Messages

76

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Gallery J....

« on: 2014-02-25 10:04:44 »

Oh well yeah, doesn't always feel like being alive...
But anyway, got myself a new renderer, what do you think?
This will give me some more possibilities...



Think about a Final Fantasy VII - Color your own screen version
 

77

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

« on: 2014-02-18 16:02:43 »

Nice work Mayo.
it's wonderfull to see the inside of the rocket from the other scene

With regards to lighting, Midgar is a funny place...
It's always dark and cloudy, no 'sunny' or daylight picture exists, except the one with Red looking from a distance..
So if you look at the top plate, it is already very dark. You can imagine when having a plate above you, at about 50 meters,
there's not a lot of light left. I would say use any trick at your disposal to balance between reality and fantasy. That would
mean, use any shortcut to lower noise and rendering-times 

As for imageshack, I switched over a long time ago to flickr, works fine for me.

Anyway, I hope you don't feel too lonely here, as I know, many are watching us.... 

Keep it up, and enjoy as you go.
 

78

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Gallery J....

« on: 2014-01-17 17:22:43 »

Some updates here...
Streets:


Sea (small test):


Unfortunately RL is a time-killer...

But hey, enjoy.
 

79

Completely Unrelated / Re: MARS-ONE Results

« on: 2014-01-01 11:16:52 »

I bet there are some serious lag times when going on the internet while you're there.....

 

80

Team Avalanche / Re: [Tutorial] How Palmer works - Get New Fields into game

« on: 2013-08-26 19:25:28 »

...is there a way to make the 2012 re-release read the recreated layers without converting to the 1998 version ?

There isnt. The steam release uses a different video driver

The only way I can think of would be to re-import the files back into the LGP files.

But I've not tested that.
 

81

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Mideel WIP

« on: 2013-08-20 17:04:50 »

Ouch. My eyes.
It is right on top of the forums and he even uses this scene as an example lol.

And it'seven on Windows 7 x64 
Let me know if it works for you.
 

82

Team Avalanche / Re: [Tutorial] How Palmer works - Get New Fields into game

« on: 2013-08-08 16:05:42 »

Ok, for completion sake 

First there are several tools available

• Ali's lgp/unlgp - LGP/UnLGP (command line) Extracts and packs LGP archives via a command line. Forum
• Lucksy's ulgp (command line) - Extracts and packs LGP archives via a command line. Expands on Lgp/unlgp by placing both functions into one tool. Tool can add files to archives without the need to extract first. Forum
• Ficudela's LGPTools  - Extracts and packs LGP archives with a GUI. Replaced by LGP/unLGP.  link

all above tools can be found in the wiki
Note, Ficudela's is listed as obsolete, do not use, but it extracts fine, if I remember correctly it was the compressing that had an bug inside...

Original PC Version
Same as below, only different data path

2012 SE Version

browse to your game folder; <Where-everinstalled>\Square Enix\FINAL FANTASY VII\data\field
copy the flevel.lgp file to a (empty) folder of your liking.
copy one of the above tools, if command-line to the same folder I used Ficudela's which has a nice interface
extract the whole, or by Ficudela's only the selected one (mostly extract all)

now you'll end up with a directory filled with files without an extention, these are the files you need for the above tutorial.

2013 Steam Version
no clue, don't have steam 

Hope this helps...
 

83

Team Avalanche / Re: [Tutorial] Palmer works - Get New Fields into game

« on: 2013-08-07 18:15:49 »

Part 3, how to get the new layers into the Game

Make sure to have the above images in the correct naming in a single directory.
Make sure there are no underscores in the directory names.

for this tutorial I only changed the original...since I don't have this field rendered...
now open Palmer,
reload the original field file


left click on the window, select 'import PNG files' and select the newly created png files.

If all goes well, the scene should be shown on screen, otherwise play around with the right click menu and turn layers on and off.

note the difference...
If all new files are loaded, once again left click on the screen and select 'Write Modpath Textures'

now you'll end up with several files looking very scrambled;

• itmin2_00_00.png
• itmin2_01_00.png
• itmin2_02_00.png

These are the files which should be placed in the modpath, in this example:
mods/<modpath>field/itmin2/ (Palmer will tell you this also...)


If the above has been completed, fire up FF7 (it's usefull to have a savefile with a save located close to the field) and go to the field.
Don't have the old version installed, so maybe later I'll drop some screens here...
Basically that's all there is to it.


