Author Topic: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums  (Read 271886 times)

paul

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #475 on: 2014-12-31 16:24:18 »
They would probably look better - in qgears at least with updated models too and real time shadows. And more future proof, one day even the best we can do now will look low res (say when 4k is the norm) at least polygons tend to scale better.

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #476 on: 2014-12-31 17:23:29 »
I don't see the harm in experimentation.  :mrgreen: Real shadows from an actual light source would be really awesome. Having a higher range of motion running around the field would also add a touch of newness. Animations for standing still and a smooth transition from running to standing still or running to walking would also be a nice touch.

sl1982

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #477 on: 2014-12-31 17:45:34 »
I was not suggesting not trying it out in qgears, I just dont think using aalis direct mode and the ff7 engine itself would be of much benefit.

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #478 on: 2014-12-31 17:51:40 »
Oh I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about qgears. Qgears is by far, a better time investment, it's kind of crazy to think what it is capable of. It just really needs the rest of those damn function reversed first

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #479 on: 2014-12-31 18:09:06 »
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.
I can try to send you the older version with Blender internal shaders.
By the way, I have a question: do you know how the lighting and shading works? Mostly, I would like to know if there are ways to do better than what Blender internal engine can do - physical lighting (i.e. with light bouncing on objects to provide indirect light sources) and the kinds of shaders which can be used are important.

By the way, I'm into the layering process of ealin_2, and it's a pain in the butt. The way the layers are pre-cut is very annoying: the doors are glitchy, I even had to redesign them. For that matter, the original field has glitchy doors, if you pay attention (namely when the doors are open). I think I may have a workaround, but it's not straightforward (meaning, I have to deviate from how the scenes are originally pre cut for it to look decent).


paul

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #480 on: 2015-01-01 01:45:29 »
I can try to send you the older version with Blender internal shaders.
By the way, I have a question: do you know how the lighting and shading works? Mostly, I would like to know if there are ways to do better than what Blender internal engine can do - physical lighting (i.e. with light bouncing on objects to provide indirect light sources) and the kinds of shaders which can be used are important.

By the way, I'm into the layering process of ealin_2, and it's a pain in the butt. The way the layers are pre-cut is very annoying: the doors are glitchy, I even had to redesign them. For that matter, the original field has glitchy doors, if you pay attention (namely when the doors are open). I think I may have a workaround, but it's not straightforward (meaning, I have to deviate from how the scenes are originally pre cut for it to look decent).

I'm not sure what you're asking? The lighting and shading in ogre/qgears? I think there is a material editor: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=48774

KnifeTheSky77

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #481 on: 2015-01-01 03:39:37 »
According to ththe Complete Guide: Exporting Blender to Ogre from the ogre wiki, dotSceneLoader can deal with the lighting(?)

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #482 on: 2015-01-02 18:57:48 »
I think I (or someone) would need to focus a lot about how to export Blender cycles scenes into Ogre properly - it doesn't seem straightforward if you what to get the shaders right as well as radiosity (or physical lighting).
On a more important note: ealin_2 is done (ready to be played in game) and uploaded to the repo. I'll make a more open release later (probably making a notification on the Graphical mods forum, as well), and if you want to try the scene without access to the repo, you can PM me and I'll email it to you. Some comments:
- Unfortunately, the way the layers are pre-cut created some severe limitations about how to get the doors closed and open. The way it is set in the release is the best that can be achieved, in my opinion. In more details:
- the layers of the doors (closed and open) are not laid over layer #2. As a consequence, if you get the thickness of the doorframe as part of layer #2, it would be laid over the closed door, which is not a desirable result. For that matter, in the original field files, the open doors look glitchy because of the overlay of layer#2 over the open door layers.
- the layers of the open doors are pre-cut in such a way that it does not cover the entire area where the wall should be shaded by the open door. At first, I thought I could shade the wall appropriately depending on whether the door is open or closed, and after a lot of testing, it is doable for only one of the two doors. For the sake of consistency, I preferred not to make any shading of the walls by the doors.
- The lighting and the windows are set in such a way that it is consistent with the exterior look of the house. There is a mismatch with the original field, which features a window on the right hand side (with an overlay of crepuscular rays), because the original field is not consistent with how the windows are located on the exterior. I initially thought of adding crepuscular rays so that it would match the updated location of the windows, but this is not possible because of how the layer of crepuscular rays is pre-cut into the scene.
- The bottom line is: there is a number of small imperfection which cannot be corrected, and the release is the best which could be managed.

