn't have been too much to make each arm unique, I imagine.
Cllicked on this video because i have never seen such good looking character models like in FF7R. sure some uninmportant npc's might not look amazing but Cloud, Tifa, Barret and the rest of the gang looks unbelievably good.
Today I learned what the hell is the fake ambient occlusion, It was really driving me crazy because there is literally NOTHING about it on youtube or elsewhere speaking of realistic eyes, so THANK YOU
In all seriousness, me too. The original FF7 is one of the biggest reasons I went into 3d and video games. When I saw those cutscenes the first time I was like.. I wanna do that! haha.
@@Outgang Im no old timer but the final fantasy franchise in general has inspired me a great deal for 3d too, specially xv. I mean the way they make the hair and eyes.. really really grabbed my attention
i just found your channel, im not a character artist in the vg industry but actually in cgi, i really apreciate that a pro like you explain all this kind of production tips, youtube and the tutorial media in general is really focused in blender kiddo stuff, things that when you jump into a real studio are pretty much garbage... so thank you!!! and for the kids that read this message, follow this channel and drop those after effects+blender+unreal 10 minutes tuts... BTW how did you extract the asset from the game?
Thanks for the compliments haha. Out of an abundance of caution I decided not to reveal my source for the model, but you know, there is always Google to answer questions like yours.
I may be tripping but am I the only one who kinda notices his arm musculature gets"bigger" or "pumped" during/after combat mode? Like I swear to god his arms get like that after picking up the Sword
I’m surprised they didn’t make ff7 mod that makes them look the the ps1 blocky version that would be awsome to see in action with the bulky Popeyes arms lol
its kinda comforting to know that half of clouds polygon budget goes to his hair since its literally what hes known for
Same for rebirth too
That was so fascinating. Thank you for this video. I would love to see a breakdown of the other characters too!
I'll do more of these in the future, thanks for the positive comment!
Hey it’s Matthew Shezmen, love your work man.
Hey man, are you working on a Bloodborne animation parody
@@Outgang thanks. Amazing video. Would love to have the same for Tifa and Aerith if you have time
@@atic01 I'm working on a Tifa video :)
As one who has spent hours admiring Cloud's character model while playing FF7 Remake and has also considered getting into 3D modeling, I found this breakdown quite fascinating :) Thank you for this video
It was really cool seeing just how much went into Cloud's character model. Makes me appreciate how much 3D artists do.
Most character artists I know are workaholics.
Awesome breakdown! Regarding the texture set breakdown, I would have loved seeing the character with a checker texture applied, to see the fluctuations in Texel Density and where it concentrates. It seems that there also is a gradual increase towards the face, and then the highest concentration on the eyes, when thinking about texel to occopied 3d space ratio. Which is also common I think, I am just surprised that these inconsistencies never really catch the eye, and the creators are totally not religiously adhering to a consistent texel density, but instead opting for a hierarchy of density on purpose, as a deliberate, artistic decision. There are other examples of course, like when looking at some models by Baj Singh, he often times has just one single sheet for his whole char and often times very consistent TD, even on the face and eyes. That wouldn't work though for close ups I guess, so me thinks that a setup like this one is like an allround battle plan to cover most situations in a 3rd or 1st person game with lots of dynamic cam work, running on PC/Console. Pretty awesome learning by looking behind the curtains. Thank you for this!
Yeah showing a checker would've definitely been a great idea, I'll keep it in mind for next time. My very humble opinion on texel density is that it should be higher on zones of higher importance to compensate for close ups, hence I expect a character's face (and by extension, the upper torso) to have a higher texel density than the lower body, and potentially a higher texel density for the hands. I've never been much of a fan of trying to match the texel density of a character to precise values and always privileged simply testing a character in-engine at a distance I expect the player to see it and judging whether the texel (and polygon) density is just right. What the player sees is what matters.
as someone whose main influence for 3d art style is nier;automata and final fantasy 7 remake, this is a very helpful learning video of the model breakdown. thankyou for this, really learnt so much
Happy to have been of help!
Wow I just want to say that I really loved your character breakdown. It was so fascinating to learn about awesome looking character from perspective of bloody fantastic artist!
I can’t believe how generous you are to put so many valuable contacts on CZcams for free for all artists to learn and also the price for your website service is insanely low for the amount of things people are getting out of. So thank you!
