Qhimm.com Forums
Final Fantasy 7 => Graphics => WIP => Topic started by: KaosuReido on 2017-12-30 06:14:23
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Update 1-1-2018: The "textures.ini" file was not originally included in the ZIP by accident. This has been fixed, and a redownload of the ZIP should now contain it. I'm sorry for the error.
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Introduction:
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I wanted to play Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 using PPSSPP, with higher resolution. Upon loading the game, I noticed the UI was, of course, not scaling well for the increased resolution of a PC, causing intense pixelization. While this is to be expected, I decided to maybe try to clean up the game's text a little, maybe make things a little clearer. Clean this icon a little, fix these lines, you know, simple stuff.
(https://i.imgur.com/9dq7eOF.png)(https://i.imgur.com/2F7G166.png)
This turned into a months long project, trying to redraw or replace every portion of the UI with higher resolution equivalents. As I'm not an artist, most of the actual icons were taken from other places, or redrawn to at least resemble their original counterparts. The lack of discernible detail in many items forced me to try to rebuild them from scratch, recreating what I assumed they were supposed to look like. Particularly, the background for the Materia Fusion screen was incredibly difficult, to the point I simply redesigned it entirely.
(https://i.imgur.com/qh14OLa.png)
Seen here without circuitry.
This is not by any means perfect, or even entirely finished. Unfortunately, while taking a break from the project after essentially completing its current incarnation, the laptop I was using failed. I have since been able to move to another laptop, and retrieved everything, but that fact made me wish to release what I had now, just in case. So, I hope this is of some use to someone, even in its less-than-perfect state.
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Installation
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1. Load your Crisis Core ISO in PPSSPP. This will create the necessary folder structure.
2. Extract the ZIP into %UserProfile%\Documents\PPSSPP\PSP\TEXTURES\ULUS10336. If this folder doesn't exist, create it. PPSSPP should have at least created the PPSSPP\PSP folder.
3. In PPSSPP's settings, go to Tools on the left, followed by Developer Tools, and then ensure the bottom option, "Replace Textures", is checked.
4. Run the game. The first noticeable change should be on the main title screen, if you notice the game has clearer text for menu options there, you should be good to go.
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Extras
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Recreating the Materia Fusion background, I was unsure if the circuitry pattern still fit or not. By default, the background without circuitry is installed. Versions both with and without are included in separate, labelled folders. If you wish to swap one for the other, simply copy the files inside the labelled folder, and overwrite the ones in the TEXTURES\ULUS10336 folder with them.
Also, I have included the original PSD files for editing or whatever. They are in the PSD ZIP, and you can use them, clean them up, or do whatever with them. Their layers, however, are not generally named or organized, and they're more or less probably an exercise in frustration for anyone with a modicum of skill at Photoshop. Most of what I did was either self taught, or learned through online tutorials, and I can't vouch for good practices or even sensible ones. My work flow was essentially "what do I feel like working on right now", and was haphazard at best.
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Known Issues
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This pack is not fully tested, and not 100% polished. There are minor alignment issues with some portions of the UI, things I am still trying to adjust. I have minimized as much as I can, but work is ongoing. In addition, the pack was designed on and for a resolution of 1920x1080. Higher or lower resolutions may have oddities, or look less clear. I may have missed one or two files; the game loads textures on demand, and thus until I reach a portion of the game that uses a piece of the UI, its file won't load.
The text for dialog gave me many problems; my first attempt at replacing it involved pasting in another font entirely, changing each character in the font image file separately. The resulting letters, while clearer, had a myriad of issues.
(https://i.imgur.com/43793GQ.png)
My next attempt involved trying to fix those issues one letter at a time, leading to text that was technically better, but looked incredibly awkward. So far as I can tell, the game doesn't simply print a letter 1:1 from the font map. It tries to adjust for width and position. This means that if the text is shaped differently, it can lead to odd results.
(https://i.imgur.com/gTP6Nvn.png)
My current attempt threw external fonts out the window, and I simply attempted to recreate the letters in place, with clearer lines. This seems to be the best solution for the moment, and while the letters look a little awkward, they behave much better.
(https://i.imgur.com/fDGas6n.png)
Due to my lack of artistic skill, I can't recreate icons that aren't mostly geometric shapes. Envelope and folder icons and the like, I feel I was able to make something passable. For things like bracers, shop icons, potions, I wasn't able to do as well. So, icons were pulled from other sources, and adjusted to try to fit. I think I have an alright selection here, but there are clear differences in design that I can't really resolve due to being unable to replicate the originals.
A lack of high quality and matching art for DMW profiles leads to most of them being sourced from the highest resolution in-game cut-ins they have. Thus, while smaller portraits look better, larger ones are simply scaled a bit.
Not every effect is present, or rescaled. The Pause icon, for instance, was never finished. Thus, as a place holder, I used an original scale Pause icon with the rest of the image file expanded to fill space. The result is a relatively tiny Pause icon at the original resolution, which looks surprisingly clear in higher resolutions. Meanwhile, some of the fog in the Materia Fusion screens refused to function correctly, and was entirely removed.
This is for the USA ISO. Won't work with Japanese ISO, or I guess any ISO that isn't product ID ULUS10336. At least, I don't think it would. You could try changing the directory name to match your ISO's product ID, but it might not work?
Make sure you have the directory named according to the product ID for your ISO:
https://www.gamefaqs.com/psp/925138-crisis-core-final-fantasy-vii/data
Match the ISO product ID, check the folder it would be in (the product ID without the hyphen), and put the textures and ini file there.
