Project goals

[Salk]

Hello guys!

My congratulations and sincere good luck to Team Avalanche, first of all.

When I read 2D OVERHAUL the first time, my heart skipped a bit because I thought it had to do with reworking the low-res background scenes (the real big graphical drawback of the PC version) but now I am not so sure.

Could you guys point out what goals the 2D OVERHAUL part of the project has?

Thanks!

[sl1982]

Hello guys!

My congratulations and sincere good luck to Team Avalanche, first of all.

When I read 2D OVERHAUL the first time, my heart skipped a bit because I thought it had to do with reworking the low-res background scenes (the real big graphical drawback of the PC version) but now I am not so sure.

Could you guys point out what goals the 2D OVERHAUL part of the project has?

Thanks!

Well the 2D overhaul has transformed into a graphical overhaul. We hope at some point to be able to redo the backgrounds but there are few of us working on the project. We have the technology and the know how to redo them, but artists are lacking at this point. Perhaps if you know some artists that may be interested in helping us out we could make it a reality.

[Salk]

I would just love to help out in any way I can.

I am not an artist so it can't be a direct help but if you don't mind elaborating a little more about what profile you need, I have some connections to other modding communities where I might find one or two volunteers.

Keep it up! 

[Timu Sumisu]

by in large, if there is some game asset, it is now changeable. We have toyed with the backgrounds, but were unable to acheive a good result with any form of upscaling or fractals (big surprise). Im not sure how we could remake the backgrounds right now, but my next theory about how to do it is to load up the images in google sketchup, and make a model of it, Ideally with every detail. This will make a 3d model for us to rerender, and the original background will be the texture. because the background is the texture we can use the texture coordinates to redraw the textures for our model, render and insert ingame. I'm not very familiar with sketchup, and if it simply overlays the uvs in a projected position, then this wont help, but if it redraws the textures for the model then we could try that.... sorry if this all sounds a bit complicated.

This idea would only work for the more geometric locations (buildings industrial places, NOT rocky or natural locales).

The other alternative, which is even more time consuming is to litterally remake every sccene in 3D, with exact positions and proportions . Backgrounds will probably be the last thing we do, sorry.

[sl1982]

Dont forget the work aaronlite did on redoing the backgrounds. All purely in photoshop, but it will take alot of work to do it using this method.

[Salk]

timu sumisu,

thanks a lot for explaining the procedure to me. Sounds indeed very complex and time consuming (both methods) unfortunately.

sl1982,

has aaronlite by any chance manage to complete one 2D background using Photoshop in order to evaluate the final result? It seems to me that there is no way to find any shortcuts for this kind of work and anything that might possibly work is going to take very long time. The only hope is finding a method that gives decent results and at the same time is easy enough to be worked on by a good number of collaborators that do not require specific skills.

[sl1982]

timu sumisu,

thanks a lot for explaining the procedure to me. Sounds indeed very complex and time consuming (both methods) unfortunately.

sl1982,

has aaronlite by any chance manage to complete one 2D background using Photoshop in order to evaluate the final result? It seems to me that there is no way to find any shortcuts for this kind of work and anything that might possibly work is going to take very long time. The only hope is finding a method that gives decent results and at the same time is easy enough to be worked on by a good number of collaborators that do not require specific skills.

Unfortunately he has decided to work on other aspects of the game due to the sheer amount of work in redoing just one background.

Here is an image of what he managed to get done.


By sl1982 at 2009-09-13

[Hellbringer616]

Haven't heard a peep from him since that, Any idea what he is working on?

[Timu Sumisu]

the floor of certain battle backgrounds.

[Salk]

timu sumisu,

thanks a lot for explaining the procedure to me. Sounds indeed very complex and time consuming (both methods) unfortunately.

sl1982,

has aaronlite by any chance manage to complete one 2D background using Photoshop in order to evaluate the final result? It seems to me that there is no way to find any shortcuts for this kind of work and anything that might possibly work is going to take very long time. The only hope is finding a method that gives decent results and at the same time is easy enough to be worked on by a good number of collaborators that do not require specific skills.

Unfortunately he has decided to work on other aspects of the game due to the sheer amount of work in redoing just one background.

Here is an image of what he managed to get done.


By sl1982 at 2009-09-13

Impressive result!

It'd be good to get back in touch with him and ask how long it took him to do that background and then make a rough esteem of how many backgrounds there are in the game. If it's just a matter of work load, this project could be spread among us who'd volunteer. Of course if it requires much skill, I'd be out of it already.

[Timu Sumisu]

if i recall it took him numerous hours. and there are between 1000 and 2000. Even if we had more people, it would take a long time.

[Marc]

there are 750-something field files in the game.  Some have shared backgrounds (and a moving element is changed in the scene, ex: underwater dock in junon = with sub and without sub).

That means there would be around 600 to 700 backgrounds to actually modify in the game (exlucing repeats, white and black bg, etc).

You can view the exact amount in loveless although the bg preview function is sometimes corrupted in it.