Thank you so much for the kind comments and for being such a dedicated viewer Tomoya! I do my best :)
Algorithm doing its thing again. Now this is something ive been looking for, a professional, detailed disection of a AAA character model, i cant even unsee the pants weird folds now lmao. The classes you offer fit right into what i was looking for improving my workflow. You got a new sub and member
Thanks for the compliments Alexis, welcome on board! See you around :)
Very Interesting, thank you for talking about that. I was examined Aurora character from Paragon, and I found the same results. I think it is important to mention that many times, the artists mirror the UVs and put the one on top of the other, for Arms or Legs, in order to save UV space.
Thanks for pointing that out Thanos
Excellent breakdown of Cloud! Just started learning 3D design. I absolutely love Final Fantasy characters designs for a very long time and am inspired to create my own characters in this similar style because it's so beautiful. Thank you!
My pleasure! Best of lucks with your designs!
Not gonna lie, it's so good to hear from someone who actually understands this stuff.
Fascinating video! As someone who knows nothing about how character models are created, this has given me an even greater admiration for the craft!
Glad to be demystifying that for you! Now if I can find someone to do the same for me and accounting I'll be happy.
I have to comment, I saw good part of your videos. It is quite respectable given your industry experience to share this knowledge. Most youtubers are either entry-level Zbrush cowboys (such as myself) except they pretend to share valuable data. The thought process you put into literally every micron of detail is of great value. Thank you, and keep doing what you do, it will raise the bar to many aspiring artists and level up the industry on the long run! :)
That's an awesome compliment, thank you M4R! I'm gonna keep going until CZcams doesn't want me here anymore :)
Thanks for the sharing Laura~ It's rare to watch any streamer that can share the breakdown a model from AAA game which had been release quite some time (not so long ago). It is a great content and revision for us~
Thanks a lot Claire!
Such a great breakdown, I'm studying 3D in my third year at Uni and I learned so much from this. Thank you, I'm definitely subscribing. Where do you get the model from? Would love to have a look at it myself to learn a bit more.
Thanks for the compliments Lady! As to where to get the model, I decided not to reveal that out of an abundance of caution.
AWESOME!!!!!! I'd love to see more studios give their models to you to give some breakdowns and feedback.
BTW I think another reason they went with physically double-sided hair was the way lighting falls on lighter hair (they'd get some pretty horrible backlighting), and it also helps with shadow casting.
They likely could have been put into the shader, but for whatever reason it's looking like they went with a lot of brute-force solutions to get their hair to work without relying too heavily on tech Art or programmer help (The back faces are probably only there in cinematic).
Outgang, if you want to utilize the second UV set for the hair, just activate ambient occlusion in Marmoset, activate the map option and plug in your map with the correct channel. Then under the Occlusion slider there is a drop down labeled UV Set. Set the this 1 to use the second UV set (It's 0 by default for the main UV set).
Cheers Richard!
awesome tips loving these break downs - getting real areas the at improve like the eyshadow tip with tranapparcny map over layed on the other eye toemtry - top tips
Loving the breakdown model with your input! Thank you!
This is so informative! I just stumbled upon your channel, and this is super cool. Thank you for creating this.
My pleasure Jeff! See you around the channel!
That was great!
The Hair AO technique is super interesting!
Yes!! i was always wondering how to get such DEPTH in unity engine. But now i know that i should make seperate haircards that function as artificial AO.
Really interesting video! Would like to see the same with Aerith, Barret and Tifa models
I'll get on Square's bad side if I do all of those, but I will do more in the future :)
Goodness I love seeing your videos. Every time I have a question in my head or I point out something you haven't I always end up either having said question answered shortly after or end up having the same points I made in my head done by you too. It's such a blast watch. I've been wanting to find a "CZcamsr" from the character art part of the industry for such a long time.
When you mentioned the tricount for the whole body I was like, "Yeah, but I wonder just how many of those went on the hair itself because I can't imagine the entire outfit costing more than 70k tops" then you instantly moved to point out the fact that the hair has 50k tris, which was the amount I myself imagined it would have since other games such as Uncharted 4 has that same kind of poly distribution.
Imma be sending this channel to all my char artists friends in the industry
Crazy interesting to see such a classic character dissected step by step ! Awesome stuff as always 😎
Merci mon ami!
Wow this is my first time running across this channel and I feel like I've already learned soo much like the separating uv textures. Thanks instantly subbed.
this is really enlightening for me see actually see the hair cards, thank you.
first time i see this channel such an amazing discovery I love it hope you make more of these
This video is quite popular so yeah, I probably will! Cheers!
