Messages

151

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-08-05 20:12:31 »

If you follow the link I posted and click 'Download' on the right side of the page, FacePalmer.zip will popup allowing you to download the entire thing in one shot. I'm not sure how bandwidth works if multiple people are downloading it from there at once, but once you get it, it sure would be nice to have a torrent available since it would likely be much faster.

Edit: Link didn't work, see torrent in separate post

152

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-08-05 19:20:30 »

Well, here it is. I might give a picture tutorial later, but let me know if you're able to download it (it is 3GB)

FacePalmer

You need WinRAR to unpack.

1) Click 'Download' on the right side of the webpage (make sure you're inside the FacePalmer folder of SkyDrive)
2) Unzip with WinRAR
3) Use WinRAR to batch unRAR all files inside the field folder (select all, right click, extract to separate folders)
4) Delete original archives in this folder
5) Drag the entire FacePalmer folder to your mods directory
6) Set your mod_path = FacePalmer/ in ff7_opengl.cfg
7) Play the game

Edit: Link didn't work, see torrent in separate posts

153

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-08-05 17:54:15 »

ugg I should have been more thorough about this is prior explanation but you should have added a feature to add in black behind the bottom layer and behind all lighting layers. You see, perfect resize doesn't fit the proportions exactly, it's usually a few pixels off of the original and without the black behind it you can get some weird, though usually hardly noticeable cutoffs. It gets really bad in the lighting layers however and can get pretty blocky and unattractive. All of which can be easily avoided by a little bit of black. Black doesn't show at all in the lighting layers, and any transparency in the bottom layer will be changed to black anyway so it doesn't affect quality in any negative ways. I'll try and add it in myself if you don't much mind.

In the end I will probably end up using your script. I will spend the majority of the rest of the project time cleaning up and error correcting. While scripts are convenient, I should expect some level of err, and that kinda thing just doesn't "jive" well with me.

I did put a black background behind everything except the non-alpha parallax layers, so that shouldn't be an issue. I playtested from the beginning up to the sector 7 slums last night and all looked well except 2 very minor things that are hardly noticeable unless you're looking for them. My biggest concern is the special cases once I get all this uploaded, and there are only like 10 to fix (I did half) before everything is 100%. And by 100% I mean from what I can see right now. I'm sure people will report errors as it is playtested and those can be addressed then.

154

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-08-01 02:47:04 »

Looks pretty much the same then facepalmer skript and works with palmer batch-import

It will only look the same if you got lucky and only had to resize some alpha animations. If you did that to anything else that has to fit together like background + foreground + foreground animations, lines will show up everywhere. That's the basic reason for developing FacePalmer, because you can't simply batch resize everything.

Edit: Ok, I understand what you mean now. Those files should be fine to resize on your own since they are just layovers and not dependent on the background. I just fixed a bug that caused FacePalmer to stop periodically on several files (the 3% I was talking about). Now it should only stop if you run out of memory / crash for some reason (although the program should not leak). I'll look into why it messes up hyou5_2 and I'll try to post an updated script shortly.

It will still stop on a couple files like trnad_1 and las4_3 since they do not have a background (00000000), so just remove them from your input folder. I've added them to the list of special cases that will be released.

And for the record, hyou5_2 contains 257 files... 

Update: I'm currently in the process of uploading all the files. That means you guys can expect something to play with within a day or two... 
Keep in mind, there are a few special cases that have yet to be fixed and integrated. These will be completed and distributed as time permits.

155

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-31 19:10:49 »

Yah, until I can fix it, just skip that one. It happens on like 3% of the files. I'd like to see someone get some stuff in game and let me know how it looks and feels if you're able. Rough spots can be ironed out easily.

156

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-29 22:55:19 »

Yes, that is a bug I just found, a few files have the wrong sizes by like 1 pixel. Until I have time to fix it, just manually fix them and continue.

Edit: Retrospectively, this comment doesn't make sense. He was talking about something different that I have since fixed.