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Credits
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Shin-Ra logos, Save Point logos, and the SOLDIER logo were taken and modified from work done by Phil Strahl, gas01line on deviantArt.
https://gas01ine.deviantart.com/
Most item and equipment icons were taken and modified from the free-to-play Breath of Fire 6 on mobile, by Capcom. The game has shutdown, and the assets are free to download for any user who wishes to download the app without cost.
A few others were taken and modified from other free mobile games, though I don't have the list with me right now.
Various other icons were taken and modified from free images on the internet, particularly the Materia orbs and the Genji equipment helm.
The pointing finger icon was sourced from Final Fantasy XIII.
Art for Zack was taken from Square Enix promotional materials for Crisis Core.
Portions of the UI were taken and modified from Crisis Core itself, because obviously.
All other art, so far as I know, was created by me, Kaosu Reido, for this project.
All rights reserved by the content's original creators, don't pay for this work anywhere, all usage is unofficial, etc etc etc. Feel free to modify anything you find here, though please provide credit where it is due. Thank you.
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Sample Images
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(https://i.imgur.com/KpxUoai.png)(https://i.imgur.com/zTgQ67G.png)(https://i.imgur.com/1AIsD6T.png)(https://i.imgur.com/C8HZNzj.png)(https://i.imgur.com/Ogzc95T.png)
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Downloads
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Crisis Core UI Upscale: http://www.mediafire.com/file/iqpkpgpcc4v9c2w/Crisis+Core+UI+Upscale.zip
PSD Files: http://www.mediafire.com/file/yjazh3599rhvv9h/Crisis%20Core%20UI%20Upscale%20PSDs.zip
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This is some really impressive stuff!
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Not working for me. Running PPSSPP didn't create any folders for me though so I did it all manually. Any ideas? Great job btw, everything looks way better.
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Not working for me. Running PPSSPP didn't create any folders for me though so I did it all manually. Any ideas? Great job btw, everything looks way better.
Not really, sorry. As long as the textures.ini file is in there with all the textures, you're using the right ISO- ah, I should have mentioned that. This is for the USA ISO. Won't work with Japanese ISO, or I guess any ISO that isn't product ID ULUS10336. At least, I don't think it would. You could try changing the directory name to match your ISO's product ID, but it might not work?
Make sure you have the directory named according to the product ID for your ISO:
https://www.gamefaqs.com/psp/925138-crisis-core-final-fantasy-vii/data (https://www.gamefaqs.com/psp/925138-crisis-core-final-fantasy-vii/data)
Match the ISO product ID, check the folder it would be in (the product ID without the hyphen), and put the textures and ini file there.
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This is great and definitely needed considering an official remaster is almost certainly not happening. Thank you for your hard work
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Not really, sorry. As long as the textures.ini file is in there with all the textures, you're using the right ISO- ah, I should have mentioned that. This is for the USA ISO. Won't work with Japanese ISO, or I guess any ISO that isn't product ID ULUS10336. At least, I don't think it would. You could try changing the directory name to match your ISO's product ID, but it might not work?
Make sure you have the directory named according to the product ID for your ISO:
https://www.gamefaqs.com/psp/925138-crisis-core-final-fantasy-vii/data (https://www.gamefaqs.com/psp/925138-crisis-core-final-fantasy-vii/data)
Match the ISO product ID, check the folder it would be in (the product ID without the hyphen), and put the textures and ini file there.
My game is ULUS10336. Only thing I can think is I don't see a textures.ini anywhere. Obviously not in any of the folders I created myself. Was it supposed to come with your download? Or was PPSSPP supposed to create it after enabling texture replacement (which is enabled)? Folder looks like: Documents\PPSSPP\PSP\TEXTURES\ULUS10336. Then I extracted your upscale file to ULUS10336.
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My game is ULUS10336. Only thing I can think is I don't see a textures.ini anywhere. Obviously not in any of the folders I created myself. Was it supposed to come with your download? Or was PPSSPP supposed to create it after enabling texture replacement (which is enabled)? Folder looks like: Documents\PPSSPP\PSP\TEXTURES\ULUS10336. Then I extracted your upscale file to ULUS10336.
Crap, yeah, for whatever reason the textures.ini file didn't transfer into the ZIP. I was sure I checked that... Anyway, I've updated the ZIP file, you can redownload it and it'll have the texture.ini.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/iqpkpgpcc4v9c2w/Crisis+Core+UI+Upscale.zip Link again, if necessary. My bad, sorry.
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It's working now. Thanks man. The pictures in this thread look great, but in game just looks so good. Really great job man.
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A high res Shinra logo if you are interested replacing it
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=17791.msg254690#msg254690
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Looks great :)
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Loving this. And for everyone looking to install this when you download PPSSPP make sure to download the installer instead of the manual install and it will create all of the folders you need automatically.
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Brilliant! I actually found this thread while researching for doing this myself. I began playing this again recently, this time on PPSSPP, and thought this would be a great project. Then I come to find you already did most of the work 8)
I'm a professional graphic designer with experience in UI design, if you'd like some help redoing any of the graphics accurately (I know you mentioned your worries about accuracy). Just feel free to PM me any time; I'd love to help. :)
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Thanks for the outpouring of support, guys. Honestly though, anyone's free to take and use this stuff, improve it, whatever they want. I've moved on from it for now, because that CC playthrough I made it for never happened; too much other stuff. If anyone wants to find errors or bugs and point them out, I can see what I can do. If anyone wants to fix it themselves, they can feel free. Just have fun with it, and I'll be happy.
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Finally got around to trying this. For me the correct folder was within PPSSPP program folder. There's a folder memstick they go in. So mine go in memstick\PSP\TEXTURES\ULUS10336.
