I thought I posted this reply earlier o.O maybe not.
Anyway, This kind of 3D work is different to the kind of stuff created for realtime rendered 3D, such as the many battle models we've been making recently.
There are two big differences between the two kinds. Firstly, there's no real limit on poly count when you pre-render - as long as we can render these scenes once in a realistic time period, you can have as much detail in the models as you like.
Secondly, and most importantly, the battle system in FF7 doesn't use any lighting system whatsoever; it relies on vertex colours or textures to get shadows and highlights onto models, hence why texture artists like Millenia paint them on manually. Since that restriction doesn't reply to pre-rendered images, With enough detail in your models and some clever rendering techniques, you could get away with giving objects a completely flat colour for their diffuse map, and just use different lighting systems to get the correct lighting in there. In modelling scenes like this, you can also use techniques like tiling textures and bump maps to get a nice feel as well.
So, basically, texture work is a lot different when working with scenes than it is with battle character models. You have a lot more options, and as long as you can learn to use a 3D app well enough, you don't need to know a thing about texturing to be able to texture scenes.
