If you were expecting Xrd you were delusional from the get go. The way those maps are setup is completely different than the way they are in KOF. Plus it requires like quadruple the work to animate and light such models due to the stretched nature of the UV's and the necessity to hand paint each frames shadows to avoid flicker when using them. Thats not even including all the extra rigging and use of negative space between UV's to create black outlines.
Simple break down. Any crease or line on the body is its OWN seperate unwrap. You dont get whole arms as a UV map. You get every muscle in the shoulder and bicep etc down to each finger joint. Then you got to stretch those maps into squares and you flood fill them with color solids. Then the negative space between maps is left with no color and you have to hand tug each seam of every map slightly into a colorless area so that it creates a black vector that never pixelates to create all those outlines that make XRD look like a cartoon no matter how hard you zoom in. Makes setting up ALL maps a bitch because the UV's are stretched to shit and distort all textures. Its why they flood fill em and Hand paint all shadows and such instead of using normal ass light and shadow maps. Because to get those lines you CANT use light and shadow mapping tricks. All engine made shadows and highlights warp and flicker like hell. Hand paint or die if you do this.
Such an expectation wasn't even trying to be realistic or fair. There is a REASON no one does it besides that game. The overhead is ludicrously high to develop assets in such a manner regardless of the end result. At that point its actually easier to hand animate and cheaper too than to do what they did.
Believe me...I tried that shit for my own stuff. Screw. That. I wouldn't wish that pipeline on LARGE teams much less small indie animators like myself. SNK was wise to avoid it and just add reflection, shadow, highlight map work, and more ambient occlusion work post launch. Only snag is if it comes at a processing overhead that causes stutter or lag online to process the new lighting overhead and maps.