I'm using ppsspp gold v 1.5.4
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Finally got around to trying this. For me the correct folder was within PPSSPP program folder. There's a folder memstick they go in. So mine go in memstick\PSP\TEXTURES\ULUS10336.
I'm using ppsspp gold v 1.5.4
Thanks for that Bear. This works for me now. Great work KaosuReido.
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Thank you so much for taking the time to do this and share it! The awful text always prevented me from playing this, it looks great now!
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hi, sorry for the stupid question, but should i download the game from the link in the OP, or just download the game from my emulator site?
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Neither. You should rip the game yourself (https://www.wikihow.com/Copy-a-PSP-UMD). We do not support pirated games here.
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i thought SE warn us in the past to not do mods for games like crisis core over their fears of piracy?
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If anyone ever takes this project to continue it, and wants to make it more visible and accessible, to, well, the same platform this texture pack is used at, please, visit the PPSSPP forums! They've recently made a section exclusively for posting your Texture Packs! https://forums.ppsspp.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=36
--And please be nice to the author, even if you make changes, link to the source, kindly. :-D He did an amazing job at this.
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If anyone ever takes this project to continue it, and wants to make it more visible and accessible, to, well, the same platform this texture pack is used at, please, visit the PPSSPP forums! They've recently made a section exclusively for posting your Texture Packs! https://forums.ppsspp.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=36
--And please be nice to the author, even if you make changes, link to the source, kindly. :-D He did an amazing job at this.
Well crap. I'd love to submit to that, but it looks like it would take a good amount of cleanup work, file-side. Also I don't really know shit about Github...
Maybe someday. Thanks.
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Hello, can you please tell me what are the fonts you used for dialogs and texts ? Thank you for your work, it's very cool.
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Thank you so much for this, makes the game look great
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Hello, can you please tell me what are the fonts you used for dialogs and texts ? Thank you for your work, it's very cool.
None. Other than the Shin-Ra text at the top of the menu screen, and some of the menu headings, all the text was traced by hand from the original textures, using the pen tool in Photoshop. It was the only way I could manage to make things line up properly and not look horrible. Sorry. If you want to try to make a font out of it, though, the PSD zip has the original tracings I used to make the textures themselves. So you could scale stuff from that.
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Hey, don't know if you're still around, I made a patch for this:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/a8wffdecika6elp/ULUS10336.rar/file
It now includes:
- HD Square Enix logo
- HD FF7 10th anniversary art
- HD art of the guys on the save screen
- HD DMW numbers
- Upscaled DMW icons (except Cait Sith due to technical difficulties)
- The "BREAK" icon in the lower left is now HD
Thanks for all the effort.
NOTE: This version here is incompatible with vierock's HD texture mod, for a compatible version of my patch, go here:
https://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19473.msg271432#msg271432
(https://i.imgur.com/JTnObX8.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/PvDR23M.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/KscwBYy.png)
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Well done D! This is awesome. Please share some screens along!
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I just realized it's DMW, not DMV (derp, has nothing to do with cars).
I've decided to try painting over the DMW portraits since they are the most important thing that needs to redone in HD, imo.
Here's a little sample of a before and after:
(https://i.imgur.com/BSNQxyK.png)
It's been quite a difficult job as I'm not a digital painter.
I figure some people might be displeased with the results, so I plan to release them all in a month, and anyone who wishes to change certain things can paint over them and post them here for improvement. I don't want to hear any ragey disrespectful stuff like (ARGHH, YOU ADDED TOO MUCH COLOR TO AERITH'S EYES, GO DIE IN A FIRE!!!!!11) and stuff like that, I'm doing what I can.
I want to do them and finish them by 2020 to give people 3 months to finish Crisis Core before FF7make.
I haven't been able to do Genesis (I don't have his portrait yet) or the summons, so if anyone wants to rip them and send them to me, that would be nice. But as far as my understanding goes, his portrait rarely appears in the DMW (it's been years since I last properly played through Crisis Core). At the very least, I want to do the six basic main chars (Aerith, Cissnei, Angeal, Tseng, Cloud, Sephiroth) because that's what people will see the most.
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You are awesome Devina!!!
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Everything you've done looks great to me. I'm happy there's even more stuff being done on this; I feel like my UI stuff isn't perfect, but seeing people try to improve it is great.
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Thanks guys, I decided to post these a little early and you can see all six comparisons:
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/DYLPPNNX
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/J1B2CNNU
Feel free to suggest improvements and, if anyone wants, try painting over them yourself.
I had to improvise a bit so it's not completely accurate to the original, so I tried my best to make it look more natural.
I'll upload them again in game-ready form once feedback is complete.
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I've been thinking at some point I might come back and actually redo the UI itself. The basic UI the game has is kind of cluttered and designed to be seen on a PSP screen, so it takes up a bunch of space. I've been thinking I might try to trim down the effects and stuff a little, streamline it. Not making any promises, of course. I haven't touched this in literally over a year, I'm pretty rusty, and I have fifty other minor projects too.
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I think you've done a really good job! My one suggestion would be to add some noise or a blur filter over the eyes. The eyes really stand out as crisp and clear while the rest looks more blurred or fuzzy.
Thank you both for your work on this
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I finished for now, made a small tweaks and did a blur filter to make everything look consistent.
Also found Genesis+Summons+Numbers and did a basic filter for them so they aren't pixelated.
You can compare using tabs here:
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/J19FJNNU
Download is in my post at the bottom of page 1.
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I caved in and did Genesis, download link remains the same, just updated in my post above.
I'm almost done playing through Crisis Core again, and I noticed his portrait appeared more often than I thought it would, so now the quality is better.
