Final Fantasy VIII models

[SierraLatkje]

And don't drive yourself crazy. Take some time, then come back when you're ready to do more.

Actually, I couldn't concentrate on anything 'cause I had to give up caffeine for about two weeks, and I could barely keep my eyes open. (After that long, you'd think my body would have adjusted, but...for some reason it didn't.) But I'm back on it again (thank goodness for diet sodas!) so I'm slowly regaining my coherency and ability to focus. Now if only my brother hadn't sent Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 over to my place to keep him from playing it all the time.... (Why am I so addicted to that game? I don't even know 75% of the cast...)

Uh, yeah, anyway, I'm pretty excited about some of the models in this batch.

First, two standard enemies, though each of them introduces a complication. The cyborg Esthar soldiers are simple enough, except that I wasn't careful enough when I did the standard Esthar soldiers, so their icon is actually wrong. So, two icons, one for the new model, and one for the old, in addition to the new model.

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/?n6iu4xjs0252pzg

The only complication about the Propagators is the fact that they come in several different colors, but are still the same monster, absolutely nothing different about them other than their color. (I think there was some sort of reason there, like there were two of each color in different places on the Ragnarok, and you had to defeat them in a row, without fighting one of another color in between, or something like that? Been a long time...) Anyway, although there's only one color on the icon, all the colors are in the .zip, in different folders. I presume that's the appropriate way to handle it?

Spoiler

I actually made two different versions of the preview image, but one of them is really pretty awful--too crowded, so you can't really see any of them very well--so I'll just upload the one version.

http://www.mediafire.com/?3cov4x8ryl9bq4c

Next up we have the Jumbo Cactuar. Like the King Tonberry, this is a large boss you fight in order to gain the right to summon one of his(?) lesser brethern as a GF.

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/?1o3uh41slg1lb3r

And now we have a batch of standard bosses.

Spoiler

http://www.mediafire.com/?jvbo5d615wf7zdj


http://www.mediafire.com/?2l6jvbvlj0al8fs
For Garden Master NORG, I made up two previews, one showing the NORG pod as well (which I had to assemble in MMD because my Blender/Metasequoia knowledge is too limited) and one just showing NORG himself. I'm not sure which is the better idea to use, so I'll leave that up to your judgement...though I should admit that technically NORG is in the wrong place on the pod in that preview, 'cause I couldn't get it to open without a ridiculous amount of effort.



http://www.mediafire.com/?zvobtc5rbo66r5r


http://www.mediafire.com/?14examer7qzsjo4



http://www.mediafire.com/?eh9h2fuo0ds9ohk

I threw in that full-size render of Ultima Weapon because I didn't think the preview image would fully display the fact that he is, in fact, wielding Cloud's Ultima Weapon. I thought that was pretty cool. (If I noticed it when I last played the game, I've forgotten in the decade since...)

Right, so, finally, we come to these two tricky customers. Both of them are both bosses *and* party members. I'm not sure how best to categorize them, therefore. Probably party members? I dunno... Anyway, Edea was simple, because she hasn't got a weapon, and only has one appearance in the battle segments of the game. Seifer, on the other hand, is a little more complicated. You fight him four times, and he has three different models, though the difference between the main model (from his time in the party and the first two fights) and the third fight model seems only to be his slumped posture, but...I thought I'd better include it just in case. Fortunately, since he spends such a short amount of time in the party, he only has one weapon, so that simplifies the weapon issue. Since it has no moving parts, I only ripped it as an .obj, since it seems like the main difference between .obj, .dae and .smd is the ability to have bones. If I should have ripped it in the other formats as well, let me know, and I'll add them in and post a new .zip. One more tricky issue on these two is that I wasn't sure how to label them on their icons. I prepared three versions for Edea, and two for Seifer...

Spoiler

Edea, btw, has one of my favorite character designs in a game ever. I'm not sure what it is, but something about her character design just really works for me. And it's also worth noting that so far she's the only model I've ripped who has individual fingers. (It's possible Ultimecia or Adel might, but none of the others have had any so far...)
http://www.mediafire.com/?z795z9p1iy9dwvn

What to do about Seifer's gunblade brings up a larger question that I'll need to address when I get to the main party members. Since they each have several weapons, should I put each weapon into a subfolder off the main folder, or into subfolders in a Weapons subfolder? Also, more importantly, Kiros and Zell have no hands. Or rather, they have blank polygons which are then skinned with their weapons, which have to be ripped separately. (Makes sense in Zell's case, since he has many weapons, but as Kiros only has the one, you'd think they'd have just put the textures on there in the first place...) This is only a problem because since they're ripped separately, they're not UV mapped onto the blank polygons. How should I handle that? (Trying to UV map the texture onto Kiros's katal blades produced rather...uh...awkward results the first time I tried it in MMD...)

Other than this awkward problem, I think it's all fairly smooth sailing from here on in...oh, except for Ultimecia's final form. It's so freakin' huge, I have no idea how I'm gonna handle it. For that matter, would people rather see Ultimecia's forms in one .zip file, or in individual ones?

