[HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

[Covarr]

make sure the datadrive registry entry is set to the same drive letter that your USB drive is appearing as.

[Mayo Master]

Thanks! I passed the CD check after changing the registry (BTW did I also need to change the registry for movies?). However, it still fails to launch, now for another unknown reason 
EDIT - I kind of fixed the mess. I was trying to use the v 0.8 of Aali's driver, it didn't work. I managed to get things to work after switching back to v 0.7.11b. Hopefully I'll get back to testing my mods soon.

[Mayo Master]

Update: Getting started on mds5_m (materia shop):



Two things regarding 5min1_1:
- I am missing two textures to complete the scene (a celebration card and a poster hanging on the wall), I hope they'd come my way sometime this week.
- I had to make some revisions because the original scene had a problem. Because the game is set as 3d characters walking on a 3d mesh arranged with 2d layers, the perspective of the 2d layers has to match the whereabouts of the 3d characters. In this particular scene, one problem was a table which would reach above the character's knees when walking on one side of the table, but the same table would be waist-high when walking along another side. I revised the table dimensions (making it more narrow, actually) so that the height would look consistent (by matching the perspective). These sorts of problem are only apparent when testing the fields in-game. Some revisions of this type may be needed in a good number of scenes.

[LeonhartGR]

GR8!

[Mayo Master]

Hi folks,

I'm having more delays for the remaining textures I need for 5min_1. Nothing really urgent though, it will all come together eventually.
In the meantime, I carried on my work on mds5_m. Here's today's update:


For some reason it's going to be much less noisy than many other scenes, which is good. I may have to add a bit more dirt on the floor planks. Also, the lighting setup was tricky, because the illumination of from TV in the original scene is completely off. I had to recreate something that would give a good match on the overall lighting, but using extra light sources (the effect of the tv lighting itself is not very obvious, beyond the shelf where it sits).

I hope you like it.

[Mayo Master]

Update on the materia shop...



A couple of comments: It may not seem like there's still a lot to do, but the toughest part of that scene has yet to be done: bonsai trees! Otherwise: please don't mind the region of the picture with lots of noise, it's the combo glass object near glossy objects which causes that - it'll be remedied in the final renders. As usual, I scaled the objects in the scene properly. As a result, it may not seem like there's as much trash in that scene as there is in the original. With that in mind, there are two possible options: 1- I could increase the number of trash items laying around, to enhance the feel of a dirty place  2- I could leave it as it is, because after all the shop clerk (a heavy smoker, no doubt) should be a minimum concerned about housekeeping.
On another note: the plastic strips by the back exit may look odd: this is because nothing (there is only a strip of grey untextured floor) is yet modeled on the outside of the shop. I'll use some objects from the exterior scene, as well as a special enviro light to address that problem.
Lastly, I was wondering about filling one of the glass jars with a bunch of materias - this being a materia shop after all. It's not in the original scene, but I think it would be relevant AND look cool. The only unknown is about the amount of noise generated by the corresponding material (I'm guessing the material will be an association of glass plus volumetric emission).

Comments, feedback and random blurbs are welcome, it's getting lonely here.

[Dubular]

I gotta say, that scene is looking great. I'm really digging the wood textures for the floor.

My main criticism at this point is the lighting. I'm only amateur at best when it comes to modeling, so I don't know how I would go about it exactly, but the lighting around the tv looks off compared to the original picture. For instance, in the original, there's a shadow caused by the tv on top of the fridge and in front, but you have a shadow behind it.

I like what you've been doing in your scenes with regard to scaling. This is a case where I find myself not entirely on board. The pop cans seem extremely small with reference to the fridge in the corner. If you can make a scene have more parity with the 3D models, I'm all for it. However I think parity within the scene itself should take precedent.

All in all, pretty f'ing awesome.

[Mayo Master]

Thanks!
The wood floorboards were really a case where I wanted to convey the original feel, but making something a bit different. Specularity and bumps seem a bit exaggerated in the original scene.
Regarding the TV lighting: it's a point I mentioned in a previous post. The original lighting actually fakes what would have come from the TV, and it's really off. In particular, the lights and shadows atop the fridge are actually inconsistent in the original picture. Why? Because you can see a bright lighting and a sharp shadow on the fridge as if a light was coming at a 90 degrees angle from above, while the TV is actually located right above the fridge and should be projecting light straight ahead of itself. With a bit of experience in modelling scene, sometimes you realize that the limitations they had in the past made them do a lot of compromise regarding modeling and lighting. It's up to us to see when it makes sense to replicate the original, and when it doesn't.
Regarding rescaling: the final "test" when it comes to rescaling is when you play the scene in the game. Now that some modders have made a great job at making character models with much more balanced proportions, rescaled objects appear a lot better not only when compared to other features of a scene (such as a door frame), but when compared to the characters themselves. For instance, if I play with Kaldarasha's models in the original scene, I'm pretty sure the soda can would be nearly the size of a character's head. I'll double check when I test the scene in game, but a good point here is about making the characters evolve in a believable environment. By the way, the dimensions of the fridge are not absurdly big compared with the soda cans (I think the fridge is about 1.70 m in my scene). Also, I'd have to ask you exactly what you mean by "parity" - I'm a little confused. Do you mean matching the original picture, or to make objects at the same scale across different scenes, or something else entirely?