(https://i.imgur.com/SUn2j6Q.png)
I also made a mod for the most important thing of all... giving Zack nipples and a navel.
His lack of them is oddly strange and makes him look alien, and I hated it.
Even Cissnei in the same scene has a navel, so it just looks weird.
So while this beach scene is only like, 5 mins long, if you want people to not be weirded out, hey, this mod is for you.
(https://i.imgur.com/7hyqnSk.png)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/uam6oe3oomihp5x/Beach_Zack.rar
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Those do look nice... but does your mama know you are drawing nipples? :evil:
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Thank you KaosuReido and Devina for this mod! I decided to finally play this game after FF7R was released. The UI upscale has helped keep me sane as I play through the game on my 55in 4K screen.
I realize I am necromancing this thread big time but this is where google searching inevitably leads people, and y’all seem like good folk. Your work has inspired me to attempt a texture mod using ESRGAN to automate up scaling the textures. I’ve had varying degrees of success so far, it handles certain textures very well and others... well they need a bit more of a human touch to really pull it off (mostly the strictly 2d elements such as text or foliage)
I don’t have a pack prepared yet, but I’m going to share some screens here and see where it goes. Hope that’s ok.
https://imgur.com/gallery/IsVd90t
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Thanks for the kind words, and it's cool to see what you're doing. If I could give some advice, I'd tone down whatever it is that looks like it abnormally boosts the sharpness and contrast on the textures. It might seem like it makes them look clearer, but what it really does is make them look artificial.
With a little tweaking of the settings, though, this would be very cool to see in motion.
Also though, try not to boost the textures needlessly huge. 4K everything SOUNDS cool, but can put a lot more pressure on the video card than is necessary for almost no gain. I mean, they're PSP textures, so it's probably fine, just something to think about.
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You're welcome. I'm still experimenting with the process. ESRGAN wasn't really meant for upscaling images so it has been a (long) process. I agree with you on the sharpness of the textures - they are results of the model I was using to upscale the textures. I'll put some of them through some different models tonight and upload them here. Good to have feedback.
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You're also welcome, I updated my post at the bottom of page 1 with a few extras (which I'm done updating now), trying to combine everything into a single pack. I'd say the game's HUD is pretty much done now, I don't know what else could be improved UI-wise.
If you need help with making an HD texture pack for the whole game, you have my permission to use my work. I can also help you out with making 2D elements like text, I'm pretty good with that sort of stuff.
I'm a bit disappointed because vierock (the maker of the other HD texture pack) just seems to have disappeared, and their work has a few errors/iffy design choices. For example, an enemy's hair texture has messed up transparency, some plants are completely different, the Shinra Building looks dirty with grime, many textures are unchanged so you have high-res textures next to low-res ones, etc.
I like the idea of a completely faithful upscale without changing the artistic direction. It would be awesome to have a definitive pack, as well as an active modder.
I would recommend making everything 4x the original. My mod pack and Kaosu's was designed for 4x in mind (for example, a 128x128 image becomes 512x512). Anything more sounds like it could be overkill and some players might not be able to play the game without lag.
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To clarify, my monitor is 4K but I wasn’t planning on upscaling everything to 4Kx4K textures. The examples I posted before are a 4x upscale using the 4xBox ESRGAN model so 256x256 textures end up being 1024x1024. I’ve dumped about 1200 textures (after deleting duplicate hashes) However, I’m thinking 4x might be a little much because the way some of textures work. Blinking animations aren’t a decal applied to the model, for example, but rather each frame of the animation is the entire character skin with a different eye. The majority of the 1024x1024 textures are around 2.2MB each and at this point, even with a GTX1080, I’ve noticed some significant frame dips.
Besides, I think 4xESRGAN doesn’t know how to handle such small original files. For example, the model I used has issues with smoothing out some of the jaggies (look at the shoulder guard of Arachno - it actually looks more pixelated along the edges). I ran the textures I have through a 2x model last night which is meant not to stylize the original too much. I have a feeling doing this 2x upscale initially will give ESRGAN or other modders more to work with and will help to maintain the overall art style if any more upscaling is applied. Unfortunately I still have to work during this pandemic so any additional testing or screenshots will have to wait until later this evening (CST).
Once a consistent style is established then work on it will go much faster I think.
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(https://i.imgur.com/dPaXWkn.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/rjkoK2L.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/EtPPWM9.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/KFMLQzM.jpg)
This is with a pretty faithful 4x scale, 2d elements in textures still need work. I'm not sure what I think, myself.
(PS Ignore bad UI elements... I have gone through and deleted the UI textures from my files yet)
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A little update: I've been refining my approach, but obviously some of these textures are going to need a good amount of love applied to their rough edges.
https://imgur.com/a/6c7aTGN
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Some models look darker. Are those the modified ones with the refined rough edges? If yes, I prefer the brighter ones. ;)
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Thanks for the feedback, it is something I am aware of. The benefit of using ESRGAN is automation - bear in mind that so far I’ve upscaled nearly 1300 textures and I am only at the part of the game where Zack meets with Lazard in his office for the first time. It’s a lot to go through - the way PPSSPP dumps the textures results in many duplicate files (sometimes 5x+) that need to be removed. What I’m trying to do now is refine the workflow. Redrawing everything by hand is simply too big of a project for one person to do, especially for free.
The downside is that no one has trained an ESRGAN model for upscaling for a project like this. Most ESRGAN models are trained by starting with high resolution images, downscaling the images to 4x lower resolution then reupscaling them to their original resolution and comparing the results to the original files. In this case, the files we are upscaling are very pixelated from the get go. At this point I’ve tried every ESRGAN model I can find and each one has done a very good job at keeping the hard pixel edges from the originals which actually makes the edges on some textures more apparent than their originals.
