The most PERFECT, awesome character mods of all time!!! (includes cel-shading)

[TerrawindX2]

Hello everyone, I'm new to Qhimms, and I am a casual fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. I have decided to play the PC version of FF7 mainly because of the awesome tweaks you can do with it.

Now to the main point.

EDIT: It turns out these are Slayernext's videos. Sorry for the mistake XD. Youtube username was different


I stumbled across some Youtube videos that were made quite recently, that had remarkably low number of views, but amazingly high quality content. The author's name is unjammerlammy, a spanish modder whose work I will consider as one of the most godlike of all FF7 modding. He has SUCCESSFULLY ripped models from Kingdom Hearts, Crisis Core and Dissida, tested them and demoed them in his videos. Ladies and Gentlemen, I shall present to you some of his masterpieces...:

CEL-SHADED CARTOON CLOUD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu30ntvrJGo&feature=channel
(Dissidia version of Cloud, but CEL-SHADED!!!!)


COMPILATION OF MONSTERS AND CHARACTER TEXTURES IN BATTLE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MDpuxlVx20&feature=channel
(Sephiroth, Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, and some mosnters including cactuar; all complete makeovers replaced with Crisis Core and Kingdom hearts and Dissidia textures)

FIRST BOSS SCORPION COMPLETE MAKEOVER:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeY9qd6d8Ms
(In this video, he demonstrates a working modification of the scorpion texture from Crisis Core being used in FF7)

Forgive me if the original author is already a member of this forum, but due to the (shockingly) lack of viewership in his videos, I thought that you guys might have not seen them yet. Please lend your support to this guy! =D

[Kudistos Megistos]

I believe they are slayersnext's videos  

And it seems that there have been very few views for FF7 related videos recently; a few months ago views for my videos went down from about 400 a day to 100.

[hotdog963al]

Yeah I saw some of these last week, impressive!
I like model mods which make sense (aka. not tacky AC style changes).

These are perfect, if only people could modify the battle scenes now, they're letting everything down ;P

[ultima espio]

These are perfect, if only people could modify the battle scenes now, they're letting everything down ;P

It's not as easy as it sounds

[Borde]

Those are some nice models indeed.
As for changing the battle scenes, It's technically not very different from changing any other model. It could be artistically harder, though. Never tried it.

[Kudistos Megistos]

By "battle scenes" I take it that you lot mean the backgrounds

I don't think they'e as bad as the field backgrounds, but I agree that it would be nice if a bit of work was done on them, especially those in places like Midgar that have a lot of detail and sometimes signs with things written on them (as in the background in the first fight).

Although they're in a different format (I think), could one resize them the same way one can resize the field backgrounds?

[Hellbringer616]

I always assumed battle backgrounds and field backgrounds were the same, You mean they aren't

[Timu Sumisu]

i've been thinking about this for awhile. and working on my character models i ran across some of the battle scenes in biturn (contained in battle.lgp) they seem to work more or less the same way as any other model, just fully textured. they also get numerous texture files . but soon i'll take a crack at changing them

[Hellbringer616]

Oh? awesome. Are they just big textures then? Or a giant 3d object, plus a texture (well a bunch)

[Timu Sumisu]

the battle scenes are textured 3d models, as you see them ingame

[Hellbringer616]

Ah, guess i'm useless then and no help haha. I can't model anything

[Timu Sumisu]

modeling is easy. just practice ^^

[Borde]

Battle backgrounds are editable on Kimera since it's last version. And that's... quiet a long while Biturn was also able to display them way earlier.

Actually, even just retexturing those models would be a nice improvement. Specially those trees at the forest battlefield look awful. The models are mostly composed by textured planes. The precalculated lighting aplied to them is also quiet bad (why they used flat shading instead of smoothed shading goes beyond my understanding).

[Timu Sumisu]

i'll probably start with the opening battle scene, as its the easiest to test and is fairly easy to texture, even for my poor texturing skills. If someone can find me the model name of the entire model together it would be much appreciated.

[Xelane]

Is this mod available? it looks so awesome.

[slayersnext]

TerrawindX2, Thanks you very much for that Thread. These are a beautiful words. I'm getting blushed jeje^^.
Seriously, ty XP

[drfeelgud88]

slayersnext rocks! i absolutely luv his vids! he's my idol here at qhimm 

[TerrawindX2]

TerrawindX2, Thanks you very much for that Thread. These are a beautiful words. I'm getting blushed jeje^^.
Seriously, ty XP

You deserve all the attention you can get

Unlike Square, rare hardworking fans such as yourself seem to be doing a lot of progress in keeping the original game alive and updated. I think with a community like this, a remake that stays true to its roots is very possible. Who knows, maybe Square Enix might consider hiring you in case this mod gets popular enough to reach their desks.

[Kudistos Megistos]

TerrawindX2, Thanks you very much for that Thread. These are a beautiful words. I'm getting blushed jeje^^.
Seriously, ty XP

You deserve all the attention you can get

Unlike Square, rare hardworking fans such as yourself seem to be doing a lot of progress in keeping the original game alive and updated. I think with a community like this, a remake that stays true to its roots is very possible. Who knows, maybe Square Enix might consider hiring you in case this mod gets popular enough to reach their desks.

If only Square's ego weren't so big, that might happen...

But srsly, it's best not to let Square know too much; they're very protective of their copyrights, even when they don't stand to lose any money.