[August]

I'm just in awe of your work... seriously, it looks so good!

Forgive my ignorance but how did you become so proficient in 3D tools? Was it all self-taught?

[Mayo Master]

Thanks!

Yes, my abilities in Blender 3d are essentially self-taught, I started 3d modeling in August 2012. However, as I explained in this post, I used a good wikibook and some good tutorials for getting the hang on this. I still regularly check out tutorials online, mostly when I need to use a specific feature (namely physics, particle systems) where a lot of settings are not immediately obvious. I think you can get through my progress as a modeler just by browsing this thread, although my earliest work was here. I believe the big steps I made are really related to texturing - in the beginning I had no idea about how to do it. In that respect, switching to Cycles render was also a huge step - although I had to figure out how to do proper UV-unwrapping too.
It would be great if my work would motivate some noobs into picking up Blender and do stuff! There's a long way before we get anywhere near the 650 scenes of this game 

[Bosola]

OK - I'm impressed. Particularly by the PSX model.

Really great to see such attention to detail and faithfulness to the original's aesthetic.

[Mayo Master]

Thanks! I hope the bonsai trees I'm doing for this scene will live up to that.

[Mayo Master]

Update: bonsai!



This is actually a 300% sized render, compared with how it would look like in the actual scene. I used the best method I could for having something that looked ok without spending an ungodly amount of time on it - in the final image it will fit within a 85 x 85 pixels square. All the branches were made manually (which was very tedious) and I added the leaves using a distributed particle system. It's a chestnut tree, by the way.
On another note, some other scenes in game feature bonsai trees, I'll be happy to provide this one as a reusable resource. The mesh is clean (all the junctions between branches are cleaned), so I think it can be exported fairly well, too.

[Mayo Master]

Bonsai part 2!



This time, instead of making the bonsai manually, I used Blender's plugin called "Sapling". The plugin generates parametric trees. I think the results are pretty awesome, it's very simple and quick to use, and one can achieve a large variety of results. I don't think I'll make trees manually branch by branch, ever again (it took me 4-5 days to make the previous bonsai, and barely more than an hour fiddling with the settings to make the second one).
Well... the scene is almost done, actually. Yay 

[August]

Yes, my abilities in Blender 3d are essentially self-taught, I started 3d modeling in August 2012. However, as I explained in this post, I used a good wikibook and some good tutorials for getting the hang on this.
(snip)

Thank you - I'm reading through that wiki book now. If I can get half as good as what you make here I'll be a happy man.

Good job on the bonsai too!

[Mayo Master]

I wish you the best in your 3d modelling adventures! When starting, I think patience is the main virtue, taking the times to get through the baby steps.
If at some point later you feel like trying out a field screen, let me know!

[Mayo Master]

Update: I incorporated the indoor stuff of the materia shop into the main outdoor scene of the Sector 5 slums.



There were some inconsistency issues to solve, since the house as seen from outside is actually much smaller (about half the size) of how it is laid out in the indoor scene. This is the best I could manage for the materia shop, I think it's fairly decent.

Now, I have another problem. I decided to go back to the weapon store scene, which is supposed to be located inside a "refurbished" bus. The whole scale of the scene is complete nonsense, let alone trying to match how it looks like from outside with how it's supposed to be inside. I realized, after making some preliminary tests in game (i.e. comparing Cloud's height to objects in the scene), that the height and width of the bus would be about 5 metres    (basically, it's assuming that the top of the crate where the kid sits is about 2 metres high). So I'm really wondering about how to turn that environment into something believable. While the height could correspond to a double-decker bus (which is absolutely not how it looks like from outside), the width is way to big for any regular road vehicle (it's about twice the size of a regular bus). So... suggestions are welcome, because I don't quite know how to get started. I could try to keep to the original idea, but some elements will be ridiculously sized. I could try to transform the scene completely and have a matching exterior, but it's pretty much like creating something from scratch. All in all, it looks like this mds5_w scene is going to be a huge pain 

[Kaldarasha]

Have you ever tried my community flevel project? I had rescaled the models to fit better to the backgrounds.
For mds5_1 the model size is 576 (previous 512).
And mds5_w has a model size of 640 (previous 512).

The only solution for the inconsistent of the scenes I could imagine, is to make the models smaller for mds5_1. But I fear the doors will look then a  bit to huge. I have no idea how much it is possible for Makou Reactor to alter the walkmesh for it. It has the ability to do it, but the question is if it works.

Anyway all what I wanted to say is that we are not (entirely) stick to the size of the models.

[Mayo Master]

Have you ever tried my community flevel project? I had rescaled the models to fit better to the backgrounds.
For mds5_1 the model size is 576 (previous 512).
And mds5_w has a model size of 640 (previous 512).