157

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-29 01:51:34 »

This is from the first post
:
Instructions
1) Extract flevel.lgp using UnLGP
2) Copy and paste the script into a text editor and save as a .jsx
3) This script must be placed into %Photoshop%\Presets\Scripts
4) Batch export layers to PNGs in Palmer
5) Place all of these folders inside %Photoshop%\ff7TexturesIN\
6) Open Photoshop, run File->Scripts->FacePalmer
7) Open Palmer again and batch import the folders in %Photoshop%\ff7TexturesOUT\
8 ) Place all new folders in Palmer's output folder into %FFVII%\mods\%modpath%\field\
9) Play the game!

For setting up the modpath, just change modpath in ff7 config to FacePalmer\ and put field folders in mods\FacePalmer\field\

Here are the links to Palmer and the Frontend:
http://backup.ninjaloot.se/share/palmer-0.6b.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/?a0btb4nc6o7hpx8

158

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-29 01:34:36 »

I rendered some backgrounds, how do I get em to work with Aali's?

You've got to batch import them in Palmer 0.6b (the Palmer Frontend makes it easier, see the Palmer thread for those). After you've done that, you can drag and drop the files into your mod folder and they will work if you've set the paths up right in the config file.

159

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-28 06:10:53 »

This script can be used by anyone for anything, totally open source. You can also modify it to your liking and include credits if you so choose. The special cases I've found off the bat are listed in the first post, however there may be more minor ones I missed that will surface when the game is played.

To add to that, there are a few backgrounds that the script stops on for some reason. For the time being, just skip those when they crash the program and consider them special cases.

160

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.8 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-26 22:36:20 »

I always get:

Error 24:folderList.getFiles is no function
Line:107
->   fileList = folderList.getFiles("*.png")//List of all layers in texture

Any ideas?

I have Photoshop CS 5.1 Extended 12.1 or do I need a different version?

-----------------

Fixed it by using the 32bit Version. Seems like 64bit doesn't work.

Glad to see you got it working. I haven't tested it on any other machines so let me know how it is doing.

And I will upload the images probably next week since I'm totally swamped this week. Can barely write replies here. 

161

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.7 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-24 23:20:50 »

well if I end up using your script I can just change it to my liking, but I am thinking now that I used a setting of 30. I personally really love the grain with perfectum but its up to your taste. I am not using film grain however, just regular grain. I don't want to hinder your artistic opinion but I will say that when I made the decision, I had the Team Avalanche high res field models in mind (which are unreleased at this point) and not the originals.

Fair enough, I tried to make it easy to modify the script by placing all adjustable parameters at the top, although the perfectum filter needs to be re-recorded and pasted into the script if you want to change it from 20 since it has a weird way of coding its parameters (seemingly random numbers). Everything else, including the grain option (i meant grain, not film grain) is in there and needs minimal effort to be changed. The worst part is running a machine for hours to get all the images processed, but that can't really be avoided.

Also, if anyone has downloaded the script today, you might want to wait until tomorrow to get the most recent one because i've been constantly changing things and fixing bugs and have reuploaded the file several times.

Edit
Its getting late and I need to wake up early for my orientation, so it looks like I'm done. yarLson, if you've got the time and equipment, can you fix the rest of the special cases? I've fixed the ones that have strikethrough font and will upload that file when I find the best method to upload the rest of the images. There may be some special cases that I've missed, but those will most likely be figured out by playing the game. If there is something wrong with the script let me know and if I can find the time to fix it I will. This marks the end of my dedicated effort on this project, but I'll pop in when I can to check on things. Expect the images (all non-special cases and the special cases I've fixed) to be uploaded in the next week or so unless someone else with the required tools decides to beat me to it 

162

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.5 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-24 19:56:52 »

if I like the way your script turns out I'll work on the special cases by hand for you. Then we can finally have a finished product


If they are anything like some of the special cases I've come across, you won't finish by Monday...absolutely no way. One of the shinra building backgrounds took me a total of about 9 hours.

Do you know if this script would work on a mac or am I gonna have to high jack my friends computer to test it out?

If it was blin69_1, which actually requires the lights to be on to fill in the background's edges, I finished that one yesterday. It was pretty tricky, but the script took care of all except 00000000 and 00065664 / 00065665 (lights), so I was able to get it done in about 2 hours. If it was blin66_2 and blin66_6 (shinra meeting room), the script took care of almost every image in that one except a couple which look simple to fix. I also wrote chorace into the script, but we might want to do that one anyways because there is a tiny anomaly if you look close enough.

