I just think it's a stupid idea.
And you are entitled to your opinion, sir. But be aware that there are a great
many people who would make the same claim about modding FF7 at all. Or playing video games at all. The "stupid/waste of time" line is as subjective as the "pornography" line, and more often than not I find people tend to place both lines where it serves them best to judge other people.
The models in FF7 are truely works of art. Have you looked at the detail that's in these models? Can you name me one program in 1995-1997 that used vertex coloring with transpencies as a way to color a material?
Of course not. How many games in 95-97 had a budget in the millions and a team of hundreds working on it? The quality of the models is comparable with later games that had a similar budget and talent pool. But yes, games with
quality models that use entirely RGB verts could probably be counted on one hand.
For fun look at Hi-res Sephy. I pick him because he *HAS* his shirt off. Do you see all the muceles? Each one of those are a set of vertex colors. Someone actually colored all those points by hand. I can do 3d modeling, but I could never do something like that.
It is indeed a remarkable model. Coloring the points by hand might be a stretch -I'm sure they had tools to make it a little easier on the modellers. But I am familiar with coloring RGB verts by hand. I already made Tifa's shirt "disappear" by manually typing in new red, green, and bue values for about 100 verts with no way to identify which was which except for the index number. The result looked
okay, but appeared "plastic-y" and of course, lacked nipples. When I imported it, the result looked more like a pink sweater than breasts. I have not had to color an entire high quality model using RGB verts (I am a programmer -not a modeller), and I probably never will. I don't see why anyone would anymore, either -considering how fast and easy it is to set up texturing and vertex/pixel shaders.
That's why I see your idea as lame.
And you can see it any way you wish. However, I wish to point out again that to most people (obviously not on this forum), spending a large amount of time modding FF7 (or any game, or even just playing games) is a pretty "lame" idea. Your comment, objectively, amounts to the pot calling the kettle black. Why not embrace all creative ideas rather than just the ones you like?
It's not like in Tomb Raider were you can just toss on a new skin. There are no skins. It's not like in NWN where you can grab Poser and import some stock body shape into gmax. You are going to have to make a torso from scratch, you will have to make sure all the vertexs line correctly and then shade each point on the whole model correctly. You are going to have to color-match the original model in hundreds of places.
I think I already mentioned it somewhere above, but I already color matched the shirt to skin by hand-editing (read: typing in) the individual RGB values for about 100 verts identified only by thier vertex number. It was a quick effort -took about a half hour, but the color still needs some slight adjustment to be a perfect match. If I had some sort of tool where I could just click on a vertex in a viewer and then move a color slider until it matched, it would make the whole ordeal a lot less painful. This is why I asked for an existing tool or a file format descriptor so I could make my own.
If you are going to put that much work into making boobs, why not just make a whole new character? Maybe a hi-res version of Tifa or Arieth to go with Cloud? I think more people will appricate that the characters will have fingers than the fact Tifa's running around topless.
Because I'm not a modeller. I'm a programmer. I have absolutely zero artistic talent. My usefullness is in the realm of game engine programming, applied math, and physics. Anything beyond that is somebody else's job. Heh. I can get meshes into a game, but somebody else needs to make'em for me.
I'll pass on your idea of high-res models to a friend of mine. He's been wanting to do some high-res remakes for a while now. The man's a Maya and 3DSMax wizard.
