Messages

51

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Nibel Mountains

« on: 2015-05-02 20:58:55 »

If he could: awesome! However, there are many things uncertain: a/ I think he could retrieve camera information based on walkmesh data, and I don't know if mtnvl includes any of that (since there's no sequence involving an overlay of characters). b/ I'm not sure if camera information could be passed on Blender easily (since he uses max scripts to get it).
So I decided to get a headstart. I may be able to come up with something decent-ish

52

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Nibel Mountains

« on: 2015-05-01 16:11:16 »

Quick update: currently trying to make the camera tracking of the mtnvl video. There's still a fair amount of error in my camera solution, I still need to optimize that before I try to link trackers with geometry.

53

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Nibel Mountains

« on: 2015-04-17 02:42:01 »

Proof of concept...

54

Completely Unrelated / Re: Dilly Dally, Shilly Shally

« on: 2015-04-15 21:33:17 »

Do you even remember who he turned out to be originally?  His true persona came out to be a man with an inferiority complex.  Zack was originally the confident one until he got shot and Cloud's memories got messed up.  I see manly people forget how fragile he was and how fast it can come back.

Precisely. Originally Cloud is a good guy plagued with insecurities, feeling he would never live up to (his own) expectations. His character arc in the game comprises most of the elements of the Hero's Journey. He wears the mask of the "cocky Soldier 1st class" during half of the game, until the Reveal ("you're a puppet!"), Death (giving the black materia and all hell breaks lose), and Rebirth (Lifestream episode with Tifa). After his symbolic rebirth, he comes to terms with who he really is and is able to move on. At the end of the game, Cloud is not the same person as when he started (almost literally). This evolution/growth was nullified by AC's plot.

55

Completely Unrelated / Re: Dilly Dally, Shilly Shally

« on: 2015-04-15 18:31:15 »

I actually enjoyed watching this animation   (well, what does that make of me, now?)
Although, to be fair, maybe I enjoyed it because I didn't really treat it as a movie, and what I mostly liked was the awesome visuals of a world and the characters "we all know and love". Graphics can deliver tasty bits of story here and there, and this animation had quite a few of these (all the details put in the decoration of the new 7th Heaven, for instance).
Regarding the fighting scenes: while I agree they're too long, I don't mind the fact that they're "over the top" because they're in line with "superhero movie fighting scenes", in my opinion. If I had to go for realism here, there would hardly be any room for the Buster Sword to begin with.
However, I can understand how DLPB gave it a 2. I appreciate that it's mostly a CG fest with little substance. It has no sensible plot, and the fact that it was originally a 15 min CG demo which Square's executives decided to transform into a movie shows a bit too much. My main gripe with the "story" is that Cloud's state nullifies his whole character arc from the game. "Conflicts" were created out of the blue in order to drive a story, and these were poorly written and executed. It actually gives the feel of an "official bad fanfic"  :S

56

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Mission B Fields, Midgar details

« on: 2015-04-13 02:12:00 »

Reorganizing scenes, it's a mess after all these years.
So picking up an oldy....
enjoy.
 

It's ALIVE!!!!!   

57

Team Avalanche / [HD Remake] Nibel Mountains

« on: 2015-04-12 17:41:34 »

Getting started...

58

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-10 16:13:38 »

Searching for people who would be willing to participate has to be made along two paths:
- On the one hand we can check communities of 3D modelling hobbyists. For that matter, once someone makes an in-game HD video featuring the high res fields along with Kaldarasha's models, I think I'll go make some advertising on blenderartists.org. The downside: many people will be put off by the fact that it has to be a volunteer work which requires a lot of commitment.
- We could find people with enough drive in people from various FF7 fan sites. I've already gotten in touch with the French community of ff7.fr, where people showed a lot of interest and enthusiasm for the project. Two people from there already offered to participate. The downside: not much 3d modelling skills, however I believe that with enough commitment and desire to learn, many people could "level-up" enough to produce some good piece of work (reflecting on how I've gotten to my current level myself).

59

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-09 15:23:56 »

mds6_1 was not done using the same tools: Ulpian made that one with Maya (not sure which render engine he used) and added a dose of Photoshop. Which was then re-photoshopped by Shampignon (from ff7.fr) and I because there were layering problems. Nevertheless, that's "release quality".
Different tools are bound to give different visual "feel", the plan is to have each artist working on a particular geographical zone to have local visual consistency. I also do not want to force the use of Blender on artists who are more proficient with other tools.

60

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-09 00:50:25 »

Ok, done 

61

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-09 00:19:46 »

That's what I did for colne_b1, so far. Shall I do the same for the other images?

62

Team Avalanche / Re: [FF7PC] Team Avalanche field scenes

« on: 2015-04-09 00:01:42 »

Update:

Version 0.03, 2 scenes (itmin1 and itmin2) corresponding to houses in Mideel have been added to the release pack. Fields by anaho.

63

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Mideel WIP

« on: 2015-04-09 00:00:33 »

itmin1 and itmin2 have been added to the pack of released scenes.
So, thanks again anaho for the work you did 

64

Team Avalanche / Re: Team Avalanche Gallery: Released Scenes

« on: 2015-04-08 23:59:09 »

itmin 2

Coming soon (although included in the release)

65

Team Avalanche / Re: Team Avalanche Gallery: Released Scenes

« on: 2015-04-08 23:58:40 »

itmin1


High quality render

66

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-08 23:38:00 »

Ehmmm.... quick question: I uploaded the high res renders on google drive, but it does not seem possible to link them as a viewable image directly (using the (img)(/img) codes with square brackets), only as a hyperlink. Any idea about how that can be worked around?