Thank you so much for the breakdown!! It was really fun and interesting watching it :)
this is an EXCELLENT channel. Glad I found it.
Five minutes into your breakdown subscribed amazing analysis
Thanks Joe!
Don't thank me you broke it down and simplified alot of the aspects I'm a environment artist so the character side is a different monster which is why I follow tutorials alot
Oh god I never noticed how weird the lower baggy parts of the pants looked like until you pointed it out. (Despite me pouring over every detail at launch)
Also, excellent video!
Can't unsee them now eh?
FYI, for the hair texture, beside AO the secondary UV is also used for the rim light normal map, so you will see a little bit of fresnel specular on the hair which will make the hair looks softer
Great insight, cheers!
What an awesomely detailed video. Never cared about 3D modelling but you got me interested.
I am sending much love for everything you're doing. Another very interesting video! I especially appreciate the part on how to make eyes more realistic.
Thank you Krzysztof! It's awesome to see you as a regular here.
Great analysis of the hair texturing, shaders and UVs. Learnt something from your video.
Can you do this type of video for Barret? Hes my favorite character in Final Fantasy 7 Remake for sure. Also Sephiroth
I have done a Vincent Valentine model back in the day, on Zbrush. Your video is awesome
This video made me question if I’m fluent in English, but the parts I did understand were very interesting. Didn’t notice the pants thing while I was playing cuz I was too busy looking at those 50k triangles in the face, head, and hair 😍
thank you for this awesome breakdown
This was a great idea for a video! Very fun to watch, thanks!
I'm just now getting into 3D and this was super informative! Thanks for the break down!
My pleasure! I'll post more in the future.
Looking forward to the Tifa Lockhart character model breakdown video.
First time in your channel. Great video, great explanation! Learned a lot from what you explained and soon I'll check the other videos on your channel. More content on characters breakdown would be really nice! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us!
11:04 most Capcom's chars (re2 3 village dmc5) also have real geos for their eyelashes
I'm happy we're at this point. Making eyelashes with hair cards is a real pain.
I learned SO much from watching this. So glad this video popped up in my recommended. Thank you. I subscribe now.
Cheers Cecil!
Your voice is so nice and calming. lol Not trying to simp or be weird.
I appreciate that Justin!
Squaresoft AAA 3D Artist making a normal map/baking mistake..
Indie 3D Artist: One of us.
That irregular texture at the bottom of the trousers reminds of mould lines that interferes creating irregular or ‘streaked’ shadows you see on action figures.
Please do Sekiro character Model 🙏🏻
I'm a HUGE From Software fan :)
Always interesting stuff around here. I'll keep the video for a second lecture later :) Have a great X-Mas !
Thanks Marc! Happy holidays!
Thanks for walking us through it, I find 3D art super interesting!
I felt the same way about the pants when I was playing! My eyes told me something was weird about it.
I know right? haha
This was really awesome i hope you can get a chance to do more of these
I'm working on a Tifa video, to be hopefully be uploaded next Monday. Stay tuned!
I'm surprised the hair wasn't using splines, it looked SO detailed.
They're just the best :)
Awesome breakdown! They eyes remind me of MvCI for some reason :^)
I would love to see a breakdown of old video game models like gta4
This video is a masterclass, I learnt so much.
Ohh my god your content is so valuable, can't believe its free! Thank you for this
probably the most impressive eyes in AAA gaming rn
this break down is amazing!
Please do all video game character model breakdowns!
I'll do more for sure
its funny I kinda learned how to model characters after finding a model of Tifa online and studying it xD
I really enjoyed this, awesome video! Will certainly subscribe.
I don't work at square so I don't know the actual answers, but I can guess why they'd take particular approaches for certain things.
I'm a technical artist, not a character artist though.
For the hair specifically.
Enabling doublesided rendering inside the shader in unreal is a little more expensive than doing it with polygons so thats the most likely reason for them modelling it in.
On one hand that does double the number of vertices, but poly crunching is something modern consoles do really well (unless theres a lot of bone influence that is).
Polygons aren't free but they're a bit cheaper than the math that you'd be doing in the shader, as even after enabling double sided you'd need to a few more nodes in unreal to get it looking the same on both sides.
Plus the eyebrow thing you mentioned, as they're using the same material (at least from what I've learned taking the model apart from the source).
The eyes are *most likely* for ease of animation, saves trying to do all the eye animation in the shader, which would be a bit painful to adjust given how animated the eyes are.