[Ton]

The way I usually handle special characters (Banon and Leo in FF6, for example) is to put them in the NPCs section. I generally keep the "real" party in a section by themselves.

[SierraLatkje]

The way I usually handle special characters (Banon and Leo in FF6, for example) is to put them in the NPCs section. I generally keep the "real" party in a section by themselves.

Okay, that sounds good. So Laguna, Kiros and Ward (when I get there) can join the Garden Faculty in the NPC section, and I guess it's a toss-up whether or not to put Edea in NPC or Bosses, though I'm leaning towards NPC, so she'll be in better company. (Besides, her ending point in the game is as an NPC, rather than an enemy, so that should count for something, right?) Seifer should be in the Bosses section, 'cause Fujin and Raijin would get lonely if he wasn't there with them, ya know? (Bonus points to anyone who knows why writing the end of that sentence made me laugh.)

However, Fujin and Raijin bring me to the other thing I wanted to say. It occurred to me suddenly that Fujin and Raijin (not to mention Biggs and Wedge!) have no last names that I'm aware of. (It's possible they've been given some at some point, but the names weren't in the game at any time, and I don't feel like searching the 'net for them. Doesn't seem that important...) Because of that, it would seem off if some characters had their full names and others only one name. At least on a section-by-section basis, anyway. So the icon that just says "Seifer" should be used, and if Edea's going in the Bosses section, then the one that says "Edea" should be used. If she's going in NPCs, then either "Edea" or "Edea Kramer" could work, since I have last names for all the rest of the cast. (Though Kiros and Ward both have rather odd last names, but...that's neither here nor there...) I think "Sorceress Edea" is out either way, because "Sorceress Ultimecia" probably wouldn't fit on the icon very well.

[Ton]

For Zell, that depends. Are you including weapons in the other characters' zips? If not... maybe you can cheat on the icon and slap them on, but include a .txt file in the .zip detailing the info about the gloves? For Ultimecia's forms, I'd separate them (Ultimecia 1, Ultimecia 2, Griever, etc.) just for simplicity's sake.
Just put whatever they're known as on the tags. Last names don't really matter for the minor characters, so don't worry too much about hunting them down. They probably don't exist anyway. I'd lay off the Kramer part for Edea though, because you might spoil the game for someone.

Also, in response to your joke?
LAUGHED. GOOD.

[valforwing]

well if you put kingdom hearts 2 cannon into effect you can assume that Fujin is Fuu Jin and Raijin is Rai Jin since they are called fujin and raijin as well as just being called fuu and rai

[SierraLatkje]

For Zell, that depends. Are you including weapons in the other characters' zips? If not... maybe you can cheat on the icon and slap them on, but include a .txt file in the .zip detailing the info about the gloves? For Ultimecia's forms, I'd separate them (Ultimecia 1, Ultimecia 2, Griever, etc.) just for simplicity's sake.
Just put whatever they're known as on the tags. Last names don't really matter for the minor characters, so don't worry too much about hunting them down. They probably don't exist anyway. I'd lay off the Kramer part for Edea though, because you might spoil the game for someone.

I am including the weapons for all the characters, either in one subfolder with additional subfolders by weapon name, or just in simple subfolders by weapon name. Haven't decided on that part yet, but it doesn't seem terribly important. I'll probably have to cheat on the preview in some way, because I'd think people wouldn't want to download a model that looked like it had no hands. (Or is that just me?) For the icon, I can just do a close-up on their faces, so it won't be obvious that they have no hands. The .txt file in both Zell's and Kiros's .zips is definitely the right way to go, in any event.

I was thinking of putting Griever in a separate .zip from Ultimecia, since he's a separate entity. I was hoping to find actual names for Ultimecia's other forms, but the Final Fantasy Wiki didn't have any. That means either I have to dig out my old memory cards and replay the battle to see if they have names, or just go with something uninteresting yet clear like "second form" and "third form". (That's probably what I'll do, as I'm somewhat lazy by nature...)

well if you put kingdom hearts 2 cannon into effect you can assume that Fujin is Fuu Jin and Raijin is Rai Jin since they are called fujin and raijin as well as just being called fuu and rai

That model someone on dA asked me to rig...is supposed to be Fujin? YIKES! Didn't exactly break their backs trying to make her recognizable, did they? Anyway, there's no way I'd ignore their names in the actual game in favor of their names in...whatever the heck Kingdom Hearts is. It strikes me (as one who hasn't played it) as fan fiction in game form, actually, but with the oddity of being official. (Kind of like Suikoden V, only less plausible.)

Sorry. That may have gotten a bit harsh there. I'm just starting to get really sick of all the Kingdom Hearts fan art on deviantART, and it's beginning to get to the point where the very idea of those games puts me in a sour mood.

