Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: The polygonal evolution from 1997 to the modern remake project

blog.playstation.com:

It’d be fair to say Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s next-gen makeover of characters, monsters, and more from the 1997 original has been a spectacular glow-up. The modern console era has returned an iconic cast and world to us with a level of realism in gameplay that even pre-rendered cutscenes over 25 years ago couldn’t match. We asked Square Enix if they could crunch some numbers and share some insight into the changes nearly three decades of technological advancement have wrought. Here, main character modeler and lead character artist Dai Suzuki walks us through a selection of characters, creatures, weapons, and more.

Dai Suzuki: When people think of Cloud, most think of his gigantic sword and his unique hairstyle. Because it is so iconic, we needed to put special effort into creating Cloud’s hair for Final Fantasy VII Remake, to properly express his personality. The hair was an extremely high-priority element and in fact accounted for half of the total polygon count for the whole model. In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the hardware has been changed to PS5, allowing for a higher polygon count to be used than in Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Dai Suzuki: Red XIII and Cait Sith’s entire body is also rendered by the placement of many hair cards* Since their fur is one of their unique characteristics, it was necessary to not only just let their hair cards grow, but also to pay attention to the flow of the fur. Their blocky appearance is adorable in the original too, but don’t you just want to pet the new Cait Sith?

Dai Suzuki: Polygons are essential not only in depicting a character’s physical appearance, but also in expressing their inner personality. When expressing emotions through facial animation, facial distortion is greatly influenced by the total number of polygons. The characters in the original version had relatively expressionless faces, but in Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, their facial expressions allow us to convey the emotions of the