The Character Art Secrets of Tifa Lockhart Revealed 

Turns out the most requested breakdown is Spongebob... talk about backfire.

For me Tifa Lockhart in FFVII Remake is a pure example of how you modernize a character yet still stay true to the original concept. I applaud Square Enix for that one, same with Cloud and other characters tbh

7:13 I noticed her belt includes an embossed pattern of fish, which is super cool considering how so many of tifa's moves are nautically based or inspired (dolphin uppercut/waterkick or divekick)

You're not the only one who pays attention to concave irises! =) Catwoman (PS2) was the first character model where I specifically used some of the limited poly budget to split the eyes into multiple layers; A base shape with the concave iris, a mid layer for specular/reflection, and an outer layer to overlay fake AO/shadow.

7:14 that logo is from Tifa's Martial Arts master that was travelling the world named Zangan.

19:18 no need, we already saw a different kind of breakdown of what's under there during the Italian senate hearing

I'm obsessed with the details about the eyes. FFVIIR is the first game where i feel like the blank-eyed video game character issue is kinda solved; you know how the characters look so expressive and cutscenes, and then no one's home during gameplay? It's a natural consequence of gameplay, but something I've always noticed regardless. I've wondered if games could ever surmount that, and Remake started cresting that hill. I attributed that to the fact that the eyes subtly flick around, which does do an enormous amount, but I think a lot of it is also that concavity to the iris. It doesn't look like a texture, it looks like real eyes, and I didn't even realize that was secret sauce. I've never really noted that real eyes have that concave aspect, and couldn't articulate why I find contact lenses so uncanny (cough cough geralt cough cough). Seeing you literally switch Tifa's eyes between the two was like a lightbulb going off. I'm gonna obsess over this as my new favorite "absolutely tiny video game details that will yell to all of my friends about" fact

you should do Aerith and Yuffie models next. With Aerith's red dress model devs have mentioned they ran out of polygon due to the hair curls. and Yuffie model is very high quality due to being made specifically for PS5.

This is sweet!! love this breakdown videos, they are so useful for learning

Ooohh this makes me appreciate even more how much effort comes into 3d modelling and texturing! I also had a random eureka moment that using true black isn’t only a nightmare to light, but also probably the same as having your character wear vantablack or something.

Your videos are incredibly educational and I'm very happy that someone with your expertise is helping us regular mortals. I really hope that you continue to upload this amzing content!

Thank you for giving us these character breakdowns!!

There's something about the way you talk that just makes me want to listen for hours. Like it's informative and relaxing at the same time.

So much for a woman that carries the entire FF franchise on her back.

I would actually LOVE to see your breakdown of Sephiroths model! it's gorgeously detailed.

Thank you so much for the content. Never thought I'd be interested in watching a breakdown of a character model. Never done 3D modelling or anything like that. But the way you break it down and talk about it. Has me glued to the screen its very interesting. Love the content :) .

Would love to see a break down of the Sephiroth model sometime.

There was so many cool details and information in the video...Thank you!

Thank you so much for this breakdown! I'm excited to try the detail map technique out. I never knew it worked like that

i love that there's always room for growth being a 3d artist! thanks a bunch for this vid

Ive been a final Fantasy 7 fan for years and also a tifa fan so i truly want to thank you for the amazing video on the breakdown of tifa's modern design, i truly enjoyed and appreciate it !👍❤

I just discovered this channel and I'm so excited! I know nothing about 3D modelling but I'm really excited to learn and find a starting point. And can I just say, your personality is so endearing? I enjoy you so much!

I just stumbled upon your channel. You have some of the best and fresh content! Thank you!

Very nice! Your methods for breaking down concepts are very accessible. I can easily see you going places with all this.

Your videos are always a treat but these model breakdowns are really incredible and appreciated! :)

Really inspiring I've walked away from this with more tips and stuff to further research. I'd love to see any koei tecmo/team ninja character breakdowns in the future to see how they compare and contrast to square enix.

I wouldn't have a single problem watching a character breakdown for SpongeBob SquarePants!!!

I started following it less than a week ago. Thank you very much for your work. I'm already a Developer.. I had already worked with modeling... now returning to study more about modeling/illumination in characters... Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Success! •••• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

This video its really opened my eyes about some of the workflow and how tidy the model UV layout, thanks alot for the awesome video!!

The lighting/albedo section at the end was really useful, will keep that in mind! Red XIII would be cool if possible, would be nice to see a non-bipedal model and talking around the issues of creating that. Plus of course fur solutions :D Crash from the remakes of 1-3 would be cool too.

