Author Topic: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums (Read 275985 times)

Mayo Master · « **Reply #450 on:** 2014-12-01 06:02:53 »

Update!

Since the previous one, all the flowers and corresponding flower pots are done, lighting was revised, and some of the furniture was textured. Here's what I have so far:

However, I ended up with an odd "artifact" as I have the bottom right part of Aerith's bed frame which has a weird illumination (it's oddly more white than it should), I haven't really puzzled out why that happens. The artifact appeared after I brought in a point-type light source as an indoor source of light (light bulb), but the light emission isn't strong and rather have an orange tint, so I don't really get why it reflects so much white. I'm also not sure if it will matter though, after I add the mattress, bed sheets and covers. We'll see.

Salk · « **Reply #451 on:** 2014-12-01 23:09:08 »

Simply lovely texture for the wood! Great job!

sl1982 · « **Reply #452 on:** 2014-12-05 07:57:56 »

Looking great! Also just as a fyi, the scenes of yours i have tested look great in 4k as is. I doubt we need to render larger for it.

Mayo Master · « **Reply #453 on:** 2014-12-05 23:17:07 »

Thanks! Well... if your monitor isn't huge, I don't think you can tell much of a difference between HD and 4K for whatever is displayed. Also, my scenes are rendered at 5 times the original, while theoretically HD is 4.5 times the original.
Most of the stuff I have made should still be looking good at proper 4K renderings (9 times the original scale), because I took care of having fine enough textures (most of the time, at least). But for actually re-rendering the stuff, indeed that's not a priority.

sl1982 · « **Reply #454 on:** 2014-12-06 04:56:13 »

Its a 28 inch. So not massive by any stretch. Its difficult to read text without scaling of some sort at my normal distance from the screen

Mayo Master · « **Reply #455 on:** 2014-12-19 15:18:07 »

Update! I finally got the bedding done - it took quite a while, I wanted to use cloth simulations and a lot of them were not producing the intended results (broken meshes, force field issues...).
Here's where I'm at:

So... I still have to make the pillows, the doors, and some random junk in the cardboard box in Elmyra's room, and that's about it.

sl1982 · « **Reply #456 on:** 2014-12-19 18:22:33 »

That is stunning. Good work

TerriblyGrimm · « **Reply #457 on:** 2014-12-23 01:11:09 »

Just been scrolling through this thread and I am incredibly impressed with the quality of your work.

Also I havent tested it, however isn't it possible to edit the walkmesh via Makou Reactor?
I know you can via Deling in FF8 and quite sure I remember seeing a similar feature in Makou Reactor.

In which event you could do architecturally sound field designs and if necessary adjust the walkmesh c:

Mayo Master · « **Reply #458 on:** 2014-12-23 02:09:26 »

Thanks!

Well... so far I am working with the assumption that the walkmesh is not editable. I would like to finish this set of field scenes under that assumption (if I keep reworking scenes forever, I'll be getting nowhere). As far as I've been told, there's no easy way to make edits, I don't think Makou reactor can provide that option - that being said I haven't taken the time to explore the possibility myself (and let's be honest, I don't have the time :/ ). With walkmesh editing, I think that scripts would also have to be modified, so I don't really see that being straightforward. However, so far Makou Reactor offers the option to scale characters easily, which helps a lot when solving scaling inconsistencies.
If in the future, if it turns out that we have a tool which could edit the walkmeshes somewhat easily, I'd be inclined to reconstruct some of the scenes. That's the sort of stuff I have on the back burner

TerriblyGrimm · « **Reply #459 on:** 2014-12-23 05:03:26 »

Haha, yeah I havent played with Makou Reactor much myself as with packages like Bootleg I didnt need to do much tedius work within the field LGP's,
however I am quite sure I remember seeing the walkmesh within Makou Reactor with a similar design to how the Walkmesh editor is within Deling for FF8 with extensive amounts of triangles that make up an invisible mesh on the field images

Yeah I can imagine how much work this already is for you especially with the quality standard you are displaying,
I've tried messing with Blender in the past and couldn't use it, the camera controls and general user-friendliness of the programe were a nightmare for me haha
So you have extra respect for getting that programe working with breeze

Mayo Master · « **Reply #460 on:** 2014-12-23 05:45:55 »

