There is no XNALara for FF8's HD models as far as I know, so no, ripping models isn't feasible.
If for some reason we're desperate for a certain model in a certain position, I can give it a try.
And that's what I meant by copy-and-pasting, with some digital touching. For example, I would copy and paste that girl sitting by the pixelated mess, then edit the hair.
I'm glad that Mcindus' porting process is going smoothly.
Once the mod is out, we should all band together to test that the mod fully works, and find instances of all baked characters, and possibly instances where we can grab HD characters. For example, I remember there's a blurry Cid in front of the school directory board. Maybe we'll screencap a pic of Cid at Edea's orphanage, and use it in the school.