Plus, translucency isn't cheap but it'll be cheaper than having a good 50 exposed Parameters in the shader that're being edited regularly.
I'd guess similar to you, that its probably for ease of use, as opposed to being specifically for performance, it just has the added minor performance benefit.
Their setup is very similar to the epic games standard eye setup in many ways, so that might also be a part of the decision.
Textures:
The textures you have there, are already converted from the original engine formats, and there are actually several textures missing, specifically packed textures and the BentNormal Map used for the hair, I wasn't too familiar with BNT's until about a year ago, but its essentially a normal map with the AO baked into the normals. I can't say I've ever seen a title outside of FFVII use it though.
I've never made one myself either.
I've noticed it with especially this game that there are a few textures that people haven't worked out what they're for, so they just ignore them in their conversions.
I'm sure most of this you're well aware of and it gets a bit techy for the video to explain it, but I thought it might be useful for anyone watching the video.
That's an amazing comment, thank you for it. Bent normals aren't something I'm that familiar with either. I know they exist but haven't seen them used in practice. How did you come across your info about their use on FF7R? Did you just unpack the models yourself and look at them or is there another source of information out there? Cheers!
Unpacked the models from the original game files. No special insider information sadly.
Its a hobby, i love learning and seeing how other studios do things. If you’re the same try to grab the original files, as people tend to remove/edit/mislabel the things that aren’t standard or are confusing (texture packing being the most commonly removed).
Thanks for the reply. Again, awesome breakdown.
Great breakdown as usual! I came back to this video and rewatched it. I really want to get my hands on the model if anyone knows how/where It will be very helpful :)
Also, for cinematic scenes, there's a lot of precomputed and precooked camera angles, so you can afford to have a pretty detailed LOD0 model (in fact, that's even desirable for cinematic scenes).
I'm really impressed how detailed these characters are, even from a distance!
Though, some LODs have like a noticable difference in facial features, so when playing on my PS4 Pro in 4K, it can look quite noticable and jarring even moving the camera and Aerith for example changes LOD model.
Still, not bad at all!
You can see LOD pops in Aerith's face? haha that would be CZcams worthy right there. Cheers.
Do you think we'll be getting a Rebirth model comparison?
2:19 i think i know what is wrong with the pants. the guy who made it probably used md 2d plane retopo workflow. that workflow is not good enough for big folds. because you can't possibly retopo the the mesh in the flow of those folds with that workflow. you just make basic humanoid retopo to a 2d plane of your cloth mesh and just wrap it around of the 3d version. while it s good for a lot of clothing like tshirts that are not baggy, clothes with small wrinkles etc. it is not good for big droops, folds etc. so you have to manually retopo it by hand with a mix of humanoid topology and a custom fold topology that *does* follow the big folds.
And By the way, I created a 3d tribute to Alice from the game Alice: Madness returns a little while back, and did an outfit redesign of her "royal suit" from the game. It was fun-fun, and I don't get to do much of the likeness work anymore so it was a nice break from the "from scratch" work.
Damm cannot unsee Clouds pants now you brought it up!
Very good Explanation
Where did you get the model? I'd love to have a closer look to it
Another benefit of multiple texture maps instead of a single sheet, is memory draw calls for the game engine. A large 4k texture sheet will require more memory and demand more on the engine than 4 individual sets of 2k textures, which still has the same pixel density.
I think it would be cool for me to invite a game programmer at some point to break down draw calls, but from what I know, I'm pretty sure a single 4k is more optimal than 4 2k textures. 4 2k textures means 4x the number of draw calls, for what winds up being the same memory "weight". The problem with a single 4k texture is that it's not modular, so if you only want to replace part of a character, like the pants, then you have to bring in yet another texture on top of the 4k texture.
i would love to see one of my girl Aerith
pleaseee
could you do Cloud’s AC version
Hmm. I haven't ever had a problem with the normal maps on Clouds pants. Haven't you ever seen cloths that have set-in wrinkles that don't match a fabric's natural folds? I don't know if thats what they are going for, but when you pointed that out thats what I thought about. We don't know what material Cloud's pants are made out of, but I was never bothered by it. Furthermore, in some parts of the game where there is striking lighting going across the character model and hitting the pants, I think it looks so very cool!
Can you do a tutorial on how to do eyes like these? I find sometime the shaders get wonky and I lose proper transparency with the transitional meshes.
I'll keep that in mind Zeph!
Cloud is so dreamy in the remake...