Lastly, below is a picture of the final render for the base layer. I hope you'll enjoy  :)



PS: I personally recommend you play with Kaldarasha's models, and edit the characters size with Makou Rector. I personally use 768 for the character size (512 is the default size)
« Last Edit: 2015-01-02 19:07:22 by Mayo Master »

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #483 on: 2015-01-05 02:29:34 »
Alright, folks! ealin_1 is done and uploaded to the repo. Again, please PM me if you want the files while you don't have access to the repo - I'll make the big "Public release" once everything's done.
A few comments:
- I actually redesigned the kitchen area. The decision was made because of very poor perspective effects. Because 2D stuff is laid over the 3D models, if some 2D elements (like the image of the kitchen counter) is shown over the 3d model at an ill-defined location, the results are poor. In this particular instance, the kitchen counter was seemingly as high as Cloud's shoulder, which doesn't make sense. Matters were further complicated by the way the layers are pre-cut, and it took quite a bit of trial and error to figure a nice way to redesign and rearrange the kitchen furniture so that it gives a good impression of perspective, without any kind of glitchy appearance. In the end, I was able to get a satisfying result with no glitchiness, so I'm quite happy about it  :)
- I changed the color of the crepuscular rays (more yellow) which makes more sense considering the lighting setup. It was rather easy, thanks to the new "SunBeam" compositing effect of Blender's newest release.
Below is the result:



Please enjoy!  :)
Next moving on to ealin_12.

PS Again, using Kaldarasha's model, I recommend 768 for the character size using Makou Reactor for this scene.
« Last Edit: 2015-01-05 15:32:48 by Mayo Master »

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #484 on: 2015-01-08 02:37:48 »
And finishing the indoor scenes of Aerith's house with ealin_12. It's uploaded to the repo. Again, should you wish to test it and you don't have access to the repo, please PM me.
 Here's the final result:



Using Kaldarasha's models, I find that a size of 1024 (thus, twice the original size!) gives good results.
I hope you'll enjoy!

Hellbringer616

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #485 on: 2015-01-08 03:07:00 »
Will notes about the sizes be in the final release? I'd like to make all the corrections you recommended, But i won't be playing until Beacause is fixed.

syntax error

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #486 on: 2015-01-08 10:20:43 »
Blender 2.73 has been released and it looks like they fixed performance and lighting problems

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #487 on: 2015-01-08 16:02:07 »
Will notes about the sizes be in the final release? I'd like to make all the corrections you recommended, But i won't be playing until Beacause is fixed.
Of course  :)  My aim is to get the "best possible experience" with the tools available, and tuning the character size is an important part of it, so the notes on the character sizes will be mentioned (or written in a Readme.txt or something).

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #488 on: 2015-01-11 05:51:38 »
Hey guys,

I was working on finalizing eals_1, but it looks like there are some problems and I could certainly use some help - namely, if you have some insight about how field background animations are handled, it would be useful. The problem in this scene is about the animation of the waterfall, in the back.
So, here are the details:
- When eals_1 has the layers decomposed in Palmer, it looks like there are 3 images related to the waterfall animation (eals_1_0_00065664, eals_1_0_00065665, and eals_1_0_00065666). These images look about the same, I am guessing the waterfall animation should be made some sort of loop in alpha value between these layers (or something of the sort). Now, when importing the images in Palmer and asking Palmer to write the modpath textures, Palmer outputs 5 files (eals_1_00_00, eals_1_01_00, eals_1_02_00, eals_1_15_00, eals_1_16_00).
- However, when loading the scene, an error message is displayed: "Glitch: missed palette write to external texture field: eals_1/eals_1_15". As a consequence, the image of the waterfall is static, there is no animation.
- I wondered if the glitch was caused by an incorrect file name (because eals_1_15 seems "missing", while the image file is actually named eals_1_15_00). So I renamed the last two files as eals_1_15 and eals_16, respectively.
- When loading the scene, the error message is no longer there, and the waterfall is animated. BUT: it is actually the original waterfall animation images which are displayed, NOT the modified images from modpath.