Ok today I learned about overlaying lower res tiling textures over regular normal map to increase details. Very informative video!

Just found this channel and wow, this is great! Not only do you talk about the technical details, you also talk about how they are used artistically. Great job! I would note one thing that I am surprised you didn't talk about. When you are talking about the bracelet chain and showing the UV ( 9:00 ), it turns out that the chain takes the whole row! Which is super weird since it definitely can be tiled, and freeing up a whole row would have probably allowed one to optimise the UV some more. So that's an interesting choice on SE part.

I love it when people who have a deep knowledge and understanding of something share their skills with the world. You’re SO knowledgeable that it’s really a pleasure to watch.

This was massively educational, thank you so much!

Phenomenal breakdown as always. I'm thoroughly enjoying the look into everything. The hair gets me every time as it is so clean and organised. No idea if you are able to do it but I'd love to see an Aloy [Horizon] breakdown in the future.

model breakdowns, what a cool idea, thank you. Saving us all so much time by doing this.

Loved the video! Learn a lot

this is amazing! I hope there are more breakdown videos of video game characters like this

Your content is invaluable and has helped me understand games tech concepts that for ages I was back and forth on, so much mixed info on the net. Gonna go through the normals vid too, thanks so much 😁

Laura is so beautiful😍

Great timing on the video

Thank you for this video!

This was a great breakdown. I especially appreciated the texturing breakdowns. Liked & Subscribed ;)

I'm a software engineer rather than an artist, but still, it's funny how you always believe you know everything, then see an excellent breakdown like this one and realise you still have things to learn. Great video, wanted to check our your Cloud one as well but never got around to it, saw this pop up in my recommended videos and decided to check it out.

Its been about 12 years since I changed careers from 3d Artist to UX Design and it was really nice to still understand 100% of what was talked about in the video even if the technology has expanded since then. We couldn't make those nice shaders for in-game models but from playing around for cinematics., similar rules still apply. Interesting stuff!

id love to see a reno breakdown! his features r so pretty :) ur videos r always so informative! love ur work ❤️

Wow, dude! I always loved Tifa's design, but this video made me really appreciate all the details the artists put into her model. I never took notice to the charms on her wrist! It's so cute!

YES!!!! Liked and subscribed!!!!!

Thank you so much, I love FFVII Remake characters and I am a 3d artist, it is so inspiring to see a breakdown of my favourite characters

The eye segment was fascinating 👌

It would be so cool if you could manage to break down the insanely detailed mess Rufus Shinra is! These are so interesting to watch!

i honestly remake tifa is one of the most beautiful 3D characters for a videogame ever made

Thank you for doing what you do! I learned a ton from you!

16:27 No you aren't alone in getting distracted by colored contact lenses. There are some scene in Season 2 where they actually do post recoloring of the irises but not many.

This is very cool never knew how much went into character modeling

i just discovered this channel, great video breakdown! looking forward to more :)

I'm so happy I found your channel! Instant subscribe!!

So nice to see Fred in this video! Greetings from Eidos!

Excellent content👍🏼

ahhh Wow I am glad I found this channel. I have been trying (Not very successfully) to learn Character animation in Blender and have been using this model, among a few others. Been finding good in depth tutorials for this stuff a bit more difficult to track down. You seem super knowledgeable too. Will be following along closely.. teach me your secretsssss

I have no idea how you found these assets, but this was certainly amazing to find.

Laura’s hairstyle is giving Tifa vibes in this video!

Funny you mentioned the italian senate in the description. 🤣🤣Love the breakdown by the way...👍👍👍

I always get surprised when its a totally new concept for seasoned artist when they hear about polygon density distribution around the character joints. Kinda obvious you want more than 3 loops around for example the character's shoulders if it has to fly around in the air like a gymnast waving it's arms around...

Love this channel!

Ok, so i managed to get my hands on the Yuffie game model (couldnt find fbxs of Cloud or Tifa fast enough). So a few more technical stuff for any character artist interested: The model has 6 texture sets which are separated across 9 shaders in total: TEXTURE SETS: 1. Face + eyelashes (2K maps) 2. Eyes (512x512 maps) 3. Hair (1k maps) 4. Body skin + some close to the body clothes (2k maps) 5. Extra Clothes that are more like attachments on top of the body (leather straps, clips, etc) (2k maps) 6. Weapon + materia texture set (2k maps) Now, they break these into 9 shaders depending on how its better to use their detail tiling maps. SHADERS: 1. Face shader. Has a tileable detail normal for the skin (256x256) and they control the area this tiles across with a black to red detail weight map (the more red the area the more visible the tileable texture)(could also be black to white like in Tifa's). 2. The body skin is separated on its own shader, again using a detail normal 3. Clothes that are of the same fabric ( so that they can use a tileable texture that makes sense across all of them) 4. Leathery clothes where they use again a tileable leather normal map (256x256) 5. Eyes 6. Hair 7. Eyelashes have their own shader (i guess so that they can setup the roughness separately and since eyelashes are geometry they dont use the opacity map from the hair shader) 8. Materia equipped on the weapons has its own shader 9. Weapon shader.