All this is to say that there are several textures that are going to need to be refined manually - especially those featuring 2D text elements such as the numbering of the item boxes or floor labels, or lines bordering transparencies. Many curved areas need to be smoothed out by hand.
I haven’t been totally satisfied with the ESRGAN results either because of the issues above.
My current plan is
- Manually adjust/refine at least one hundred images to create a training dataset
- Use dataset to train an ESRGAN model more appropriate for this project. Multiple models will likely be needed for different categories or “types” of textures (character models, foliage, text/ui, etc)
- Dump all original textures and sort them by type
- Upscale and test.
The number of textures is kind of overwhelming at my skill level. I am not the best artist, nor the fastest. I am nearing the point where I am prepared to ask for assistance completing part 1 if anyone is willing to help. What I will do is sort out the textures I do have into categories and share them here so any interested parties can contribute.
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Thanks for explaining in detail! It's highly appreciated! The whole process seems quite amazing. Is this ESRGAN tool a neural network based AI upscaling engine? I apologise for my post being shown a little shallow for such a complicated and hard process, hehe... Your persistence in such detail is what's gonna bring perfection to the final result of course!
What I actually meant by posting is that until the process is finally completed just keep a link with the brighter textures as well that don't lose too much of a detail as an option if possible ;). I'm personally one of the users that could do without refined rough edges if the whole process is so demanding but of course the final result is going to be devine!
Good luck with the rest of the work needed! Looking forward for the completed project!
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No worries, I didn’t take your comment as disparaging. I do appreciate the feedback as honestly I am newer to the game and Long-time fans of the game will be able to have a better perspective than myself. Thank you for the encouraging words.
Yes ESRGAN is AI neural network... training and processing is going to take some time. Also I am a busy person (I’m at work while posting this) so please be patient! (To be honest a lot of the ESRGAN work has just been waiting around 8))
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I had the day off of work today. My CPU spent most of the day being occupied with training an upscale model... mixed results so far. But, I finally had a chance to upload the textures I have already. I think tomorrow I will dedicate time to playing through the game to get a more complete texture dump. I also updated textures.ini to match the established wildcard. Sorry about some of the filenames, btw! Since I haven't played all the way through the game I don't know what everything is called yet.
There are some issues I've noticed - I didn't have dumps of some of the animations for Zack with his soldier 1st class uniform, nor do I have any upscaled textures from the initial training mission. (If anyone has a *complete* set of textures please share!).
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w1j1hAG5JNzfNoS7CXi6yDN1xBnrO_N3
If you take a look, you can see what I'm talking about with some of the edges. I'm actually ordering a tablet/stylus for this project because editing with a mouse will just be too frustrating. If anyone wants to take a stab at it however, be my guest.
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Maybe you should just focus on environments for now since yeah, the hair and transparency looks off when done by AI, and it will be a pain in the butt to do all those individual masks.
I think vierock already did most of the characters anyway, and they all look good (altho Cissnei's/Hermione's eyes are too bright imo).
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I would love to watch the final result of this project with the character's fixed though since they will resemble the original models... :)
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Maybe you should just focus on environments for now since yeah, the hair and transparency looks off when done by AI, and it will be a pain in the butt to do all those individual masks.
I think vierock already did most of the characters anyway, and they all look good (altho Cissnei's/Hermione's eyes are too bright imo).
I agree to be honest... it will be too much work for me to realistically do the character textures. I’ve got to hand it to Vierock because did a really great job. Right now I’m actually just playing the game whenever I have spare time so I can get all of the textures. I also developed some scripts (in Python) to automatically remove duplicated texture dumps, rename them to account for the texture wildcard and generate a list to add for textures.ini. I’ll share them whenever I release something next. They’ll be useful to future projects anyone may do using ppssp.
It would be really great if we could inject the textures back into the iso. I was able to dump them directly however (as of yet) I don’t know how to put them back in. It would make the work much easier because the textures are actually stored differently. For instance, instead of a separate character texture for each facial animation frame, there is a texture with just the base face design and a separate texture containing all the different facial expressions in a single file. Being able to copy this structure would help with memory use (enabling higher resolution) and also file size for the final release. It’s something I’m looking into at least.
(https://i.imgur.com/XmlZPdS.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/SNjrL8V.png)
This is how the textures actually appear on the ISO.
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I think umdgen can repack the files into iso format. Don't know too much about it though
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http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/99BCCNNU
https://imgur.com/a/dpGaxV3 < to view full resolution
Some things to note:
Switched to Topaz Gigapixel AI because the results are way better and easier to work with
Changed texture hash method to xhh64 to eliminate need to sort/delete duplicates.
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Yeah, you can see how the upscaling is a mixed bag...
Aerith's hair and eyebrows look better.
Some stuff like her dress (the flowers on them too), eyes and lips could use some refining.
If you look closely at the chandeliers, the transparency got messed up...
I have an idea, how about upscaling the whole game, then posting all the textures on Github?
Then everyone could work on it like a group project, playing the game from the beginning to the end, manually fixing errors, etc. I could help you out on that, but we'd all need a basic framework to start from.
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Yeah, I’ve noticed those issues. Usually they are the lower resolution textures. What I’ve been working on the past few days in my off time has been developing a tool to classify the images and organize them.
ESRGAN handles certain images better than Topaz and vice versa. Very low res images (<32 px) probably need to be upscaled to something larger with nearest neighbor first before scaling with the AI or straight up done by hand because the ai tries to add too many details that don’t exist. Textures with text also get pretty messed up with either ai.
