Messages

1

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-02-06 14:59:00 »

Are you going to add different methods to your mask?
I tried your mod and the only grudge so far is really the horrible PC mask. xD

If you want, I've a better method of processing the masks.

I still don't get why you are saying that the PSX alpha are better.

The PC alphas are actually the PSX alpha rescaled + potraced.
As the game only support black & white alpha (no AA), it's the best way to manage them.

The main problem is that the PSX alpha are a bit off. At PSX resolution it was okay, but not at PC resolution.


Do you have any example of PC vs PSX ?

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-02-05 08:13:45 »

For my FF IX mod, I end up adding a lot of pre and post processing (de-dithering, sharpening, denoising) that took a long time to process.
So I'm retraining a ESGRAN network with the original background (no process) as input and the current version of my mod as output, and now, I will have a network that can get rid of dithering artefacts and have more details than the original process :

https://twitter.com/Ze_PilOt/status/1092709418276438016

I'm not sure that network will be usuable with any other kind of texture, but as many people use manga109 for stuff that are not drawed, it might work (probably for PSX textures)

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-27 08:30:34 »

This is truly excellent work. It would never have occurred to me to use ML to upscale the background layers. The results are phenomenal in a game as beautiful as FFIX.

My only concern - and I don't really want to add a sour note to this discussion - what's the position of anyone who distributes artwork that's transformed from SE's original assets? Are ML manipulated backgrounds treated as a transformed work? I wouldn't want any HD pack to be stymied by legal problems.

I've asked SE directly, but got the usual answer : We can't endorse it, please follow the user agreement.

It's clearly in breach on that agreement on two points :
- Don't re-verse engineer the game
- Don't (re)use assets

For the first point, I'm living in Europe where such clause is illegal (https://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2012/05/eu-court-legalizes-reverse-engineering-of-software.html)
Anything for inter-operability is legal.

For the second point, I believe my work can be considered as fair used :
- It's educational (I'm releasing the whole process in open source), and cultural (restoring lost art).
- I do not sell it and have no commercial advantage.
- It's partial (it's only the background of the game, not the whole game) and derivative (restoration is considered derivative)
- It doesn't hurt their business (on the contrary, they can sell more games because of it)

Of course, if they send me a cease & desist, I won't fight against it, but I don't think they have any interest in doing so.

4

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-26 19:23:26 »

New version !

https://twitter.com/Ze_PilOt/status/1089207667304919040

Download link :

https://t.co/LtyUjPvhyC

The repository was also updated with the fixes used in that new version :

https://github.com/ZePilOt/FFIX_Upscale_Scripts/commit/e5d25cbefd7d65d557b7d292d86430995a4c591d
and
https://github.com/ZePilOt/FFIX_Upscale_Scripts/commit/73f2f52dfcab7814057702df68028f2209acdeab

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-26 15:58:22 »

If you see a blank icon with no "image" icon next to it, you have a missing file.

It will be the same process for the PSX images.

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-26 15:53:23 »

I've both fields in their respective folder. :/
From my understanding is, that your script use the alpha from the pc version for the masking or not?

I want to use the psx masks instead.

It will use the psx masks for compositing, and the PC mask for re-injection into the game. It is commented in the scripts.

As I've said in PM, for every tiff file exported from Hades, you should have a .tiff.info in the exact same folder, coming from my repository. You can easily spot missing tiff files by looking at a .tiff.info not having a .tiff file next to it.

7

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-26 14:07:52 »

The scripts are using the PSX layers. But some layers don't exists in the PSX version (ie. field text).
They also takes the PC version in the cases of effect layers (blending,...). You need both.

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-25 08:30:44 »

Are you compressing your tex with DX5?
I opted for no compression ARGB and it looks better  but of course your filesize is bigger (packed it's still 2 Gigs or something). maybe you want to give that a shot as well.

I tried ARGB but it doesn't increased the quality by a factor that justify the size of the files, and more importantly, the in-game loading times.

9

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-25 06:46:48 »

The reshade is subtle and working very well ! Could you share your settings ?

They are still some artefacts around animated objects, but I have a way to reduce them quite a lot (and it doesn't need any reprocessing)

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-24 17:39:14 »

You should mention in your readme that it's vital to uncheck one specific Field in the extration of the PC Fields -> Opening-For-FMV or else HW will crash everytime.

Indeed. It's updated (as well as a better & faster way to handle overlapping layers).

11

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-24 14:21:27 »

You can check the memoria.ini to see if something seems wrong. Probably battleFPS or battleSpeed.

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-24 08:29:22 »

Awesome job Ze_PilOt, definitely an eye candy ! Merci à toi !

Is it possible to include in the memoria.ini an option for widescreen support during battles/fields only ? Something like:

WidescreenSupportField = 0
WidescreenSupportBattle = 1

Should be doable.

It's a bit annoying, but you can use alt-space to switch for now.

13

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-23 16:43:50 »

Good news everyone !

