I'm starting this thread as a way to open discussions and suggestions about pooling our resources together. I believe we could get more work done and faster if we would use some re-usable assets (objects and textures). There may be some technical difficulties (we are not all on the same modelling softwares, there may be scaling issues, etc.) but it wouldn't hurt to try. Of course, one strength of Final Fantasy VII as a game is about the unique feel of each scene and the very little amount of reused assets. However, a non-negligible amount of objects and textures were reused in the original game. Additionally, it makes sense that, in a coherent world, you could find the same manufactured object several times at different locations.
Thus, I would like to move on several fronts:
- Examining the original scenes and figuring out what objects are shared across various scenes (for example, I noticed that a chair modelled by anaho for a Mideel scene was also found at the Honey Bee In).
- Sharing 3d objects on the file repository for items which are likely to be reused. Troubleshooting might be needed though. For starters, I uploaded 3 simple .blend files on the WIP repo (3D Modelling resources folder), and the corresponding .fbx and .3ds I could export from my blender file. It may or may not work, I'd appreciate some help in verifying this. The objects I uploaded were done during my sewer scene: one empty beer bottle (amber glass), one empty Shin-Ra Cola bottle, and one can of bug spray.
- Sharing textures. There are two purposes: the first is to provide a "bank" of textures, especially some that would be home-made (for instance, my bug spray label). The other would be to facilitate object retexturing, when passed from a given 3d modelling software to the next. Materials may not be transferable between blender and 3ds, but if the object is already UV unwrapped and there are textures mapped accordingly, it shouldn't be much of a problem to recreate them. Again, for starters, I uploaded the Shin-Ra Cola label and the bug spray label on the repo.
- Node setups for materials (at least in Blender, I don't know how materials are set up in other software). I think it would be useful (especially for beginners) to get some sort of Materials cookbook (what shaders and masks to use for metal, plastic, wood, cloth, etc). We could share these directly in this thread.
That's all I can think of for now, you're welcome to provide some input.