 

84

Team Avalanche / Re: [Tutorial] Palmer works - Get New Fields into game

« on: 2013-08-07 18:11:06 »

part 2 (how to recreate the layers)
(to be filled later)
Ok, now we have our different layers, what we do is import them in any graphical package that supports layers, I use Photoshop, but anything else should do as well.

Import the layers in the corresponding order (file-name-numbers from low to high).

After all layers are imported, they are aligned by slightly moving them to fit the picture, now it just looks like the background in the game.

To get the correct size we want we have to enlarge the layers 4 times.

depending on the method of enlargement, there might be some artifacts, which are typicly visible at the colored green layers

Now we have the right size of the different layers which need to be rendered.
The rendering of these parts vary from 3d tool to 3d tool, but in principle it should be similar.

As for creating the final renderings, one might be able to use different render passes. Use the property where you can differentiate the objects being rendered, as a layer, or a seperate pass.
This functionality differs between every CC-Tool (Content Creation tool).

As an example here you can see some different passes of a field file I created earlier (long time ago....when the earth was stil flat... )


Full render - Material ID's - Object ID's

This gave me in the end, as a quick and dirty not completely cleaned up version:

see note on enlarging the original layers...

Additional information on object seperation in the renderers can be found here:

• Blender - (see IndexOb)
• Maya
• 3ds Max - (See Material ID)

This list is not complete as it differs between the render engines being used...

85

Team Avalanche / [Tutorial] How Palmer works - Get New Fields into game

« on: 2013-08-07 18:08:40 »

Part 1, how to get the layers out of the Game

needed tools:

• FF7-PC (for getting the lgp files, the version does not matter).
• Palmer

I'm not going into unpacking the field file, but make sure you have it extracted, giving 'itmin2'

now open Palmer,

left click on the window, select open field file and select the extracted field file.

If all goes well, the scene should be shown on screen.
once again left click on the screen and select 'Export PNG Files'

now you'll end up with several files;

• itmin2_0_00000000.png
• itmin2_0_00000128.png
• itmin2_0_00000129.png
• itmin2_0_00000130.png
• itmin2_0_00000516.png

Like this:

These are the different layers of the field file.

Now what you have to do is to recreate these specific files (with higher resolutions of course )
(that's for the next part)
 

86

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Mideel WIP

« on: 2013-06-27 18:59:43 »

So how exactly do I get that in game?

Part 1, how to get the layers out of the Game

needed tools:

• FF7-PC
• Palmer

I'm not going into unpacking the field file, but make sure you have it extracted, giving 'itmin2'

now open Palmer,
left click on the window, select open field file and select the extracted field file.
If all goes well, the scene should be shown on screen.
once again left click on the screen and select 'Export PNG Files'
now you'll end up with several files;

• itmin2_0_00000000.png
• itmin2_0_00000128.png
• itmin2_0_00000129.png
• itmin2_0_00000130.png
• itmin2_0_00000516.png

These are the different layers of the field file.

Now what you have to do is to recreate these specific files (with higher resolutions of course )

Part 2, how to get the new layers into the Game

Make sure to have the above images in the correct naming in a single directory.
Make sure there are no underscores in the directory names.

now open Palmer,
left click on the window, select 'import PNG files' and select the newly created png files.
If all goes well, the scene should be shown on screen, otherwise play around with the right click menu and turn layers on and off.
If all new files are loaded, once again left click on the screen and select 'Write Modpath Textures'
now you'll end up with several files;

• itmin2_00_00.png
• itmin2_01_00.png
• itmin2_02_00.png

These are the files which should be placed in the modpath, in this example:
mods/<modpath>field/itmin2/ (Palmer will tell you this also...)

If the above has been completed, fire up FF7 (it's usefull to have a savefile with a save located close to the field) and go to the field.

Basically that's all there is to it.

(there might be some catch with the bit-depth of the png's, but don't remeber that exactly anymore)
I hope this helps, otherwise I might fill this up later with some screenshots if needed/wanted.

 

[edit:field file and png's are uploaded in the repo under Original Models (Reference) under the name Tut.zip]

87

Team Avalanche / Re: Tiny Bronco

« on: 2013-06-06 18:41:02 »

... my actual jobs are keeping me very busy and tired, I don't have the energy to do 3d modelling when I'm home (I just need to unplug my brain...

Now that sounds very very familiar....
 

88

Team Avalanche / Re: Tiny Bronco

« on: 2013-06-03 19:45:26 »

Nice, looking forward to the landing scene....... (cut-scene that is).