[valforwing]

thats a real shame.
kingdom hearts is a wonderful game. however the sequals have changed how the game originally was portrayed. the original in my opinion is the only one I truely enjoy, while the rest to me is now nothing more then model fodder for me to slice apart and use for my customs. I try my best to bring more final fantasy models out for use in MMD but people insist on useing kingdom hearts charecters only. there are many MANY people in the kingdom hearts community who have never even played the first game. it's appalling. when these so called fans fill deviantart with axel/roxas stuff and haveing no idea how roxas even came to be in the first place. the original kingdom hearts is my faveorite video game in the fact that even ten years later I am still playing it and i am still discovering new things in it that fascinate me.

i'm just saying that Fujin and Raijin are called by their final fantasy names in KH2 but they are also called Fuu and Rai as nicknames. perhaps they have no last name but their first? such as Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. Tiddus has no last name but thats not stopping him.

kingdom hearts 2 has great models to extract but the playability in the game is severly lacking. interactions with the enviroment is either to dangerous to sit and admire the level or you can't get close enough to look at anything because of huge collision boxes. I could spend and hour in the waterfall cave simply because it looks beautiful and i can't find a pattern to the rain droplets falling from the falls.

[Ton]

KH/FF8 canon are two different things, but at any rate, Fuu and Rai are just nicknames. It's like calling someone named Samantha, Sam.

[TGE]

Talk about oftopic....

[valforwing]

i wonder if its possible to rip the trains from this game....i bet with a minimal amount of tweeking i could use them to recreate the ones from VII

[Peardian]

All of the models so far have been uploaded, with the exception of Seifer, since there's no model link for him yet.

[SierraLatkje]

i wonder if its possible to rip the trains from this game....i bet with a minimal amount of tweeking i could use them to recreate the ones from VII

I think Noesis may be able to rip them, but first I'd have to have access to the files. Unfortunately, the only program I've ever heard of to properly extract the files from the ISO seems to have vanished from the 'net. I'm only able to extract the battle models because I found a special FFVIII model viewing program that came with all the original model files in a subfolder. (Much akin to the people who've put all of the Dissidia .gmo files up on MediaFire, and a small handful of the ones from Duodecim...) I'd love to be able to rip more things like vehicles and locations and especially non-combat characters, but...I don't have the files or the know-how to make my own program to extract them.

I *have* ripped a few of the vehicles from FFVII, since those few appear in combat, but they can't be imported into MMD with their color schemes, 'cause of the irritating way that FFVII handled its models. Still, if you'd like them, they're in a huge download on MediaFire; I can send you the link. (The vehicles in question are Rufus' helicopter, the Tiny Bronco and the Shinra truck that hit Palmer while he was mocking the party as he ran away.)

...sigh...it still really bugs me that I can't submit the FFVII rips here, but the only submittable format that works properly is .dae, and I can't do preview renders with it.

All of the models so far have been uploaded, with the exception of Seifer, since there's no model link for him yet.

Ack! I can't believe I didn't notice that! Augh, how embarrassing... The download is at http://www.mediafire.com/?q8zpfshbfmax3ob. Sorry about that...

[Ton]

What's the problem with FF7? It just doesn't export in the right format? Does FF9 work the same way?

[Peardian]

There, Seifer uploaded!


For the main character weapons, you could have them as their own submissions. It would be make things nice and organized to have packs like "Squall's Gunblades" separate from the character models themselves.

[SierraLatkje]

What's the problem with FF7? It just doesn't export in the right format? Does FF9 work the same way?

The problem with the FFVII models is that the majority of the coloration is not in standard textures. The standard, rippable textures are only things like eyes and tattoos. The coloration is stored in files that Noesis can't rip separately, but *can* embed into three model types: .dae, .fbx and .rbm (or was it .rdm?). Any other format comes out colorless. It's very frustrating. Maya is the only program I've tried that seems able to open the .dae files properly (or was it the .fbx ones?) but I'm so incompetent with its complex controls that I can't get it to do anything other than open them. I've had a couple of threads here about the problem--one on Model Discussions and one in Requests--but no one's been able to solve it yet.

I don't think there'd be any problem with FFIX, though, since all the models would be fully textured. I don't have the files for FFIX working, though. I *did* find a program that could extract them from the ISO, but they all came out with only numbers and no extensions, and Noesis didn't seem able to read any of them. (I only tried a random sampling, given how many there were, a few from each folder, because I'm not quite patient enough to try every single one of those files...)

For the main character weapons, you could have them as their own submissions. It would be make things nice and organized to have packs like "Squall's Gunblades" separate from the character models themselves.

I could do the weapons as their own submissions, but wouldn't that make things worse for Zell? Since his weapons *are* his hands, if they're downloaded separately, then he'd literally come without hands... Either way is fine with me, though, so let me know which to do. There aren't any characters in the next batch (which is almost done, btw, just have to do the icons and previews) and the only characters in the batch after that are weaponless enemies, so it'll be a little while still before I'll be ripping the main party.