So... is there a way to fix this issue? As things stand, either we get a crappy low-resolution animated waterfall, or a high res waterfall which would remain still (along with the Glitch message).
Any help would be greatly appreciated. If you think the question may be better asked elsewhere, please advise  - Maybe Omzy or yarLson would know).

Kaldarasha

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #489 on: 2015-01-11 12:40:56 »
It is the problem with the transparent layers yarLson has mentioned on Aali's driver thread. Atm these layers can't be animated (problem with handling a dynamic alpha value I guess).
The last _00 is to mimic color variations which the textures have as extra information (mainly the magic textures). I wonder if the game use this or something similar to handle the dynamic alpha channel of a texture.

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #490 on: 2015-01-11 16:08:58 »
Oh. I'll do a bit more reading about this then, although you seem to say there's currently no workaround. I did manage to make the static transparent layers work, though. I have them in my release of ealin_1 and ealin_12. However, for it to work, the layer I have to import into Palmer is not processed with respect to its alpha value, the transparency is actually given by the level of black (in a way, I simply have to overlay my transparent layer over a black background to get it to work). But that doesn't seem to work for this case (most likely because this is a case of handling dynamic alpha values, not static).

paul

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #491 on: 2015-01-11 16:12:43 »
The animation is done via field script, some set "parameter" states which seem to just swap tiles around, and some do it by changing the pallets of tiles at runtime. The waterfall appears to be done via the pallet method.

From Makuo reactor tool I think its this script:

Load the palette #8 in the position 0 (color count=256)
Label 1
Copy palette (sourcePal=0, targetPal=16, color count=256)
Multiply RGB(130, 130, 130) on the colors in a palette (sourcePal=0, targetPal=16, first color=Var[5][0], color count=10+1)
Multiply RGB(162, 162, 162) on the colors in a palette (sourcePal=0, targetPal=16, first color=Var[5][3], color count=10+1)
Load the position 16 in the palette #8 (color count=256)
Var[5][0] = Var[5][0] + 12 (8-bit)
Var[5][3] = Var[5][3] + 9 (8-bit)
If Var[5][0] > 100 (else go to label 2)
   Var[5][0] = 0 (8-bit)
Label 2
If Var[5][3] > 138 (else go to label 3)
   Var[5][3] = 0 (8-bit)
Label 3
Wait 1 frame
Go to label 1
Return

Seems like there is another script in that field related to this kind of animation too, I'd have a try with this tool? Perhaps you could add more layers/states and update the animation to use that instead?


Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #492 on: 2015-01-13 17:02:36 »
Thanks paul. The problem is also discussed on the forum thread about Aali's driver. One of the problem is that these odd animations (now that I think about it, thank goodness the flow of the sewer scenes were not relying on that!) are handled by changing color values on an 8-bit color palette, and there's a problem with these palettes:
Quote from: Aali
there's no hardware from this millenium that supports paletted textures

One solution may be to recreate such color palettes - although ultimately they'll be in 8-bit colors, so I'm not sure if such a solution might be decent-looking in the end. I tried to convert a test .png into such a color palette (my antique version of Paintshop can do that), which prompted a brand new error message when loading that scene in the game "Error: Wrong color". I may be onto something, I'll make a test where I set the colors of the png to match the rgb values listed in the script and see what happens.

In the meantime, I think the best for me is to release eals_1 without the waterfall at all (and even prevent it from loading the original palettes), I think the scene looks good as it is. Adding the waterfall would be extra bonus when we actually have the means to do so.

SpooX

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #493 on: 2015-01-13 21:20:22 »
So there are only issues with the animations when a color cycle is being used? can't we change the script part as a workaround?

 8)

Kaldarasha

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #494 on: 2015-01-14 04:47:55 »
So there are only issues with the animations when a color cycle is being used? can't we change the script part as a workaround?