About Makou reactor, maybe you could ask on the dedicated thread on the Tools section. You're probably right, but it would take someone to dig into the stuff to explore how easily the walkmeshes could be revised.
As for blender, I picked it up 2 years and a half ago - if you've browsed this thread you probably saw some progression on the way. I was lucky that I tried to get started after the 2.5 version; the interface looked a lot less user-friendly before that point. That being said, the type of work I'm into does not involve much camera control - on the contrary we want it to be rigged (SpooX's Shinratool script providing all the data in most cases). I admit that getting familiar with shortcut keys was the first necessary step, but once you know these keys then I do find Blender rather easy to use.
Oh, and by the way, bonus gift as I needed to generate a texture for ealin_2

TerriblyGrimm · « **Reply #461 on:** 2014-12-23 10:12:43 »

Oh man the nostalgia, I immediately pictured Aerith " don't step on the flowers!!!!"

Those flowers are so detailed O.O

It's really surprising to be honest that square doesn't just do this with their PC ports of classic FF games,
simply recreate the scenes, animations, character models, textures, UI and fans would actually be satisfied with the quality of the ports

It's really amazing the quality of content the modding community creates, it's just unfortunate that square leaves us feeling it is necessary to spend our own private time patching a game that we paid for

Still wonderful work as always really am loving the detail especially when compared to the original :DD

perhaps I will try to learn blender again then start overhauling the character models in game with more anatomically realistic ones
so we could have character models that fit in with excellent quality environments

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #462 on:** 2014-12-23 13:10:29 »

Quote from: BffWithDEATH on 2014-12-23 10:12:43

perhaps I will try to learn blender again then start overhauling the character models in game with more anatomically realistic ones
so we could have character models that fit in with excellent quality environments

That won't be enough. I'm already on the limits of the games possibilities (there is only room for textures). The main problem is the skeleton and the animation files with there Z-position. If we could edit them a bit better and could use wight painted models with a unified skeleton, then things would look a lot better. But we need also tools for this. I guess mesh deformation is possible with the current engine, because it seems to be used in Safer Sephiroth special attack, but someone has to enable it for the models and expand kimera to display such models.

Mayo Master · « **Reply #463 on:** 2014-12-23 16:35:51 »

Quote from: BffWithDEATH on 2014-12-23 10:12:43

Oh man the nostalgia, I immediately pictured Aerith " don't step on the flowers!!!!"

Those flowers are so detailed O.O

It's really surprising to be honest that square doesn't just do this with their PC ports of classic FF games,
simply recreate the scenes, animations, character models, textures, UI and fans would actually be satisfied with the quality of the ports

It's really amazing the quality of content the modding community creates, it's just unfortunate that square leaves us feeling it is necessary to spend our own private time patching a game that we paid for

Still wonderful work as always really am loving the detail especially when compared to the original :DD

perhaps I will try to learn blender again then start overhauling the character models in game with more anatomically realistic ones
so we could have character models that fit in with excellent quality environments

Actually, I find that remaking FFVII from Square Enix standpoint would not be straightforward at all. If they wanted to do a HD port, they would pretty much need to recreate all the assets (a/ apparently they've lost a lot of the assets of the original game b/ said assets are for the most part completely archaic now), and get it to work with a new engine... and at that point, they might as well go for a full-fledged remake. Not to mention that a bunch of elements of the game (storywise or gameplay) were widely acceptable when the game was released, but the current customer-base wouldn't be able to stand it. I also believe that FFVII is unfortunately plagued by the syndrome of the unpleasable fanbase, in that respect I agree with Square's decision to dedicate resources to entirely to new games.
What would be nice, however, would be a more supportive attitude towards the modding community, because whatever we do, we'll always be at the mercy of a Cease & Desist.

Quote from: Kaldarasha on 2014-12-23 13:10:29

That won't be enough. I'm already on the limits of the games possibilities (there is only room for textures). The main problem is the skeleton and the animation files with there Z-position. If we could edit them a bit better and could use wight painted models with a unified skeleton, then things would look a lot better. But we need also tools for this. I guess mesh deformation is possible with the current engine, because it seems to be used in Safer Sephiroth special attack, but someone has to enable it for the models and expand kimera to display such models.

Indeed. And then there are severe limitations when it comes to shading (we can only do so much with only diffuse shaders)...

Oh, and by the way, it is DONE

LeonhartGR · « **Reply #464 on:** 2014-12-24 05:52:44 »

Hmmm! Flowers smell nice!