V04 of the mod (first official release - Not beta anymore !) :

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1D0CEu3YqFn5zYbiTM3ghzm9IdxQ_2M6h

Changelog :
- Fixed the desaturation of the background
- Crispier graphics !
- Custom launcher
- optional PSX font included

The repository with the scripts & the trained model :

https://github.com/ZePilOt/FFIX_Upscale_Scripts

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-23 06:51:52 »

I saw that you mentioned automating exports and turning everything into gifs.

I don't know if you still intend to do it or not, but I thought I'd share when I did it.
I did it back in 2015, but made 2 albums, of every single background in the game, both animated and non-animated, as (largely) seemless gifs.
One or two small hiccups, I just realised I never shared them here in the forums.

Dynamic Backgrounds (Animated)
https://imgur.com/a/ra3OU


Static Backgrounds
https://imgur.com/a/A09TB

If you're able to make the same thing at higher resolutions that'll be really cool.

Really nice works ! That's exactly what I had in mind !

I will try to recreate them in HD, but it's already quite good as they are !

Also, I can't explain how happy I am to finally see someone not call the PSX renders 'downscales from higher resolution renders', which is what half the internet seems to think was how they made the PS1 renders. It's also pretty cool to see someone notice that some of the 'lost art of FFIX' is concept art, and things rendered just for an artists portfolio  and not 'original resolution renders or 'secret files from production'.

Thanks

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-22 14:12:19 »

Also a font matching the PSX one to use with Memoria. It's the "Zidane" font with an extended set of characters (latin-extended : àéè')

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pEqqMw-yunNruMr2GRvQo7_AUa8I4Kln

[Font]
Enabled = 1
Names = "Garnet", "Times Bold"
Size = 24

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-22 11:13:26 »

Aha! That makes sense I'll just disable widescreen for now.

You can redownload the package, it was updated with a fix.

I've pushed my change to the memoria repository :
https://github.com/Albeoris/Memoria/pull/78

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-21 14:06:54 »

Aha! That makes sense I'll just disable widescreen for now.
I've noticed you seem to mean that this mod of yours is more of a guide for other to improve upon right? Every background looks great as far as I've seen. Process seems to work great too, masking looks fine (depends on how much of a perfectionist you are). I do think satsuki's masking looks a tad better. But he's doing some manual work, and you wanna stay away from manual work like the plague It's just not part of your philosophy regarding the pipeline you've developed.

I'd think your work could be very much appreciated on FF7 and 8 as well, just giving the other modders a hand at making their lives a bit easier.

A manual mask will always be better. You can do it on dozen of images, not hundred.
I just though of another way to compute a very clean mask, but I have to check if it works

I will release the scripts soon, I still need to clean them.

18

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-21 13:46:24 »

It works! So now we can actually have HD backgrounds and Memoria working at the same time. Now I just need to figure out how to get the scaled battle UI working. I was under the impression that it was already packaged with Memoria, but it's not turned on by default at least.

The widescreen option is broken too. I'm guessing there is an hardcoded offset relative to the original tileset size, but I can't find where it is.

19

FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-21 11:11:51 »

A version compatible with Memoria :
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WxAbradSPoEvo1d1SAnFKVpxL8TNv63x

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-19 17:36:45 »

I Know
My processus is automated.
But lots of small optimisations need to be done by hand for an optimal result.

Yes, the layering script I'm currently using takes 400 lines of code to handle all the cases. It was about 20 lines in my first tests.

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-19 12:49:36 »

Yes it's an hard work to optimize the layer's cutting but it's realy worth it.
A base layer cutting unoptimised can realy ruin your works.

Well, that's something that can be easily automated. Compositing layers can be tricky and complicated, but it's not dark magic and has basic rules that you can follow (and automate).

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-19 12:48:39 »

V01 was retired. V03 is up :

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IA3r5iJDP-Y8CyGwiqQEBmQEp53pa4sA

Changelog :
- Fixed grey lines appearing on several backgrounds,
- Fixed composition errors (text embedded on some background, wrong skies, ...)
- Better compression (should not affect quality).

And a PDF with a selection of background art :
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IQmNY2j5ZLag8qOiWru1bspURVVRb0tT

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-18 11:50:27 »

So did you use the PSX masks and just used 4x size without any filtering so you get a crisp clean but blocky mask or did you upressed the masks as well?
If yes, how?

So far I'm using the PSX masks to combine the layers, then the PC masks (upscaled without refiltering) when I de-compose to the original tiles. Seems to works nicely so far, so I doubt I will change the method.

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-18 10:50:13 »

Is this because of the masks?
I had this problem as well but solved it using another upres algorithm.

No, it's really because of photoshop trying to denoise colors next to black areas

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FF9 Graphical Releases / Re: [FF9PC] Background upscaling mod

« on: 2019-01-17 14:24:56 »

An general issue has been detected in the denoising process : Some grey lines may appears on a lot of background.
This has been fixed in the scripts, next version will be a lot cleaner !