I want to know every detail of Model Breakdown about you. Lovely Outgang
Its interesting to see how much Work they did for this Character model. 50000 vertics only for the head is a lot...
Man Cloud's pants on the bottom part is way too baggy. Wish they kept 2015 Cyperconnect2 Cloud's pants. Those were perfect.
FF7 remake has one of the greatest character models in history just on the hair alone lol
Fun fact: after scrapping all of Cyberconnect2's work to build the remake in house, Square reused Noctis' Luminous Engine model to save time on Cloud's model.
would love more videos like this
amazing analysis! learned a lot.
Gonna have to rewatch later to rly understand the layering in the textures tho… still to n00b on that
To be honest you’re amazing from personality to your skills ( beautiful and gorgeous ☺️) but I am just saying this as a fan or a friend or I don’t know just someone who cares about your channels.
Based on my experience companies or character artist usually enjoyed if you just cheers them even for nothing but in any cases if you try to talk about their mistakes or weaknesses usually they don’t like it.
And if in the future they didn’t give you any access to their models like this one please just remember that it’s not your fault and you did it great but accidentally you talked about something they didn’t want you to do.
Anyway I just see a great artist and specialists and I am sure you will make one of the best CZcams channel in the future.
Keep up and good work!
Yeah I mean it's done in an educational context and I hope that people will appreciate that. I believe in a world where we can study commercial work in an effort that's beneficial to developing ourselves. I know it's a risk but it's taking a risk for something I believe in. Your comment made me pause and think, thank you.
interesting subject thnak you
I'm in the early part of this video, but another thing I noticed was his birthmarks/beauty marks on his arms are the exact same on each side... it wouldn't have been too much to make each arm unique, I imagine.
It's common for video game characters to have mirrored arm textures to save memory.
Ever since I noticed that in-game, I've never been able to forget about it 😅
@@Outgang i wonder if it saves a lot of memory. Thanks for the input!
@@skyserpent14 right?? Im very detail oriented. I wish they were unique 😆
I'm glad that was not tasked with making the 2nd UV for the Hair xD. Doing this manually must have been pain.
There's straightening and packing tools for this kind of purpose. But yeah, even those don't always work properly, hair creation is not for everyone.
Cllicked on this video because i have never seen such good looking character models like in FF7R.
sure some uninmportant npc's might not look amazing but Cloud, Tifa, Barret and the rest of the gang looks unbelievably good.
Yeah Square did an amazing job overall.
Today I learned what the hell is the fake ambient occlusion, It was really driving me crazy because there is literally NOTHING about it on youtube or elsewhere speaking of realistic eyes, so THANK YOU
My pleasure Clara! Glad to be of help.
thanks a lot, i love it
Excellent brake down. Though I didn't see any mention of the resolution of the texture maps. Im curious know what it is.
2k for the most part.
cloud strife changed my life (this video was good too ig..)
In all seriousness, me too. The original FF7 is one of the biggest reasons I went into 3d and video games. When I saw those cutscenes the first time I was like.. I wanna do that! haha.
@@Outgang Im no old timer but the final fantasy franchise in general has inspired me a great deal for 3d too, specially xv.
I mean the way they make the hair and eyes.. really really grabbed my attention
is 2k texture right?
Great! Can you do a breakdown of Ellie from The Last of Us Part 2 or Dante from Devil May Cry 5?
These are great suggestions, thank you Nail!
i just found your channel, im not a character artist in the vg industry but actually in cgi, i really apreciate that a pro like you explain all this kind of production tips, youtube and the tutorial media in general is really focused in blender kiddo stuff, things that when you jump into a real studio are pretty much garbage... so thank you!!! and for the kids that read this message, follow this channel and drop those after effects+blender+unreal 10 minutes tuts...
BTW how did you extract the asset from the game?
Thanks for the compliments haha. Out of an abundance of caution I decided not to reveal my source for the model, but you know, there is always Google to answer questions like yours.
I may be tripping but am I the only one who kinda notices his arm musculature gets"bigger" or "pumped" during/after combat mode?
Like I swear to god his arms get like that after picking up the Sword
I’m surprised they didn’t make ff7 mod that makes them look the the ps1 blocky version that would be awsome to see in action with the bulky Popeyes arms lol
Where did you get the character model from, might I ask? I'm assuming that now the PC game is out, people have ripped the models out of the game?
Where can i get this model and textures? :)
The pants bugged me a bunch!! It’s like there is no butt muscles that would stretch out those wrinkles. Barret too
They're not good enough at the squat game.