 8)

This would demand to create new files for the waterfall animation and these files must be in the flevel.lgp as well.
I wonder why Aali doesn't use the same trick as he use to mimic the color pallets for magic effects? Like **_15_00, **_15_01, **_15_02, etc. If this would work then Palmer may need an update too to extract the different palettes as textures.

ficedula

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #495 on: 2015-01-14 18:01:46 »
This would demand to create new files for the waterfall animation and these files must be in the flevel.lgp as well.
I wonder why Aali doesn't use the same trick as he use to mimic the color pallets for magic effects? Like **_15_00, **_15_01, **_15_02, etc. If this would work then Palmer may need an update too to extract the different palettes as textures.

Going by the field script above, the issue is that the palette is being changed through code: it's not like the file contains 3 different palettes that get switched between (so you could just have 3 PNG files, one for each version). Instead, some script code changes part of each palette (and because it's script, in theory it could change it by a different amount based on variables, so there could be hundreds, or thousands of different possible palettes that get generated.)

In practice I guess that actually there are a limited number of variations of the palette that actually get set up by the script, but that's why there's no simple solution, if I understand it correctly.

(If I were coding a solution to this - which I'm not - then I'd probably set up the fragment shader to effectively emulate a paletted texture; have the actual data as an integer texture, and send a lookup table to the shader containing the palette data for it to translate. Would have reasonable performance on anything even semi-modern. Certainly a little complex though.)

paul

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #496 on: 2015-01-14 20:48:15 »
Going by the field script above, the issue is that the palette is being changed through code: it's not like the file contains 3 different palettes that get switched between (so you could just have 3 PNG files, one for each version). Instead, some script code changes part of each palette (and because it's script, in theory it could change it by a different amount based on variables, so there could be hundreds, or thousands of different possible palettes that get generated.)

In practice I guess that actually there are a limited number of variations of the palette that actually get set up by the script, but that's why there's no simple solution, if I understand it correctly.

(If I were coding a solution to this - which I'm not - then I'd probably set up the fragment shader to effectively emulate a paletted texture; have the actual data as an integer texture, and send a lookup table to the shader containing the palette data for it to translate. Would have reasonable performance on anything even semi-modern. Certainly a little complex though.)

QGears will have the same issue, I was thinking about building some meta data table that stores which tiles/pallet's are changed. Then it should be possible to generate "normal" texture based animations. But it would also mean rewriting some of the script opcodes so that they simply change the current animation frame rather than changing pixel data.


Kaldarasha

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #497 on: 2015-01-15 07:31:20 »
Going by the field script above, the issue is that the palette is being changed through code: it's not like the file contains 3 different palettes that get switched between (so you could just have 3 PNG files, one for each version). Instead, some script code changes part of each palette (and because it's script, in theory it could change it by a different amount based on variables, so there could be hundreds, or thousands of different possible palettes that get generated.)

In practice I guess that actually there are a limited number of variations of the palette that actually get set up by the script, but that's why there's no simple solution, if I understand it correctly.

(If I were coding a solution to this - which I'm not - then I'd probably set up the fragment shader to effectively emulate a paletted texture; have the actual data as an integer texture, and send a lookup table to the shader containing the palette data for it to translate. Would have reasonable performance on anything even semi-modern. Certainly a little complex though.)

Aye, you are right. I've absolutely forget about that. Aali did said himself that he can only think of a shader based solution for it.

Mayo Master

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #498 on: 2015-01-16 15:41:52 »
Hi folks,

I've released eals_1, the files are on the repo. I'll upload a picture tonight to show you how that looks. Again, if someone happens to be interested in trying out the field, while not having access to the repo, you can PM me so that I can email the files to you. 3 notes about that release:
- Given there's no simple way to get the waterfall to work properly, I've released this scene without the waterfall.
- I changed the color of the crepuscular rays (yellow to emulate a winter sun)
- The default character size (512 in Makou Reactor) works well.

That wraps up Elmya and Aerith's house. Now, onto the Sector 5 slum market.

Hellbringer616

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Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums
« Reply #499 on: 2015-01-16 15:47:26 »
Wonderful release man, I wish I had the artist talent to join you all but anytime I have tried I have trouble making a cube haha!
Look forward to seeing all of sector 5 completed!