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Lead Technical Artist at Square Enix Eitaro Iwabuchi gave a talk at GDC 2024 titled “Final Fantasy XVI: Wrangling Complexity to Deliver Top-Quality,” in which the developer talked about crafting all the scenes for the game. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
Final Fantasy XVI includes over 300 different scenes, and workflow was very complex. To tackle the production of these scenes, the development team divided the work process into different levels ranging from 0 to 11.
Level 0 involved creating the scenario for a particular scene, identify the tasks, and preparing a narrative meeting. Discussing the direction and issues of each sequence during the narrative meeting was the subject of Level 1. At Level 2, the team tested narrative guidelines, created storyboards, and ordered the effects. During Level 3 the direction was chosen, camerawork for animatics was reviewed, and the scenarios were checked in each language.
At this stage, temporary mounting allows the director to preview the entire scene, and preparations for motion capture are complete. The team moves on to complete the motion capture process for Level 4. The main production phase begins at Level 5, where the motion capture data gets implemented, and instructions are given to the animation, effects, lighting, and audio staff for production.
Level 6 involves setting characters on the layout of the scene, and Level 7 involves boss characters. A review of all assets is conducted during Level 8, and the executive producer reviews the process. At Level 9, animation, effects, and lighting are brushed up. At Level 10, final adjustment on audio, vibration settings, and further lighting work begins. At Level 11, there is a final director review, and the scene is completed.
Furthermore, it was revealed during the GDC 2024 talk that the “Cut Editor” is a dedicated tool created by Square Enix to create video scenes for Final Fantasy XVI. This tool allows developers to change details like weapon stances on characters, or edit change the surface of materials to look dirty, wet, or damaged depending on the circumstances required for the scene.
A hybrid rendering method was implemented during intense scenes by combining real-time rendering of characters and backgrounds, while pre-rendering was used for effects and crowds. This allowed the developers to achieve a good level of performance and high quality.
Final Fantasy XVI is readily available for the PlayStation 5. A PC version is currently in development, and a demo will appear sometime prior to release.