I have to say on my first play through of FF7R I couldn't help but squeal out loud because of how beautiful Aeirth and Tifa were, which was kind of embarrassing being a guy who is 6'5 and 30 years old. lol But it goes to show exactly how much love and care were put into their character designs, an awesome review Outgang look forward to seeing more from you!

Thank you. I learned a lot from this. Golden content. Please keep up the good work.

Super interesting! Thank you

I loooove seeing how detailed mouths are in video games, overlooked aspects of design. I definitely can't wait to see more of your content this is so cool! (Love your hair and eyebrows btw! Hope not rude to say so) Also the overlap tile texture is really similar to how alot of games create flowing water textures / waterfall! Example like Mario galaxy and dark souls 2!

id love to see barret!! awesome video btw!

I don't even know how this video got me but I will watch this fully. My childhood babe.

Awesome, excellent explanation :)

I dont know how was that a shameless plug at 12:08 .. you are sharing all this for FREE! Thanks for all the insights laura! I enjoy it !

I can appreciate ff7r technical breakdowns. Earned a sub. Ff7 has always been my favorite game

Thanks man, I'll put this up next time I have a meeting with the Senate of Italy

I never realized that about iris concavity but now I can't stop seeing that! lol I've always thought colored contacts just never looked quite right on people. Like, they're uncanny, just a little off. But I could never put my finger on what exactly was causing that tell-tale sign. It makes so much sense now! lol Thanks for giving me a new OCD tick lol.

One thing for the skirt that I can imagine is not using baked animation as suggested but real-time bone physics. It would probably be a lot cheaper than a cloth simulation but it would still be able to react to the game play in a realistic way

I thought I would click in this video staring at Tifa, but I ended up staring at you the whole time.

As a game Dev, I REALLY love these character breakdown because they provide useful insights on how to make a character. I just subscribed because your channel is awesome 👍🏿💯🔥😎😁 Plus, Tifa is one of my favorite female characters. Tifa, Motoko Kusanagi and Chun-Li

I know nothing about 3d rendering and models but this is very interesting to watch.

you are amazing!

Great analysis I acknowledge I was curious about the detail in FFVIIR character models,what catches my attention is how poly count just drops to PlayStation2 levels on some places. Is nuts 😅

I would love to see an Uncharted 4 or a Last of Us 2 model breakdown those character models are so crazy highly detailed. Their faces alone. Especially with the skin contours or age lines in certain character models It's nuts!

Great video. That detail in her eyes! - I'd love to see a breakdown of a Genshin Impact character some time, I heard they delete the normals to look more anime and improve performance on mobile and I can't help but wonder about such methods and what costs/benefits that would provide to them. Don't normals affect the lighting somehow?

i wanna thank youtube recommending such a good channel like this

wonderfull material thank you very much

5:05 - Uh, okay.

I still remember when the original game came out. We’ve come a looooong ways.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOUUUUU!!!! 🥰😍🤩

For the bones in her skirt, they're probably using physics. I think you can have much better results and control using bones and physics than cloth simulation. You let the engine move everything dynamically in real time even for cutscenes. And if you need a specfic movement you can be in control because you have bones as well. Same for the hair.

Need more,plz!!!

Love your content so much, there's only two so far but I live for these character breakdowns! I'd genuinely enjoy a SpongeBob one. (also that Italian senate comment in the description has me 😭)

Oh my, I have really hard decision to make right now. I want a breakdown of patric from sponge bob because I need to know the secret of his magnificience but at the same time I want to give a like for this just awesome and educational breakdown video.....aghh I don't know what to do lol

Also Please do a video on Sephiroth next!!!

Like and subscribed, waiting for an aerith deep look 😘

Awesome! Do Yuffie next!!

I'm sure a Italian senetue would like to review your model

Dang...when you threaten me with Spongebob, I had to subscribe immediately...

loves all the easter egg found .... tq