The aim of the tool is to categorize the textures in a speedy manner so they can be put into the appropriate workflow. It can also be used to evaluate the quality of the upscaled textures and designate them for clean up / masking.
I’ve been playing through the game too. My work is going back to normal so I don’t have as much time but I’ve been able to get in a couple of hours a day.
GitHub is a good idea. I have tomorrow off of work so I will probably have the evaluator done by then and I’ll upload some stuff.
Edit: haven’t finished yet, it’s a little more complicated than I realized. I’m pretty close though.
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Hey so I hate to barge in like this but I have been looking for something for hours and since it has to do with Crisis Core Upscaling and this is the only still active thread on the topic I could find, I need to ask:
Is there any way to replace the FMVs of the game with the AI Upscaled ones? is anyone doing that? and if not, would it be possible?
Thank you in advance for your time, and again sorry for interjecting like this!
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I think it could be done with UMDgen so long as the video was in the right format. Consider it a stretch goal.
edit:
I've been messing around with textures with the weird halo artifact using photoshop. Loading the layer transparency as a selection and then using select and mask has been pretty effective. This isn't a perfect example by any means if you're looking very closely but they are actually pretty small elements in the game.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/999BFNNU
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Thanks for the response!
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https://i.imgur.com/2w7zZXJ.jpg
Tried my hand at applying some texture to Zack's clothing. I was aiming to give the texture an appearance more like how it appears in cutscenes. I don't think I quite achieved it but I think it ends up looking better than a straight upscale. (You can look at Angeal's sweater to compare how the AI scaling appears - open in a new tab to see full resolution). Once I have a more solid release ready I'll also have a separate upload containing psd files for the masks. That way any edits will hopefully be easier to make :)
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/777WGNNX
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Finally got my tablet in. I'm definitely not a professional with it, but I decided to experiment today with a texture that really bothered me... The Loveless Poster in Midgar. I had to spend a few hours on it but I should get faster as I become acclimated to using the tablet.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/99FBJNNU - textures
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/77KL7NNX - in-game comparison
Really a lot of the signs didn't come out very well... but this one is so prominent that it really stuck out to me. Honestly a lot of the originals look better than the upscaled versions because the AI doesn't know how to handle that kind of detail. Plus, the player really doesn't get to look at many of them very close because of the way the camera works in the game.
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Its almost ready....
(https://i.imgur.com/vSF01Jr.png)
So far I've got it displaying all of the textures I've dumped so far and it saves all the relevant attributes and categorizations in a database and even remembers where the user left off.
Just a few more things to get implemented:
Show upscaled texture in right panel and switch/compare against ESRGAN copy
Add buttons to open up upscaled texture in user's default editor/viewer
Filters to only display certain categories
Work has picked up again and there is rioting and other nonsense going on in my city (and I don't even live in the North!) so progress isn't going as fast as I'd like but I'm still working a little on it every day.
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tJFU5elrxa6qebSbycpGzO4nxNmtAGC8/view?usp=sharing
Getting pretty close to finishing, sharing what I have so far. I'm right at Chapter 8 in the game and I'm about 20% done with the missions, so I should have nearly all the textures. I'll edit this message later with a readme.
Everything in the link goes in the ULUS10336 Directory.
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You've been keeping multiple save files in case you need to go back, right? In case you don't, I have like 10-15 prepped. You can also assign a button in PPSSPP to quickly enable/disable textures by pressing a button so you can easily compare what looks better or worse.
I've been checking out various areas and it looks good! Of course, we'll need to go back and look for all those messed-up 2D elements like posters and road signs that got messed up.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/77WDPNNX
Some errors I noticed:
- The pavement outlines of the bricks are gone
- The beach skies and waves at Costa beach are messed up
- The soft glows at the highway look pixelated, because a lighting texture got upscaled in a bad way.
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(https://i.imgur.com/BGhC06L.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/O0cJman.png)
What do you all think of this textured look?
Edit:
You've been keeping multiple save files in case you need to go back, right? In case you don't, I have like 10-15 prepped. You can also assign a button in PPSSPP to quickly enable/disable textures by pressing a button so you can easily compare what looks better or worse.
I've been checking out various areas and it looks good! Of course, we'll need to go back and look for all those messed-up 2D elements like posters and road signs that got messed up.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/77WDPNNX
Some errors I noticed:
- The pavement outlines of the bricks are gone
- The beach skies and waves at Costa beach are messed up
- The soft glows at the highway look pixelated, because a lighting texture got upscaled in a bad way.
Yes, I actually have a lot of saves but I might have missed some areas earlier in the game before I realized that you can only have 5 save states. If I need a certain area I will let you know - thanks.
The fine transparency/detail textures (fog, clouds, water etc) will probably best be left as is unless you or someone else has the skill to fix them. Both ESRGAN and Topaz apply really weird color artifacts to the edges because weren’t designed with transparency in mind I guess. They can usually be seen around the black halo effects in the form of hyper-blue or red pixels. I’m not capable enough to fix them accurately with transparency and honestly they scale up on their own good enough.
I have developed a few techniques that have helped to reduce/remove the artifacts in non-transparent textures though. Once I get off work I’ll try to create a step-by-step guide and a couple of actions I’ve created.
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Hi everyone,
This is my first post but it's a useful one I hope.
Seeing the many contributions to this project, I was inspired and wanted to share what I have been working on during the past few weeks. It was shocking to me that Banora looked so bad, and because Banora has such a profound meaning to the game I went ahead and made some updates to the horrible looking textures there.