[Timu Sumisu]

i recall opening my psx version with 7mimic and seeing many more than that o.o

[Marc]

In order to dump the whole script for the ff7 voice project, I had to visit every field file in the game using loveless.  To my knowledge, none are missing from loveless.

Loveless shows 729 different files, 27 of which are not field files (tex and tut files) for a total of 702 field files, each with a background.

Out of those 702, there are 17 black backgrounds (no background at all - mostly used for debug and "mind" scenes).  And in the rest, there are plenty of repeats such as 10 or so blank snow fields.

So I'd say around 600 to 650 is a nice estimate of how many backgrounds will need to actually be re-done.

Still a mammoth task to say the least (and not one I would undertake unless a huge team was in place given the fact that 3 hours x 650 = 1950 hours = 81 24h days!).  And has background tiling ever been solved ?

Still, backgrounds and movies are the two single untouched issue the game still could see major improvements in (since everything else is in WIP).  There's likely little to be done for movies given the fact that the source material is of such low quality but the backgrounds are exciting to think about.

edit : thought occurred to me that the discrepancy between your number and the actual field files might come from the layers in each background.  What you saw might have been individual layers.  Layers might actually play in your favour as well if you can just work the actual background without all the details such as ladders, etc.  Not as much finicking needed that way.

[Hellbringer616]

Speaking of movies, Anyone have a quality comparison between the PC and PSX videos?

[Timu Sumisu]

Still, backgrounds and movies are the two single untouched issue the game still could see major improvements in (since everything else is in WIP).  There's likely little to be done for movies given the fact that the source material is of such low quality but the backgrounds are exciting to think about.

Actually movies and backgrounds are in the same state. in my opinion, the best way to deal with both is do it like square - render em. if we redo backgrounds in 3d, we'd have (in some cases) the material to make the 3d scenes.

[Izban]

halkun's experiment would be useful for the background's would it not

especially if you could get it in game, only problem then is whether or not people would be wiling to download the increased size and possible camera issues

i don't know if its possible or not but rotating camera in regular backgrounds would be cool

[titeguy3]

I was actually just about to mention that. Not sure if that's what Timu Sumisu meant when he mentioned Google Sketchup, though.

For those who aren't familiar, Halkun's experiment was to use some piece of software to render the 2d background as a 3D model by basically tracing the outlines/edges of all of the 3D objects. Using this method, one could retexture the objects, recompose the image, and bam! New backgrounds.

Course I'm not the expert, for specifics you should contact Halkun...

[sl1982]

I was actually just about to mention that. Not sure if that's what Timu Sumisu meant when he mentioned Google Sketchup, though.

For those who aren't familiar, Halkun's experiment was to use some piece of software to render the 2d background as a 3D model by basically tracing the outlines/edges of all of the 3D objects. Using this method, one could retexture the objects, recompose the image, and bam! New backgrounds.

Course I'm not the expert, for specifics you should contact Halkun...

Basically the only way to redo the backgrounds in this way is to use sketchup to make the background 3d. Retexture and rerender the background.

[BlitzNCS]

I'm really quite interested in this. I'd be happy to work on something like remaking and re-rendering the 3D backgrounds, but is there any guarantee we'll be able to get the camera angles perfect?
If not, is there any way to synchronise camera X, Y and Z with those stored in the field files somehow? i'm sure we can edit walkmeshes with meteor if need be, too.
if you all think it's a good idea, i might just start to work on building a midgar when i get time. may take a while, but my motivation'll be there.
midgar'll be an easy place to start since we have a top view of it, too.

[Timu Sumisu]

if you start, do stuff like halkun was doing, get a sketchup file working, and if the uvs are exported in a nice way, we can retexture them.

[KnifeTheSky77]

if you start, do stuff like halkun was doing, get a sketchup file working, and if the uvs are exported in a nice way, we can retexture them.

I was intrigued by halkitten mittens 3d videos so I decided to give it a shot myself.
I started off with mdstin extracted from palmer
here is the aftermath:





Please note fellas, this is my first time using a 3d modeling program let alone google sketchup.
(Starting off, I didn't have a clue what I was doing)

Learning how to (loosely) use photomatch (thats the tool that you use to do this madness) 
It gave me some insight on how difficult it would be to apply this method to some screens and objects.
Also, when one would go about doing this, how would one know what to, and what not to apply to just a flat surface.

For example: Being the sketchup nubile that I am, I applied the train to a flat surface instead of breaking it down into smaller cubes and planes.

[halkun]

Halkitten?  Oh... The avatar.... Right


Not bad for a first shot. I strongly suggest you go through the sketchup tutorials (Start with chapter 2, on the left hand side)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_fqoCjKPM

Hehe, Yea, I guess I forgot to mention that I do 3D art for fun. It's a whole lot harder than it looks.

You want any pointers?

[BlitzNCS]

D: i finally find motivation to model something, i start up and i find someone else beat me to it? FFFFFFFFUUUU-

...I think it happened again D:

I'mma just give up now.

[sl1982]

D: i finally find motivation to model something, i start up and i find someone else beat me to it? FFFFFFFFUUUU-

...I think it happened again D:

I'mma just give up now.

Now thats just dumb. You should both work on it and learn it.