KnifeTheSky77 · « **Reply #465 on:** 2014-12-25 01:08:21 »

You've really captured the essence of the original which hit me right in the feels, just like when I played the psx game when I was 8. Do you think you'll release the set by the new year?

Mayo Master · « **Reply #466 on:** 2014-12-25 02:01:15 »

Even though everything is 99% done when it comes to modelling and texturing, I'm afraid I won't have it ready before the new year. Here is what still needs to be done:
- Make a few textures. There are a couple missing in mds5_m, mds5_w, 5min_1, 5min_2.
- For each scene, the final renders (with very high amount of samples) plus the re-renders each corresponding layers. Even though rendering time is much less than modelling time, it's still non-negligible.
- There is still a lot of layering, cutting out layers and testing them in-game. Sometimes the way the original layers are cut is not actually optimal. So, there's a loop render-assemble layers-test in game-back to re-render which needs to be done. Of course, I can quicken the process by making test renders with few samples, and only go for the final renders when I know exactly what to do.
However, I'm aiming to have that done by early January, and finishing these scenes is my priority (meaning: I'm not starting anything else) - except for enjoying Xmas holidays, that is

paul · « **Reply #467 on:** 2014-12-25 10:11:44 »

I've been messing with 3D fields in QGears, here is what I could hack together in an hour using one of Mayo's scenes:

Mayo Master · « **Reply #468 on:** 2014-12-28 16:05:55 »

Thanks for sharing. It looks like what you got are the shaders from the Blender Internal engine, whereas the scene was made for Cycles (I have an older version of the same scene with Blender Internal shaders, but it does look very good in comparison). By the way, it is possible to do texture baking in Cycles, so maybe you'd like to check that out. Unless you'd like me to upload that older version to the repo?

KnifeTheSky77 · « **Reply #469 on:** 2014-12-28 19:06:42 »

54 fps... not too shabby for just dumping the scene with no optimization.

Which blender plugin did you use to export the scene, i've found a few but all seem buggy. But I also have no idea how to use blender-soo many buttons

paul · « **Reply #470 on:** 2014-12-30 21:07:09 »

Quote from: Mayo Master on 2014-12-28 16:05:55

Thanks for sharing. It looks like what you got are the shaders from the Blender Internal engine, whereas the scene was made for Cycles (I have an older version of the same scene with Blender Internal shaders, but it does look very good in comparison). By the way, it is possible to do texture baking in Cycles, so maybe you'd like to check that out. Unless you'd like me to upload that older version to the repo?

Ah so thats what its doing, if you have a blender internal version that'd be cool (to see how it looks

). I don't have access to the repo though, I was just given this one file directly.

@Knife, I dunno what I'm using, I just used whatever the first google result was.

Edit: Oh btw about the 54fps, that was just a dip, it hits 120fps easily, and in a few years you'd prob be able to get 250fps easily too. If the project ever went down the real time 3d route then optimization probably wouldn't matter due to the hardware speed when its all finished being so much faster.

I was thinking that it would actually be technically possible to get FF7 itself to render 3d fields with hook that replaces the rendering functions.

KnifeTheSky77 · « **Reply #471 on:** 2014-12-31 02:26:05 »

Could I get access to a blender scene or two? I'm messing around with/testing the ogre3D side of qgears-there are some pretty interesting guides over at their wiki o.O

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #472 on:** 2014-12-31 10:57:40 »

Quote from: paul on 2014-12-30 21:07:09

I was thinking that it would actually be technically possible to get FF7 itself to render 3d fields with hook that replaces the rendering functions.

Theoretically we could use 3d backgrounds as a character model. Problems are only to place them correctly on the field and the texture management of the game. It would easily blow up the size of the char.lgp.

paul · « **Reply #473 on:** 2014-12-31 11:30:47 »

I was thinking more external files, for example Aali's driver has that "direct" mode, well it could say if the file im loading is "reactor.field" (or whatever) then disable the 2d field rendering and load all of the meshes and things from some where else and render those itself. It would require hooking a lot more stuff in the game though.

sl1982 · « **Reply #474 on:** 2014-12-31 15:44:52 »

Even if it could be done what would be the point? The renders that we do take days to complete and look vastly better then anything that could be done realtime? Its not like we could use the scenes to create fully rotatable 3d.