Would it be possible to make a movie as advanced as Final Fantasy on Blender?
Yes. Although, without any bit of raytracing.
Things you would need:
1: One heck of a renderfarm
2: Huge team of modelers, light crew, texture artist, and animators
3: Access to a sound studio
and 4: Money! 
Let’s go on that limb everybody is talking about :
now that the sources are open : why not ?
Every movie implies tons of coding : just the fuzzy logic that regulates the movement of the armies at the en of the two towers required some 200 000 new lines of programming.
So it is possible. Now would that be efficient, would we need to connect to another renderer or enhance the present one ?..
Well, given a few years to work, millions of $$$ and a whole team of talented artists, I’d say yes and better even.
Anyway I like Shrek better : it smells less of motion capture than Final Fantasy and less of bezier curves than Monster Inc.
Not to be cynical, but why would you want to make something like that:
- It’s already been done before
- Because it’s been done, it would be boring to watch even if it was excellent on a technical level.
- The movie was a technological breakthrough but a box office flop; hence, you would go bankrupt like the company which made it.
- It would be easier and cheaper to make a super realist film with a movie or video camera.
- You can do stuff with Blender that might not be as flashy, but it might be more interesting if you concentrate on important things such as content rather than pyrotechnics and digital babes.
Good luck, hope you make good and interesting use of Blender.
This is the sort of thing that I hate… people who write “not to be cynical” and then proceed to be completely cynical! What is the point of posting such a reply? And to top it all off, you have a signature that goes:
AARRGH! (Not to be cynical or anything…!)
OK guys lets not get off topic. I dont know for a fact if it is possible to do something like FF or not with blender. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your asking this question mainly to get an idea of the bounds in which blander resides. Now, I dont think blender really has any bounds. The fact is, Blender has gone open source and can be developed by anyone that can write code. I would be VERY intereseted to see what programmers have been doing to develope blender…
You can do final fantasy in VI.
What is VI?
What is everyone talking about…Blender now, or Blender after years of developement ? Honest answer. NO. I work with several professional programs, and I have to say, Blender has ALOT of limitations. Number of lights…number of faces…number of everything. The hair from one of the final fantasy characters alone would be impossible in Blender. BUT… DO NOT give up on Blender. I use it for quick down and dirty poly editing alot and it makes a nice, quick scanline render. And who knows what the community can develop this program into ?