Author Topic: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction  (Read 5426 times)

kaspar01

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[FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« on: 2019-06-26 11:59:44 »
Hello guys!

It's been a while since the last time but the "remaster" announcement woke me up from a long sleep  :evil:

What's the point of this topic and why should it be so important?

Cameras are one of the not yet fully documented things in FF8 but they could provide great help to the 3D reconstruction of many stuff that could lead to new/better 2D background mods for example.

Also later on, when the remaster will be released (if the engine is going to be moved to Unity or something), maybe an actual 3D environment could actually be injected in the game (or replaced for some battle stages for example).

We already can use walk-meshes for having some spatial reference and they helped me a lot to understand the actual depth for some areas.
I'm sure those mesh come from the actual 3D model since some of them kept their relative position (you can notice that if you import most of the garden ones..the central hall ones just overlap each other with no need to move them)




Having exact cameras views in the 3D would help with precise reconstruction and be used for texture camera projection.

I guess we could try to make some sort of inverse-photogrammery to get some raw-3d models of some stuff.

This is what I'd like to get in a more precise way (I adjusted the camera position manually to get this)



Even better would be having a precise reconstruction of the camera movement during cinematics with 3d characters overlay (we need to figure out how to read those data)

So far this is what I think I understood:

-walk-mesh come from the original 3D models then they're a reliable reference of the 3D environment
-the in-game 3D camera probably "render" a bigger region which is later cut from the game (the camera doesn't actually move when you see the background slide..it just show a different slice of the same camera render giving the illusion of movement while keeping the character aligned on the background) ---> see camera ranges

So far this is what I'm trying to understand and I'm quite sure about:
 
Camera position read from Deling doesn't actually match the walkmesh but if you swap the order the position you get is probably correct (X->Y , Y->Z , Z-> X) ..otherwise all the walkmesh position are the one to be swapped.

Camera orientation from my guess is guided from 3 vectors (even though probably just 2 of them should be enough to get the orientation)
1st Vector represents the axis pointing to the "right" of the camera
2nd Vector represents the axis pointing to the "bottom/down" of the camera
3rd Vector represents the axis pointing to the "front/aim" of the camera

So far this is what I'm trying to understand but I really don't know how to handle:

-In the very first "in-game cinematic" there must be some sort of object masking away the characters when they are "behind" the column... I would guess that should be some sort of mesh (similar to the one for the walk ) that serves the purpose of hiding 3d models... could be that or some sort of 2d mask tracked but I hope for a 3D plane that could give more spatial info.

see here (5:57) : https://youtu.be/0Gfcjm4a1Lw?t=349

-I don't get how the "zoom"  value works and how I'm supposed transfer it to a 3D software (like 3dMax or Maya)

-We don't know much yet about camera animation data but the number of "positions" (??) doesn't match the supposed number of frames in the cg animation.. we need to figure out how those data are supposed to be read..!


« Last Edit: 2019-06-26 14:04:12 by kaspar01 »

JWP

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Re: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« Reply #1 on: 2019-06-26 17:53:55 »
A lot of the camera animations are read using this, I'm not sure if it also applies to the field camera:
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15906.msg261844#msg261844
might help with some of the structure analysis.

kaspar01

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Re: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« Reply #2 on: 2020-01-03 22:37:50 »
Ok guys I'm back..

Since holydays gave me some spare time I went back on the camera research and I got some news but still I need to solve some stuff.

about background I figured out most of the thing I needed to know except for the camera positions:

Since my coding sucks I used data as it is extracted from deling and this is what I got:



(this is just an example but my method worked with more backgrounds)

in maya I used the first 3 vector (axis) in a four by four matrix to get the rotation and seems to be working
Also the parameter called zoom (in delling) seems to match the focal lenght (must be divided by 10)

The thing that is driving me crazy is the position since the one shown in deling seems not to be correct but I can't tell if it's me doing something wrong or maybe Deling not reading the data correctly..

I found some info here but I would need help from someone more skilled than me with this issue..
https://web.archive.org/web/20171031181044/http://wiki.qhimm.com/view/FF7/Field/Camera_Matrix


Also I made some tests with manual camera tracking and it gave some stable result so I got those wich seems to be the correct proportions for garden basement using a few cylinders :)
proof here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bQHiL9mFtpQzJEmbeWKRE99sIc9VpegO/view?usp=sharing


Any help will be greatly appreciated  :)

kaspar01

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« Last Edit: 2020-01-03 23:18:08 by kaspar01 »

LeonhartGR

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Re: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« Reply #4 on: 2020-01-05 22:10:11 »
Looking forward to any updates!!!

kaspar01

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Re: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« Reply #5 on: 2020-01-06 17:11:13 »
I think I solved the position using this formula similar to Myst6re's one:

Code: [Select]
tx = -(camPosX*camAxisXx + camPosY*camAxisYx + camPosZ*camAxisZx)/4096
ty = -(camPosX*camAxisXy + camPosY*camAxisYy + camPosZ*camAxisZy)/4096
tz = -(camPosX*camAxisXz + camPosY*camAxisYz + camPosZ*camAxisZz)/4096

#note you calculate using int but you may obtain a non-integer result..
#I did not made the same divisions Myst6re made before on the axis

I made a script for maya handling everything and it gives almost perfect matches in many cases while sometimes something is missing about the focal lenght since it's not always just the zoom value divided by 10...in those situation is obviously a different value..

I guess there is some sort of formula for that either but I did not guessed it yet.. ::)

kaspar01

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Re: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« Reply #6 on: 2020-01-07 22:30:39 »
little update about zoom/focal lenght

I created some sort of table with the data I've collected so far and this is my conclusion so far:

"Focal Lenght =  Zoom *0,1"  formula gives accurate results but sometimes fails

I made some check to spot when it fails and it looks like when the fields have background size different from 320x224 the focal is often smaller...

this makes me think there must be a calculation that result in 1 involving the image size stats..

here's my table with values I found

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e7qYNiKdgtZOriaSmoF5UniHu3RjGlO9gVX2Tzsesdo/edit?usp=sharing

eFocal lenght is  the Focal lenght I managed to obtain manually which seems to be correct to me (it may be not perfect but I estimate a 5-10% error threshold)

any suggestion would be really helpful

Sebanisu

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Re: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« Reply #7 on: 2020-01-08 13:21:43 »
I just dumped the walkmesh into OpenVIII last night. Today I will try the camera. I'll let ya know if I learn something new.

kaspar01

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Re: [FF8] Camera Research / reconstruction
« Reply #8 on: 2020-01-10 15:46:39 »
I updated my table with a lot of new data and my theory still may be correct ( focal is probably just zoom/10 unless background size is different from 320x224)