I don't see any reason it wouldn't work on a mac since I'm pretty sure all javascripts for photoshop work for any platform (but don't hold me to that). So if you've got perfect resize and perfectum, you might be good to go. I'm not sure if it works on anything other than cs5.1, but I wouldn't be surprised as almost all functions I use are basic ones.

Edit
I was comparing:
Film Grain 15% + Perfectum 40: Loss of too much detail, right amount of noise
Film Grain 15% + Perfectum 20: Right amount of detail, too much noise
Perfectum 40: Loss of too much detail, not enough noise
Perfectum 20: Right amount of detail, slightly not enough noise

So my conclusion is that between 10 and 30 smoothing is probably best in Perfectum, while less film grain should be used (~10). The film grain does add a little to the realism of the scene but given that the characters themselves are simply shaded polygons I think its best that the backgrounds match, so I've opted to go with Perfectum 20 without film grain. Tell me if you think this is the right choice. At this point I need to make a hard decision because once I start doing the special cases I don't want to have to redo them with different settings.

163

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.5 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-24 02:25:54 »

Ok, I'll continue to iron out the special cases in the meantime...

Edit: I think I'm just going to use the algorithm to resize the majority of the special case files and simply do the portions that don't work by hand and release an archive separately. It will take too long to add all of them into the script. I coded an exception for chorace & chorace2 and that added like 200 lines. Plus, i have to start med school monday and i'd like this finished before then 

164

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.5 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-23 19:50:28 »

I used filter>noise>grain

are you using the Perfectum filter? If not I wouldn't recommend adding grain because it is too noticeable without the smoothing plugin

Yes, I'm doing the Perfectum at the default setting of 40 after applying the film grain. I think we have slightly different versions of photoshop though, because I don't have the grain option in noise, but there is one in filter->texture with similar options to what you've mentioned, so I set those to intensity 15 contrast 50 (default) and type = soft because the regular seemed too much. The result looks pretty damn good as far as I can see at 4x resolution.

I replaced the samples in the first post with real output from this technique, compared to the original blown up to the same size. The difference is kind of ridiculous.

165

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.5 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-22 22:06:52 »

Added a demo (only 4 fields), see above 

Edit: I think I set the film grain a little too high. yarLson, when you said 15%, contrast unchanged, where did you find those options? They aren't the same as in Filter->Artistic->Film Grain or the one in Perfect Resize.

166

FF7 Tools / Re: [REL] FacePalmer v2.5 (dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds for ff7!)

« on: 2011-07-22 17:26:56 »

Haha can't argue with that, FacePalmer it is then.

Hellbringer, I think thats the plan, but I would like to get it 100% before I do that, which isn't far at all now, thank god.

167

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Keystone v1.1

« on: 2011-07-21 05:22:12 »

Now keep in mind, since I'm simply recording the Perfect Resize action and plugging that into a function, the specific software version of Perfect Resize probably needs to be exactly the same. What this means is that it is better to get whatever version you can get ahold of (even the older Genuine Fractals), record the action, and then overwrite the perfectResize() function. That does require a bit of know-how (easily searchable on the net), but there's no better way I know of to do it.

Edit: Posted new version of script above. (v2.4)

The algorithm has narrowed it down to 20 special cases (out of 689). I have implemented yarLson's resizing methods and a foreground smoothing method I came up with. So far, the script should work on 669/689 fields =  97%. This is counting the backgrounds, foregrounds, animations, alpha layers, and parallax layers.

168

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Keystone v1.1

« on: 2011-07-20 16:36:57 »

Does it? I've got the full version  , but I thought their full image-editing software suite has the watermark and perfect resize alone is a fully-featured trial.

169

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Keystone v1.1

« on: 2011-07-20 05:53:08 »

Thanks a lot yarLson! I'll try to design that part modularly so it can all be plugged into one function. That should make the products of this script look perfect. The one thing I am concerned about is the time it will take to run, but if I can run it on my machine with those parameters and then distribute the content in another way, let me know. I'm not sure what the rules on that are here. Perhaps that is better than simply posting the script since it requires some specific software and hardware to work.