(https://i.ibb.co/WnwDsn1/PPSSPP-v1-9-3-ULUS10336-CRISIS-CORE-FINAL-FANTASY-VII-6-3-2020-7-53-16-PM.png) (https://ibb.co/cJHbxJd) (https://i.ibb.co/fx3LnY5/PPSSPP-v1-9-3-ULUS10336-CRISIS-CORE-FINAL-FANTASY-VII-6-3-2020-7-52-57-PM.png) (https://ibb.co/mcngXCw)
You can find the files here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/x8x5skzigiclvlt/FFV7-HD-TEXTURES.rar/file (http://www.mediafire.com/file/x8x5skzigiclvlt/FFV7-HD-TEXTURES.rar/file)
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Devina,
I’m nearing completion of my evaluator tool. It might be unnecessary in end but I feel that it will streamline the workflow. You mentioned using github in a previous post. I’m aware of what it is of course but honestly I have no idea how to use it. Can we in fact upload images there?
Changing topics Right now the evaluator uses SQLite for the database (which is strictly offline), but if multiple users are to use it I would need to have an online database. It seems like a waste to pay money to host a database that is less than 500kb... but I’ll see what can be done.
Edit: Probably what is just split the textures into chunks and divide them up... I think I’m getting in over my head with the server stuff.
https://imgur.com/GkssnZz
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That's really cool laujclan, although maybe you should wait until me and eqprog work out our version. Also, aren't they called Banora White because the trees are supposed to be white?
Github is easy, it just lets you upload your work online. Then you can give permissions to people who are allowed to work on the project, and they can upload/update textures one by one.
https://github.com/AkiraJkr/Birth-by-Sleep-HD-ReMix
Here's an example. Then people can download the "master version" easily which contains everything updated.
Once you're done the beta (when you finish the game), you should post everything in a new topic, I imagine we might have 5000 textures once you're done. Then the next step would be to skim all these 5000 textures for things like posters that got upscaled poorly.
I also fixed the issues in Costa del Sol (the sky's a bit brighter as a side effect, but it's no biggie).
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Oh damn, lmao. Thanks for pointing that out Devina. My recollection with FFVII:CC is really bad. I haven't played the game since 2008. Somehow that made it past my fuzzy memory. Well, the funny thing is that I initially made the branches white, then I realized it didn't match the tree texture that was already in the HD texture pack from Jack Blackadder's website (https://www.jackblackadder.com/ff7ccr). So I went back and made it brown. :-D
I've currently stopped my progress in the game since Banora was so "unloved", it led me to rediscover my photoshopping skills. What's unfortunate is that FFVII:CC is not getting as much love as it should so I'm down to help out whenever I can.
In the meantime, since it may take a while for you and eqprog to upscale the textures, maybe I'll play the game as is for now. Probing in the texture folder's have led to accidental spoilers, lol. Like eqprog, I'm not familiar with Github, so I'll take a look at the link and try to figure how that all work out.
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Devina email me @gmail.com with your github username
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I sent it to you via forum PM, see it?
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I love your new avatar Dev! ;)
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Yes, it’s nice! I sent you the invite Devina. There should be some pretty basic instructions in the commits, let me know if you need any help getting things up and running.
For the evaluator, you can put in a custom name for the texture - for now it only saves the name in the database but the plan at the end is that the evaluator or a separate script will rename the textures, organize them into folders based on their categories, and then generate a textures.ini file. I figure not every texture need a custom name.
There is a photoshop action I included. Really the most useful one is FFCC mask which will tighten up a lot of the fuzzy edges however it’s not perfect. The dodge and burn action creates two adjustment layers for lightening and darkening the images. See some of the psds in the edits folder for examples. It can really bring out a lot of detail in a subtle yet non-destructive manner.
One action I didn’t include is this one by PiXimperfect for frequency separation. I use it to help remove some of the random ripple textures that the AI adds in some instances. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hgR_1mWShxYesDBkA_WveXdmwmnbkZ3r/view - check out this video for a basic overview on how it works. https://youtu.be/-iGB2BfEu20 Basically it separates the image texture data from the color data so you can remove/edit the perceived texture without messing with the color too much.
As far as fixing random color artifacts I use the brush tool set to the “color” or “hue” blending mode. A lot can be done as well by using the match color feature under adjust image and using the original texture as a source.
And at the end of the day some are just going to have to have a lot of manual fixing.
Edit: one last note: this doesn’t have all of the textures quite yet. My work schedule got changed up so I really haven’t had too much free time to complete my play through but now that we have GitHub I’ll just add the new textures to the repository whenever I’m done.
Edit 2: use the wip edits branch for now.
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Original:
(https://i.imgur.com/4s1X8bz.png)
AI Upscaled | Modified
(https://i.imgur.com/H4zDk9P.png) (https://i.imgur.com/dHKny8V.png)
Pretty happy with this one too as its very visible to the player.
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Looks great eqprog. Keep it going~! 8-)
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Thank you. The project has ended up being much bigger in scope than I initially envisioned so your encouraging words sincerely help to motivate me, laujclan! Today I'm both off of work and have no additional obligations. I'm going to finish the game today and I will have hopefully all the textures dumped. I didn't use a guide while playing through the game so unfortunately that means I might be missing some.
Plan for today:
- Finish game
- Upscale remaining dumps
- Finish sorting textures with Evaluator
- Add feature to organize upscaled textures in Directories
- Update textures.ini
- Update github to include branches for each texture category
- Update github master branch for currently functioning version
After I get done with this I will publish information about the github page, which will be public and open to contributions from the community.
Keep in mind:
- Any contributions must be the contributor's original works.
