Noob willing to help

[Mayo Master]

Good people of Team Avalanche, I salute you!

I personally always have been interested in the concepts of remaking or overhauling FF7, and the works of your team is really stunning. All the new 3D models I have seen in these pages are amazing! So, I'd like to try to contribute within my limited abilities - I'm quite a noob when it comes to 3D modelling, I mostly had fun with stuff like Terragen in the past (anyone interested in rendering empty outdoor fields?). I thought I could do a couple of things with free Sketchup because it's rather intuitive (I'm not cut to use stuff like Blender), even though I'm working at the pace of a snail under prozac.
So, here's hoping I could be of some use, and to begin with, I've started the modelling of this field screen.



I hope it's at least recognizable!

 

[omega res novae]

not trying to bust ur chops or anything but my personal experience with sketchup was alright but once i exported my model to blender it fell apart and made things difficult. keep working and stay familiar with sketchup as it may make some things easier but you should really get familiar with blender. 
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
that link is to a wikibook that really helped me out with the basics and getting started. do the exercises in the book, read, and practice. there are plenty of youtube videos out there also.

 

[Mayo Master]

I see. This reminds me of my initial issues with Sketchup, as I initially used it for creating importable objects into the free version of Terragen2, and my objects were inexplicably falling apart even though the Sketchup 3D preview was flawless.
Thanks for the link, I will try to learn Blender bit by bit - even though my laptop won't make it user-friendly :-\

 

[omega res novae]

its not that bad on a laptop especially if you have a  mouse

 

[Mayo Master]

After the recommendations of squall8cloud7, I started to learn using Blender and I now grasp the basics.
So, I decided to start simple and begin with modelling basic objects, which would be later incorporated in 3D fields (as I thought about remaking the sector 7 sewers, initially). Then I had the following idea:
- Since I'm a noob in 3D modelling, maybe I could focus on making simple items which would be re-usable assets, for other 3D modellers to use in their own 3D fields. I know that part of Final Fantasy VII artistic strength is to feature many screens using unique items, but it would be relevant to have objects such as cans, glass bottles, plastic bottles, cigarette packs, chairs, crates, ash trays, etc. be featured in several scenes. If needed, I could make several variations of each items with different textures/mapping. For example, making glass bottles, I could design several labels to make different kinds of beer, soda, etc.
- This idea would lead to the design of "brands", which would be relevant with the world of Final Fantasy VII. I think we could take some artistic liberties in that respect, though still referencing to this universe. For instance, there could be the "Chocobo King" beer ("Chocobo King" is a sign featured in the post-credit of Crisis Core), or the "Rocket smoke" cigarettes. Personally, I would have fun handling that.
- With the idea of designing reusable assets, I could browse the field screens and list all the objects which could be falling in this category, and make a document referencing objects/field screens. Then 3D modellers could consult this list and pick the suitable items.
- Since I'm a noob, I may need a few guidelines concerning the making of such 3D re-usable objects. More specifically, I have little idea about what would be reasonable poly counts for simple objects. I could also optimize the scale of the items so that they would be easier to use by someone else.     
- There's also the issue of making "future proof" 3D models. If Team Avalanche is going to release this 3D-based graphical overhaul somewhere around 2030, perhaps we would like to make items with higher poly-counts so that we can make insane-high-res renders with future technology (1920 x 1080 is the current standard, but what of it in 15 years?). Someone else who has played Gran Turismo 5 will understand where this concern comes from.

So... that's all for this post, I'll appreciate your feedback on these ideas. 

 

[SpooX]

Just a little find while working on importers in Max, I found out that 3ds Max 2013 can import sketchup file without any problems.
This can have some benefit, as there is a nice camera match function within sketchup...

As an example, here's a frame of the opening movie overlayed on the 3d model.


 8)

 

[Mayo Master]

The camera match function in Sketchup was indeed attractive. I'm wondering: can you use Sketchup match function to draw the basic frame of your 3D field, and then import that to Blender via using 3ds Max as intermediate? Well, it would also be useful to be able to edit that sort of stuff.
Then on Blender we can always set a background image from the camera viewpoint, but setting it manually is a bit... tedious.

Otherwise, now that I got the basics in Blender, I think I'd rather stick to it.