[TerrawindX2]

TerrawindX2, Thanks you very much for that Thread. These are a beautiful words. I'm getting blushed jeje^^.
Seriously, ty XP

You deserve all the attention you can get

Unlike Square, rare hardworking fans such as yourself seem to be doing a lot of progress in keeping the original game alive and updated. I think with a community like this, a remake that stays true to its roots is very possible. Who knows, maybe Square Enix might consider hiring you in case this mod gets popular enough to reach their desks.

If only Square's ego weren't so big, that might happen...

But srsly, it's best not to let Square know too much; they're very protective of their copyrights, even when they don't stand to lose any money.

That is an unfortunate truth nowadays. It's all about copyright protection. If there was a poorly done fan remake of FF7, and it doesn't get popular, Square wouldn't mind. But if it was a masterpiece, it turns into a potential cash cow, and Square may sue.

I am not really fond of Square's marketing practices nowadays. They were so bold enough to try to buy over Tecmo, the creator of the Fatal Frame series. Doing so would not only eliminate the competition, but also possibly ruin entire game franchises.

But at least they are not as bad as one anime company I heard, which even banned fanart of their material because of copyright. Not that the anime they were so eagerly protecting was good or popular in the first place. The anime was a pile of shit, and they probably thought banning fanart might help ease that problem. Digging a deeper grave is what they're doing right now.

[hotdog963al]

Wow, awesome! I'm glad you guys are up for re-doing the battle backgrounds, that's something I've wanted to see for a long time.

I'm sure just putting new higher-res textures over the existing models would be great on it's own!

[Kudistos Megistos]

Wow, awesome! I'm glad you guys are up for re-doing the battle backgrounds, that's something I've wanted to see for a long time.

I'm sure just putting new higher-res textures over the existing models would be great on it's own!

Yep, the biggest problem with most of the backgrounds is that low resolution images look awful on  modern compute monitor (it's no so bad on a TV); the pixels are massive. If we could just do with the battle background textures what can hypothetically be done with the field backgrounds (of course, the two kinds of background are in very different formats), and improve some of the obvious awful things like the trees in the forest scenes that Borde mentioned, I'll be satisfied.

That is an unfortunate truth nowadays. It's all about copyright protection. If there was a poorly done fan remake of FF7, and it doesn't get popular, Square wouldn't mind. But if it was a masterpiece, it turns into a potential cash cow, and Square may sue.

That, or they get embarrassed when hobbyists make a better game than they can. I wonder whether part of the reason they've been shutting down so many Chrono Trigger projects is that they make Squeenix (who have only added a few dungeons in their DS remake AFAIK) look bad.

But at least they are not as bad as one anime company I heard, which even banned fanart of their material because of copyright. Not that the anime they were so eagerly protecting was good or popular in the first place. The anime was a pile of sh*t, and they probably thought banning fanart might help ease that problem. Digging a deeper grave is what they're doing right now.

You really have to wonder what's going through their minds when people do that. They aren't going to lose a penny from letting a few fans make fanart. If anything, potentially copyright breaching stuff that falls short of episodes made available for download (like fanart, image macros, music videos etc.) can sometimes raise awareness of anime, at least in the West (admittedly most people will then just pirate the episodes, but a few will buy the DVDs and other paraphernalia). I know that I discovered all of the anime I watch (which isn't actually very much) from stuff like that. Does anyone other than lawyers benefit from such protectiveness?

Interestingly, a lot of Hare Hare Yukai videos on Youtube can't be watched in the UK thanks to copyright restrictions  

[Borde]

Those fractal interpolated pictures look really amazing. I never expected a filter to get such impresive results out of those old low res images.

[Bosola]

You really have to wonder what's going through their minds when people do that. They aren't going to lose a penny from letting a few fans make fanart. If anything, potentially copyright breaching stuff that falls short of episodes made available for download (like fanart, image macros, music videos etc.) can sometimes raise awareness of anime, at least in the West (admittedly most people will then just pirate the episodes, but a few will buy the DVDs and other paraphernalia). I know that I discovered all of the anime I watch (which isn't actually very much) from stuff like that. Does anyone other than lawyers benefit from such protectiveness?

If anything, I suspect that fanart and fan-led projects can really keep a franchise alive. I'm not saying that a few pics of Sephiroth on Deviantart have made Advent Children a success, but I do think that the 'cool' factor to watching people rebuild or tinker with games they fondly remember really can keep a brand in mind. I can't see how that's harmful to the holder of the intellectual copyright.

[Kudistos Megistos]

Those fractal interpolated pictures look really amazing. I never expected a filter to get such impresive results out of those old low res images.

I too was pretty impressed when I saw them. Of course, getting them back into the game seems to be a bit harder, but I'm sure that Aali will be able to get Palmer working properly quite quickly.

If anything, I suspect that fanart and fan-led projects can really keep a franchise alive. I'm not saying that a few pics of Sephiroth on Deviantart have made Advent Children a success, but I do think that the 'cool' factor to watching people rebuild or tinker with games they fondly remember really can keep a brand in mind. I can't see how that's harmful to the holder of the intellectual copyright.

My point exactly 

The company with the copyrights loses out, the people making and enjoying the fan art lose out and the lawyers make money. There seem to be quite a lot of examples of people following the letter of the law whilst going against the spirit of it.