(FFVII PSX) Model swapping?

[Tetraspore]

Is there any way to swap field/battle models around on the psx version? I'd like to try and replace Cloud with Zack's model or some other model.

 

[Lazy Bastard]

There absolutely is - I figured it out several years ago based on reverse engineering work by Akari and a few others, and a large amount of reversing of my own. However, it's a manual and tedious process (I intend to write some Python scripts sometime to automate much of it, but so far I've only written a script to extract BCX file data and provide a text breakdown).

Here are a few threads of interest in this regard (in no particular order):

https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9055/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/10817/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9099/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9823/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9301/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9127/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9079/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9071/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9056/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/9002/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/8992/
https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/8986/

If after skimming those, you're still interested in diving in, let me know. I've also documented most of this on the Qhimm.com wiki.

 

[Tetraspore]

Great. Thanks for the resources, I'll get back to you on that.

 

[Tetraspore]

snip

To be clear, we can't extract the models from the psx iso, rig up a custom mesh, and re-import the model to the psx iso, correct? We are strictly limited to utilizing existing assets?

 

[Lazy Bastard]

To be clear, we can't extract the models from the psx iso, rig up a custom mesh, and re-import the model to the psx iso, correct?

In theory, we should be able to do that. However, I don't know anything about graphic design, and I also don't know anything about PC model data formats. It's quite possible someone else could bridge that gap for us, but in the meantime, yes, we're limited to manual manipulation of existing assets.