Roundtabe discussion, Super Hi-res backgrounds...

[halkun]

So I've been doing some experiments and came up with some pretty good ideas. Now keep in mind these are ideas that I haven been working with and would like some input.

With the new graphic driver, we could, realistically, have high resolution graphics for ff7 using the same old engine. I've been playing with various sources of the backgrounds, including the original 2D art, some of my own modeling and various 3D assets.

I think we may just have the ability to give the graphics a real boost in resolution....

The Crisis Core map models give us a wonderful base to start from. I've been playing with them in blender and I am more than happy that many locations can simply be re-rendered with just that data alone (half of coasta del sol, Nibilhiem, Junon, and many scenes from Midgar.) I also have a collection of the walkmaps to start as a base for 2D -> 3D projections which I've been toying with....

The problem is my computer is running on a blown AGP port, so I can't really do anything really spectacular until I get a new computer.

So Let's discuss technical aspects of bringing the pictures to a high-res status. Let me start with the basics...

The game run in 320x240, which is a 1.33 (4:3) aspect ratio. In a perfect world I would love to have the default display be 1080i,but that isn't happening because the aspect ratio is different and the game was never designed to be letterboxed.

We have several 4:3 resolutions to choose from.

1280x960 is good, (4x resolution) but it's kind of non-standard.
1440x1080 is better (4.5x resolution) but is a non-integer scaling making the pixels have uneven distrobution
1600x1200 is good, (5x resolution) but exceeds the vertical resolution of standard HD.

What do you guys think?

Of course, this would also mean the movies will have to be redone too. But all those model assets can be extracted from FF:CC with no problem, save for the midgar model which one can find easily online. Animation also is a snap as you just copy frame-for-frame the current shot with new models.

I donno, how does on feel about this?

[Kudistos Megistos]

Quite a bit of work has been done on increasing the resolution of the backgrounds and movies in the game; unfortunately, most of it was done by Seifer, who has moved to his own forum (where progress is much slower).

I'm not quite sure whether this is what you had in mind, but it has the advantages of not needing much time as well as being true to the visual style of the original game.

[halkun]

The fractals look ok, but seriously need to be touched up with photoshop so they look better.

[Timu Sumisu]

okay just to clear up, you intend to use CC resources to coverup old ff7 laemness graphics? or create new stuff n put it over the old. OR are you upscaling everything. Upscaling can look okay but it'll b tough at 5x (my fav rez) to render new stuff... well even with crisis core that leaves a ton of content left to be made, and it also wouldnt really look right in ff7 (given all the stuff that would have to be done )

for cutscenes although you could cover it frame by frame and ligning models up... thats a bad idea... better to line up the first frame (which might be linked from a background and then do the rest originally to not worry about matching and as for all the models needed for cutscenes... wait til millenia n I are done all our characteres... they can be used for such things, given his texture are fairly hi rez. and I could animate them, but alas, i just want to clarify exactly what you intended to do

[obesebear]

I'll tell you this, I really love the idea of using the new models to make new (but similar) fmvs.

As for the resolution, 1280x960 I think is the best idea.  Really, once you get higher than that who will really care/notices?  The only ones unable to run it would be laptops, and even then the driver would make it look just fine.  I honestly don't think anyone will complain about the entire game being at 960

[Hellbringer616]

my vote is 1280*960

Cause i have 1680*1050. and thats the only one that would work for me.

[Otokoshi]

If all of this effort is going into scaling up the resolution, why not make a "master copy" at the highest resolution.  I'm sure it is unnecessary to go beyond 1600x1200, so do the retouching in hi-res and you can always scale it down for everyone's needs.

EDIT:
I also feel using the models made by the community to be a better idea.  Not only do they look much better than the rips, it takes away from the legality of using copyrighted models in a patch.

[Kranmer]

wow sounds like you have some pretty good idea's,
i would also like to see 1280x960 game size (not just because my mointer only supports that but because it seems a pretty common size) or maybe it should be done like otokoshi said and make it in a very high res and people who cant support the format would have to have scaled down settings, or if you have lots of time just make one for each res.
but if your gonna make the game 4xRes the videos would have to be 1280x896 (and so on),
Seifer is working on sharpened videos and i am working on smoother video's (i lose a little detail but i think the overall picture quality is still better then the original but this is my own opinion and NOT a fact) if anyone hasnt seen any of my videos yet i uploaded 3 of them here they also have PSX audio which is 44100Hz which i believe is higher then the PC's audio on the movies(also peoples opinions on them is welcome but please be contructive and dont just say they are bad please give a reason and maybe even idea's on how to make them better)
http://www.mediafire.com/?nc2i2f3oyk5
also they are in Xvid with MP3 audio, (in H264 they looked very slightly better but since that isnt supported yet, Xvid seems to do a pretty decent job but if anyone wants to sugest another codec that can do good quality and filesize and is support by aali's driver please let me know)

[Timu Sumisu]

I'll tell you this, I really love the idea of using the new models to make new (but similar) fmvs.