The only solution for the inconsistent of the scenes I could imagine, is to make the models smaller for mds5_1. But I fear the doors will look then a  bit to huge. I have no idea how much it is possible for Makou Reactor to alter the walkmesh for it. It has the ability to do it, but the question is if it works.

Anyway all what I wanted to say is that we are not (entirely) stick to the size of the models.

Well, no, I've never tried. And thank you for mentioning, because that's going to be a life saver! Honestly, if I can have characters resized for mds5_w, then most of my troubles are over. If all characters were bigger, then it would mean that, in comparison, I could get the interior of the bus rescaled to reasonable proportions. We'd have to go by trial and error, because if I just get all character scaled by 1.5, I'm not sure how everything is going to look like. Still, it is by far the most accommodating option 
I would not resize the character much for mds5_1. The walkmesh is what it is, and doors are already much larger than need be.

[Mayo Master]

Update!

So... I've mostly worked on trying to make a compatibility of environments between mds5_w and mds5_1, and it's pretty much figured out. I initially tried to piece the walls of the bus together using what I originally made for mds5_w, but I wasn't happy of the result (among other things, the topology was really messy). So I decided to take the basic dimensions of the bus and remake it from scratch - which took a bit of time. I'm just done with the body of the bus (not textured), and I wanted to share that with you.

[KnifeTheSky77]

It's all coming together now 
Oh man am I excited to play this scene

[Cyberman]

Bonsai part 2!

<IMAGE REMOVED TO not be redundant>

This time, instead of making the bonsai manually, I used Blender's plugin called "Sapling". The plugin generates parametric trees. I think the results are pretty awesome, it's very simple and quick to use, and one can achieve a large variety of results. I don't think I'll make trees manually branch by branch, ever again (it took me 4-5 days to make the previous bonsai, and barely more than an hour fiddling with the settings to make the second one).
Well... the scene is almost done, actually. Yay 

Bit late but LOL that is funny. Now you might be wondering why I would say that. When I was actively using POV (back 10 years ago) I did the exact same thing. I first made a pine tree by "hand" actually I used a random perturbation calculation along a spiral for each "branch" and scaled the branches (you may now wake up). However this was tedious (even too me) so I found a fractal tree maker that did the same thing in POV by a function call.
The nice thing about parametric tree creation is you can add a bit of randomness for each tree you create so they all look just a bit different.
The down side is the object data explodes. However you are rendering to 2d so the amount of data is all the same (LOL).
Congrats you aren't the only one who has done this (IE don't feel bad).

Update!

So... I've mostly worked on trying to make a compatibility of environments between mds5_w and mds5_1, and it's pretty much figured out. I initially tried to piece the walls of the bus together using what I originally made for mds5_w, but I wasn't happy of the result (among other things, the topology was really messy). So I decided to take the basic dimensions of the bus and remake it from scratch - which took a bit of time. I'm just done with the body of the bus (not textured), and I wanted to share that with you.
<IMAGE removed for redundancy sake>

Oi looks good.

begin brain ramble
With all these details it would be interesting to see it in a preview like one would in Oblivion/Fallout3/NewVegas/Skyrim. Granted that is only partially possible (I did say partially). As you can only insert data into those systems programatically that preexists in the data base for the game. You would also have issues with Vista information for the area (what does the surounding area of midgaard look like relative to sector 5 slums giant pizza in the sky?). Lots of technical difficulties with doing such things.
end brain ramble

I've never been able to "get into" using blender sadly because I learned to make models programmatically (IE snythesize everything instead of using and making chunks of image data to paste on things). It only has certain advantages (for example the models in FF7 look pretty good irregardless the resolution they are displayed at for a similar reason), in that it is far more scalable. It is quite a bit more work for simple results however (LOL). Hence likely it was not a popular method in the end to do things.

Back to the image at hand, you know I never really paid attention to what the bus looked like in game. I've played through it a few times too. Hmmm my guess is the details weren't enough for me to "care". I tend to focus on something that has any detail in games when viewing.

Cyb

[Tempus]

So I'm really wondering about how to turn that environment into something believable.

Switch off your brain. Making sense out of FFVII's physically impossible BGs is a waste of time. The stairwell in upper Shinra Building, for example, is impossible. The way the stairwell goes up would cause the each subsequent floor to have an overbite. I know because I tried to model it as a continuous model for the Mako Dawn mod. You don't notice because you never compare the BGs side by side. No one besides developers will notice — you're just hyper concious of it because you're making it.

Unless you're planning on solving all continuity issues, my suggestion would be not to worry about it and focus on making it look nice, not logical. Unfortunately, that'll occasionally mean recreating tweaking / things even when they're supposed to be part of the same object.

[Covarr]

Do we have the ability to make/modify walkmeshes? That's obviously taking greater liberties with the game than this project was ever meant to, but it's pretty much necessary if you want the world to actually fit together properly.

[Kaldarasha]

Makou Reactor has some possibilities to edit the walkmesh, but it seems to be a bit buggy and uncomfortable. But the option is there...