67

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Mideel WIP

« on: 2015-04-07 16:00:55 »

Glad to see you back, it's been a while 

I would say the best work organization we can have is to have each artist dedicated to specific geographic areas, to ensure graphical consistency at a local scale. With that in mind, my recommendations would be for you to keep to the Mideel scenes and the sector 7 slums for now.

By the way, regarding displacement: if you're running out of RAM, my take would be to decrease the number of subsurf divisions, but preserve a high level of detail with bumpmapping. That's what I used for the cliffs of eals_1 scene (Aerith's house outdoors), they have "only" 4 levels of subsurf if I recall correctly. I think you can strike a good balance with a moderate poly count.

68

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-07 15:56:40 »

It happens too if you're logged in if it surpasses an unknown (to me) limit. It happened to me too not so long ago...
I guess uploading them to your googledrive will be the solution, yes. Sorry to bother you with all this.

I'll do that job eventually. And don't worry, after all, the point of this project is a graphic upgrade, so if the gallery which is supposed to present that doesn't do it justice, it would be a shame.

69

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-04 16:27:25 »

Imgur converts PNGs to JPGs if you aren't logged in when you upload. The best solution to this is to make an account (or log in) before uploading, and they will keep the original image intact in most cases.

I was logged in when uploading these images. It looks like this image display problem doesn't affect everybody. I don't think it's a big deal, although I could upload the "Released" pictures on googledrive instead of imgur and see how that changes.

70

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-03 16:33:58 »

Really?
http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15975.msg224827#msg224827

mds5_1
min51_1
eals_1
mds6_1

Those appear as bad .jpg files to me. I think the image server converts too heavy big sized images into .jpg?

To be honest, I don't seem to find glaring issues on my end (or maybe I've been working with these images too long and I'm lacking perspective). For mds5_1, there is some level of noise (my render lasted 5 days on that one :S ) mostly because of a huge volumetric scattering shader which was meant to convey the feel of a dusty atmosphere. I wasn't minding the noise on this one because of that "dusty" effect. And yes, these images have very little in terms of post-processing - I didn't have any noise-removal method available which could satisfyingly remove noise without looking noticeably filtered.
That being said, if there's an image compression issue on your end, the problematic images correlate with image size, so there may be something there. Except for eals_1, the three others are the largest. Could you give me some details about where in these pictures you notice the biggest problems? I'm really having troubles to pinpoint that.

That being said, now that I recall, I did notice several artifacts like you described when viewing the images from my work place (c'mon, I can have a coffee break every now and then   ). I don't know whether it's due to a server compression artifact or simply that my work monitors were not having the same display quality.

71

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-03 00:09:15 »

Would it be possible if you update some .jpg images on the gallery with the original .png files?
There seems to be much quality loss on some such files. One would think those renders are of bad quality instead.

And can I ask why are some renders with noise? I'm not a big fan of that noise effect.

Anyway, do you people realize you are doing some amazing work?

Ehmm... to be sincere, I'm not sure what images you're referring to. The "Release gallery" only has .png images, high res, and as noise-free as it can get. If you're referring to other pictures from other threads, they're "work in progress" stuff, which may explain the presence of noise.
In case you don't know: when you want to render, in most 3d software you use a raytracing technique which has to back-calculate how objects are illuminated. Realistic illumination is achieved by accounting for indirect illumination (ie, light bouncing on neighboring objects before being reflected by the object of interest), in addition to direct lighting. Back-calculating the sources of indirect illumination can be viewed as an iterative process - in Blender they correspond to a number of Samples. At low Sample number, the image is very noisy, and the more Samples you have, the more the render will converge towards a "perfect" picture. However, the number of samples you decide on when launching the rendering process will be the main factor in your rendering time. My "release quality" pictures took more or less 20+ hours to render, based on the complexity of the scene and the picture size (mds5_1 took a lot more, for instance). So, when you just want to show an update or a "work in progress" picture, it makes sense to make faster render, which will display some amount of noise.

That hand drawn look is very attractive, it's a real shame he hasn't done more. The Photoshop'd effects look great compared to the blender rendered ones, not that they don't look great in their own right

Well, it would be awesome to see him back, I've sent him a message about the completion of the scene and hope it can reach him.

72

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-02 21:12:03 »

Can we see it? 

It's on the gallery thread

73

Team Avalanche / Re: [FF7PC] Team Avalanche field scenes

« on: 2015-04-02 16:41:25 »

Not enough pics in this thread

I originally did not want to overload this thread with pictures, which is why I've chosen to give a link to the gallery on the first post. If you feel, however, that it would be useful to have a couple of pictures in the first post to showcase the project (such as "Old vs New" pictures in the style of Omzy's thread), then I'll cook something up.

74

Team Avalanche / Re: [FF7PC] Team Avalanche field scenes

« on: 2015-04-02 02:14:40 »

Update!
Version 0.02 includes 1 new scene: mds6_1. This scene had been made by Ulpian ages ago, but it was left at the state of 1 final render without layers (and Ulpian hasn't shown any sign of activity since... January 2013 :S ). Numerous retouches were necessary on the original image so that the layers would look right, and I thank Shampignon from the ff7.fr community for having helped out a great deal in this process.
I hope you'll enjoy!

75

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Sector 6 Slums

« on: 2015-04-02 02:09:48 »

It is done.
It took quite a number of retouches to get Ulpian's render in the game, namely because of a fair amount of layering issues. There were more than 20 Photoshop/Gimp revisions which were necessary.
Kudos to Shampignon from the ff7.fr community who helped out a great deal.
I hope you'll enjoy!