As for the resolution, 1280x960 I think is the best idea.  Really, once you get higher than that who will really care/notices?  The only ones unable to run it would be laptops, and even then the driver would make it look just fine.  I honestly don't think anyone will complain about the entire game being at 960

I do

I run my computer at 1920x1200 Anyhow, the best way to do it is always go with the bigest resolution, and if we're making original content... then the resolution doesnt matter... bigger is just as easy. However, although all the backgrounds and characters and just about everything else could be redone and rerendered, there is the issue of time, and manpower. I could do the entire thing myself... hopefully before i die. If people are interested in this, we need more artists. As it is i think we're pretty close to being able to insert custom backgrounds. and everything else we already know how to change. therefore what we need is a smackload of artists. particularly texture artists because textures are the longest things to generate (acurately, not stock textures).

alas the people need to speak. what ideas to people have. how would you like to tackle this?


P.S.

rule of thumb, we should stick to 5x resolution, if ppl want 4x its not hard to downscale it.

[Jari]

1600x1200.

This is aimed at a PC gamer, yes? I'm willing to bet that 24" TFTs will surpass 22" TFTs in sales very soon, if they haven't done so already. Factor in the development time, and we are probably talking 26" to 30" as the most sold size, if the trend continues.

Pretty much every 24" TFT that I know of does 1920x1200, so it can display 1600x1200 in native resolution, with black bars on the sides to keep the aspect ratio correct.

[Covarr]

If you do it huge, you can downscale it after the fact. It's not nearly as easy to do it the other way around.

Of course, even 640*480 would be a HUGE improvement over the original.

[Hellbringer616]

Of course, even 640*480 would be a HUGE improvement over the original.

Reminds me, doesn't it have to be in a multiple of 320*240 to look right? Or since he is redrawing them all from scratch (i think thats what he's doing) does it not matter?

[Timu Sumisu]

As it stands I don't think anyone is making anything  other than battle/field models

[Hellbringer616]

Well yeah, and i think i might try and uncensor Barret, and fix some typos in the game. But thats because i am growing restless with my lack of contribution to the community

[Jari]

You'd have to deal with distortions produced by the optics (PTLens and panorama stitchers that use similar methods can do this, but accurately enough that walkmeshes and everything would still match up?), noise produced by the sensor and vignetting produced by the combination of the optics and the body.

There are ways to deal with all of that, but how much work are you willing to put into something that can be achieved by simply loading the backgrounds into a photoshop and applying your favorite method of fucking up the image enlarging the image and post processing?

[Borde]

That's right, we already have acces to the background images. No need to use extra equipment.
As for the topic, well, the bigger the better. I mean, you are allways in time of shrinking the images. You can even let the graphics driver himself do it and, If the aspect ratio is the same, it should still look pretty good.

[Timu Sumisu]

So how do people want to do this? upscaling has been covered. Is there a bigger interest in creating content vs upgrading the old stuff or are there other ideas of what to do.

[Covarr]

If you upscale with photoshop, you've gotta do it individually per background. While it's technically possible to batch upscale the backgrounds, you'd surely end up with a few that simply don't like the parameters that were used with the rest.

If you've seen earlier season box sets of Dragon Ball Z, you may have noticed that the noise removal goes haywire when the screen shakes, and lineart disappears. This is the same sort of thing, doing stuff in a batch and not monitoring results.

[Timu Sumisu]

so batch followed with scrupulous testing

[Prince Lex]

If it's a question of extracting and upscaling the backgrounds, we could develop a method for everyone interested to follow (so that some backgrounds don't end up looking better than others) that acts as a kind of tutorial. I'd be interested in helping, I'm good with photoshop - I just don't really get FF7 loading "tiles" of the background rather than the background itself. I'd need to do a bit more reading on that.

[Timu Sumisu]

if its a matter of upscaling with a lil filtering, once someone has succesfully taken out a background, improved it, and put it back in the game, make a standard set of steps to do, and delegate chunks of backgrounds so things'll go faster... so all were waiting for is being able to put backgrounds back into the game?

[Prince Lex]

if its a matter of upscaling with a lil filtering, once someone has succesfully taken out a background, improved it, and put it back in the game, make a standard set of steps to do, and delegate chunks of backgrounds so things'll go faster... so all were waiting for is being able to put backgrounds back into the game?

Haha Jinx, almost.
I agree.

[Hellbringer616]

Yeah pretty much, i've resized a few screens. They aren't the best.. But they are MUCH better then the stretched ones.

[Timu Sumisu]

whats the status on putting custom images back into ff7?

[Hellbringer616]

You'd have to ask Aali, He's made a program called Palmer, it can export the PNG's and it can view the fields. Thats it for now..

I don't know if he has more progress and has yet to release it, Or if he didn't work on it at all.