- Do not include Images taken from GIS or other such sources unless you can demonstrate that they are in the public domain or a public license. (In the later case adequate citation and/or credit must be provided)
- Do not contribute artwork from another creator's project.
The last point there is a touchy subject - obviously we cannot distribute other people's work without explicit permission. Technically speaking, even hosting the dumped textures online is a copyright violation (I really hope this doesn't bite me in the ass...) and I wouldn't want to land myself in even more trouble by offending members of the community. Furthermore, without being able to verify that other's work are their own I would prefer not to include contributions from other projects unless the originality of their work can be verified.
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Sounds good. How do you feel about sorting the textures into 2 categories: Environmental and Characters? Then you can easily sort the characters by who they are in subfolders, as it's obvious who each one will belong to. It will also make things more convenient for the future, I think. It might be some work in texture.ini, but I think it'd be worth it. I might edit some clothes/faces when I'm bored (Aerith's dress irks me a bit with its quality, plus I need to make an optional nipple-pack add on for Zack again).
You might also want to make a third folder for Enemies, and you should be able to tell what a monster skin looks like.
There's a chance you might be missing some textures in those optional phone missions (which are really boring padding filler), but it's not a big deal. I might start another playthrough and analyze the textures soon.
I wish we had vierock's permission to use some of their textures, since they released some decent textures in the Shinra Building, but they totally noped out, so I guess we'll have to be doing it ourselves.
Also, I'm pretty sure it's fair use to upload dumped textures from video games as long as we don't put it behind a paywall, otherwise NexusMods and spriting sites would be under fire, and every HD texture pack too.
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Well, I'll be having more sub-categories, but that's basically what I'm doing. The evaluator will take care of that - hopefully by tonight. It will also generate the textures.ini file based on that so no worries there.
edit: beat the game. It took a little longer than I thought it would sooo maybe I won't finish the rest of my goals today. We will see.
edit 2: pushing update now
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https://github.com/eqprog/FF7CCUP/tree/sorting
This is the current branch I'm working on.
Use eval_img.py to sort out images. Press the open button if you want to edit an image - it will open both the original and the upscaled image in whatever your default editor is.
Bug warning: There's currently a bug/oversight in this - the evaluator will organize the textures as you edit them HOWEVER I still need to add a tracker to the database to make note of the previous category because its currently not smart enough to move it out of whatever folder it gets put into after being moved from the default directory. Just be really sure its in the right category before you press next otherwise it will have to be manually moved into the right directory until I fix this! If you just want to edit the image and not worry about sorting it, that's fine. Just leave the category as "New".
Also, I haven't actually tested it with the game however I am pretty sure it will work. If anyone else wants to test it, please let me know.
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The sorting looks a bit confusing so I'll leave it to you.
Right now, I'm going to work on the Genesis monitors at the beginning of the game.
I think it'd be easier to redesign the UI a little, but I plan on doing more later.
Before:
(https://i.imgur.com/RM8Vprd.png)
After (WIP):
(https://i.imgur.com/np8dzOp.png)
How do you feel about using the Remake's version of the logo?
Original:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/f/f7/Shinra_Electric_Power_Company_logo_from_Compilation_of_Final_Fantasy_VII.png/revision/latest?cb=20200513020619
Remake:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/8/82/Shinra_Electric_Power_Company_logo_from_Final_Fantasy_VII_Remake.png/revision/latest?cb=20200513021046
The only difference is that it's Shinra, not Shin-Ra.
This would mean there would be more consistency between the two games, and it's called "Shinra" in text during Crisis Core.
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I've been using the updated one in the before crisis game since it's the correct spelling now.
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The sorting looks a bit confusing so I'll leave it to you.
Right now, I'm going to work on the Genesis monitors at the beginning of the game.
I think it'd be easier to redesign the UI a little, but I plan on doing more later.
Before:
(https://i.imgur.com/RM8Vprd.png)
After (WIP):
(https://i.imgur.com/np8dzOp.png)
How do you feel about using the Remake's version of the logo?
Original:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/f/f7/Shinra_Electric_Power_Company_logo_from_Compilation_of_Final_Fantasy_VII.png/revision/latest?cb=20200513020619
Remake:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/8/82/Shinra_Electric_Power_Company_logo_from_Final_Fantasy_VII_Remake.png/revision/latest?cb=20200513021046
The only difference is that it's Shinra, not Shin-Ra.
This would mean there would be more consistency between the two games, and it's called "Shinra" in text during Crisis Core.
All that sounds fine to me. I've made the sorting less confusing/work better but I don't mind doing all of it. Its kinda mind-numbing but easy, too.
By the way, I figured out how they were doing the transparency. Just put everything into a group and add a mask to it, then fill it with something less than white
(https://i.imgur.com/6rEmDS2.png)
Just keep the H & S values at 0 and adjust the B value (Brightness). Now you can make all of your layers the exact same transparency non-destructively.
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I'm about 3/5 done with the sorting now. I decided to just focus on that for the time being as (hopefully) it would make the project more accessible for additional people to collaborate.
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That's great. :)
And yeah, the sorting is one of the major reasons why I haven't done anything on Github yet.
I'm scared that if I replace some textures, it would get undone or overwritten somehow.
I'm a Githut noob too.
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I completely understand that. Hopefully I will be able to finish within the next few days.
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Only about 500 more textures to organize, gonna take a break for right now. I should finish by tonight.
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I'm going to make a thread in the main graphical releases forum.
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Great. :)
A note to everyone who might be reading this topic, it's better if we all go here:
https://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=20208.0
There's not much point to this topic anymore because my work and KaosuReido's is integrated in this new project.