Ok, so let me provide you a shortlist of some simpler scenes to make. Note that for consistency's sake, it's best if each person tends to stick to modelling the environments of one location. In that respect, there could have been a somewhat easy scene in Sector 5 Slums, but I'll be doing it since I've been doing the others in that area. Additionally, if you start modelling one of these scenes successfully, you can pretty much assume that your next work would have to remain in the same area of the game. The suggestions (please check the
File Reconstruction Sheet, LGP File tab, Flevel.lgp section):
- sbwy4_1, sbwy4_2, sbwy4_3: they're set in the utility tunnels running in the Plate, where the party goes on the Bombing mission to the Mako reactor in Sector 5.
- astage_a, astage_b: scenes of the Event Square at the Gold Saucer.
- bigwheel, bwhlin1: scenes of the Round Square at the Gold Saucer.
- delmin12: Basement of the Villa of Costa del Sol.
- holu_1, holu_2: scenes of Holzoff's lodge at the base of the Gaea Cliff, past the Great Glacier.
- kuro_4, kuro_6, kuro_10, kuro_11, kuro_12: tunnels and corridors in the Temple of the Ancients.
- onna_4: Main hall of the Honey Bee Inn.
- ncoin1, ncoin2: tents in North Corel
- yougan, yougan2: grass fields where the party members deal with Yuffie
- zz1: Sleeping man's cave
- zz2: Chocobo Sage house
I think these are among the easiest to start with, and I would rather have experienced modellers avoid taking them so that newbies can get something manageable.
A side question: how much computing capabilities do you have at your disposal? It may affect which scenes you can do and which ones you can't (although all the ones from this list should be manageable with a low end computer). Namely, you may end up having technical difficulties if a scene involves:
- fluid or smoke simulation
- particles systems (i.e. method to generate large populations of objects, such as grass, rocks, etc).
- large objects requiring detailed displacement modifier (eg. a cliff).
About texturing: you'll soon realize that texturing is actually the most time-consuming side of modelling. I don't personally find it as entertaining to do as making the mesh of objects, but texturing is what will make a huge difference between a good scene and a not-so-good one (don't worry, I was pretty much at your stage 1 year and a half ago). When you don't know a thing about texturing, Blender's internal is easier to deal with because you can use projections (cubic, cylindrical) to map your textures. Cycles doesn't really support that. However: the best way to texture is based on UV unwrapping. It opens many more possibilities for texturing. Cycles pretty much only uses UV unwrapped textures. The other thing is: using Cycles as a rendering engine is a huge bonus and makes much more realistic results. The tricky thing is: texturing with Blender's internal render and texturing in Cycles is done very differently (you can't use one for the other). For example: I began modelling by making the mds5_dk scene (the man in pipe) using Blender's internal. I remade it with Cycles recently, and had to redo all the texturing from scratch (it paid off, however). So, my advice would be:
- start texturing with Blender's internal, just to get familiar with the basic concepts
- try to get into UV unwrapping sooner rather than later
- once you are familiar with UV unwrapping, switch to Cycles and redo your texturing.
So... let me know what scene you'd like to get started, and I'll get you the walkmesh and camera data. I hope you'll have fun!