170

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Keystone v1.1

« on: 2011-07-17 04:03:50 »

gogogogogogogo! so looking forward to testing some new field bgs. Really wish I could get into doing some of this work myself, but I'm fairly sure my old P4 3.2 couldnt hack it

That's sure a motivator 
I just moved into a new apartment and I'll do my best to work on it over the next week. I may end up posting the finalized photoshop script without proper resizing parameters, but that can be filled in by others like yarlson and sl1982 when they get a chance. At this point I'm ironing out the special cases, which is tedious work.

171

General Discussion / Re: Any mods released with improved pre-rendered backgrounds ?

« on: 2011-07-09 20:40:48 »

Don't forget Keystone 

172

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Keystone v1.1

« on: 2011-07-01 05:40:18 »

@DLPB - support for jpg would depend on Aali's OpenGL driver support and atm it uses png's. Considering the difficulty of writing an algorithm that accounts for more than a hundred special cases, I'm not too worried about optimization right now. Can always improve speed and size later.

@Marc - thanks for your interest in this mod. The new script I'm writing depends on Palmer (0.6b). I am working diligently to put out a 2.0 version and I anticipate being finished in the next couple of weeks. The current script only works on standard backgrounds with a background, foreground, and alpha animations without any special case requirements. When 2.0 is finished, it should be capable of batch resizing every single field background without artifacts (assuming Palmer is perfect at importing its own exports at this point), so hang tight 

Also, I welcome any info on the actual filters and resizing parameters in photoshop to get the best quality images at 2x and 4x, if anyone has some numbers for me. That's the one part I haven't spent much time on that others have.

173

Releases / Re: [WIP/REL] Project Blackfan

« on: 2011-07-01 05:31:10 »

kicker,

Your mod path should be the 19th line of ff7_opengl.cfg (not ff8).
You can set the mod path to whatever you like (for example, mod_path = Blackfan/) and this corresponds to a directory inside your %ff7%/mods/ directory
So if you set the mod_path = Blackfan/, you need to create a directory named Blackfan in %ff7%/mods/ and place your field directory inside of that.

Good luck 

174

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Keystone v1.1

« on: 2011-06-25 02:24:22 »

One would guess for doubly resized, you're looking at 4x the texture size and for quadruply resized, you're looking at 16x. However, since PNG compression isn't simply a bitmap of pixels, the file sizes differ from those estimates depending on the number of colors in the image. For an example reference:

md1stin (first scene in the game):
512x512 (original): 0.31mb
1024x1024: 2.08mb
2048x2048: 5.89mb

As a REALLY rough estimate, we can multiply these by the number of background files (689) to get:
512x512 (original): 0.21gb
1024x1024: 1.43gb
2048x2048: 4.06gb

The huge difference between the original and the doubly resized is probably the result of the fractal algorithm adding a lot of different colors while the relatively small difference between the doubly resized and quadruply resized is probably due to the fact that PNG compression becomes more efficient as the number of pixels increases and the number of colors remains the same.

175

FF7 Tools / Re: [WIP] Keystone v1.1

« on: 2011-06-24 03:02:29 »

I actually figured all that stuff out. Snagged Q-gears' filesystem code for UnLZSing and it worked like a charm. I used the reference on the wiki to decode the field backgrounds, but found that it was far from complete, as you said. Firstly, for animations (Sfx!=0), you need to use ZZ3[0] and ZZ3[1] instead of SrcX and SrcY. Apparently there are more than BG1 and BG2 sprites in some field files (think BG3 and BG4) and they have similar structures (length followed by 12 bytes of unknown data followed by sprite data). This explained most of the misaligned/messed up textures like anfrst1. These extra sprite groups include the parallax layers. After that, there are little black spots that appear on many textures which have a masking bit of 1 (1 00000 00000 00000), which simply means to use the first color in the palette (got this tidbit from asking Aali). While I wrote an entire viewer for it, it is not nearly as complete and robust as Palmer. Since Aali's new release I have little use for my program so I'm working on getting this script to full working order now.