THE personages Of Final Fantasy 7 they had an amazing graphic evolution from the 1997 original to the Remake to finally arrive at Rebirth, multiplying not only the polygons but also the visual effects.
Cloud Strifefor example, went from just 900 polygons in the original Final Fantasy VII to around 110,000 in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which even became around 220,000 in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: an exciting technical journey for the protagonist of the Square Enix adventure.
“When you think of Cloud, what comes to mind is his enormous sword and his unique hairstyle,” explained Dai Suzuki, main character modeler and lead character artist for Remake and Rebirth. “Precisely because she is so iconic, we have a place particular attention when creating Cloud's hair for Final Fantasy VII Remake and best express his personality.”
“Hair was a priority element and indeed contain more than half of the total number of polygons used for the entire model. In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth we switched to the PS5 as hardware, and this allowed us to use a greater number of polygons than in Final Fantasy VII Remake.”
Hair and against the grain
The graphic evolution has obviously also touched on elements such as animal fur, for example Red XIII and Cait Sith. Their body “was created by placing many polygonal patterns of hair,” Suzuki wrote.
“Since fur is one of their defining characteristics, it was necessary to not only let their hair patterns grow, but also pay attention to the movement of the fur. Their boxy appearance was already adorable in the original, but the new Caith Sith. .. doesn't it make you want to pet it?”
The developer then spoke about facial animations: “Polygons are essential not only to represent the appearance of a character, but also to express his personality. When expressing emotions through facial animation, the distortion of the latter is largely influenced by the total number of polygons.”
“The characters in the original version had almost expressionless faces, but in Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth their facial expressions allow us to express the characters' emotions more intensely.”
“Even the weapons, thanks to the greater detail, are composed of a greater quantity of polygons. The Potens Sword has a simple design and the majority of the polygons have been used for the housings for the materia and the leather bandage that wraps the grip. The material that attaches to the weapon also has fabric on the side of the weapon and of the 8,000 polygons, about 1,000 are used for the two sockets.”
Of course, the monsters have also improved. “Midgardsormr's numerous spines are molded all the way to the tip of his tail. These spines, absent in the original version, make his silhouette even more menacing. These details play an important role in communicating to the player the sensation of great damage coming from the spines when the creature lashes its tail.”
Finally, a curiosity: “Which Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's object uses the least number of polygons? And which has the most? I don't have all the data, but these numbers shouldn't be too far off”, and indicated the minimum and maximum respectively like 12 and 2.3 million polygons.
“The smaller one is a box used as a dummy model. That is, a piece of data that is not visible while playing. Other than that, I think the smaller one is a small note or key card.”
“The largest is the battleship Relnikha, piloted by Scarlett. The ship was used in the cutscenes, it has such a high polygon count as we had to consider the interior not as a backdrop but as an all-encompassing character.”
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