PS if you like challanging transport models, give highwind a go....
 

89

Team Avalanche / Re: Tiny Bronco

« on: 2013-04-29 10:18:37 »

I've put a 3ds file into the repo (ref.org.models).
 

90

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

« on: 2013-04-29 08:32:10 »

Just to show that I've started to work on mds5_w. I actually got a "new" computer, in fact I tried to repurpose a PC that was being disused in my work... unfortunately, it turned out that I have only a chipset acting as a graphic card, which is terrible. It has a bit more CPU and RAM than my laptop, but the GPU is so poor that it creates aliasing problems on the renders.

you could use that old baby for different purposes as well, I just set up a NAS with Nas4free, with a low powered PC to have all my files in a central place and available from any computer I might be working on.

So... there are mostly 2 things that have been bothering me in that scene. First is the seat on the left hand side, near the back wall of the bus, where one of the shop clerk sits. This particular seat is actually considerably smaller that all the other seats on the scene. I thought of resizing it so that it matches the others, but it looks like the walkmesh in that area corresponds to the small height of the seat. So...
a/ I can carry on with a seat whose size matches the other, but we'll have to test how that'd look in game
b/ I keep the seat tiny, and we'll have to assume that a kid's seat is being used in that place.

could be a child-seat, I wouldn't worrie about the size difference.

The other part that concerns me is much worse: the bus driver seat, dashboard, etc. In the original picture, it's actually a complete nonsense. The seat is misaligned with the cabin, the height of the seat and its position would make it impossible to see the road when driving, it's a mess really...

Well, actually there's a third thing that may need to be corrected. There's some sort of metallic handrail+grid between the bus driver seat and a passenger seat behind it. In the original picture, this handrail/grid is in the middle of the walkmesh 

About the other things....considering we are in the slums, where everything around is being used, trash is dropped there from the plates, so it is most unlikely the bus will ever drive away. A driver seat might be adjustable, the rail might be moved to a different place... who knows. I wouldn't worrie about it all too much.

Use the force your instincts Luke
 

91

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

« on: 2013-04-16 15:44:12 »

7mimic is a fine tool to use, I use it to extract the backgrounds, however to get the different layers, you do need Palmer, you also need it to construct the layers again to be able to put it in game (mod dir).

Since the psx version is bound to hardware, it makes no sense in trying to get updated images inside, exept if we have some briljant genius who can port the whole game to the ps3....
 

92

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

« on: 2013-03-26 00:23:43 »

Very nice. I'm looking forward to the completed scene renders 
By the way, the server crash from a few weeks ago deleted your gallery of the Forgotten City, any thought of remaking the thread?

Thanx, currently mostly working in Photoshop, UV-ing....is slow.

oh somebody noticed the forgotten city is forgotten, well I waited for Qhimm to restore the database, but that didn't happen to the latest updates... so I guess it has really become a forgotten city

 

93

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

« on: 2013-03-24 23:57:04 »

2014-12-11

- Train completely re-rigged (as scaling the train to correct size completely screwed up the whole) now I'm able to drag the train through the viewports with correct animation.
- Added breaks for the train (dynamic).
- Started un UV mapping and materials of the train and fixed an issue with the nose.

- Tanker resized to match train scale, still needs under carriage.

Personel wagon:
- retopo on main shell.
- Uv mapping finished, materials in progress, some texts are not complete.


from left to right:
DG5638B      神羅百型      ShinraHyakuGat....      弐式五O....      DG5638B
                          Created by KOB....


Any help in the missing texts is most welcome....
 

2015-02-02
small update



 

94

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

« on: 2013-03-24 23:56:31 »

Train evolution
once upon a time it started out like:


a rebuild....


with the goal to have it animated like:


now behold:
Press play on the picture to continue...


PS how do you like my handpainted material? 

enjoy
 

95

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

« on: 2013-03-24 23:55:58 »

To get a clear galery...


Warehouse


Station platform


TrainHouse

Wall painting

 

96

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Mideel WIP

« on: 2013-03-24 10:25:37 »

What I need are some hires textures mostly of wood shot from pretty far away.
I add what I currently think as an image.

The place where i get my textures from is this

as a side note, I don't know why people keep going on about 5 times the resolution, this is an overkill, 4 times original is the way to go.
 

97

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Mideel WIP

« on: 2013-01-14 22:42:27 »

ohw, feeld like you could live there nice going.
never noticed the 'Spirits within' poster in the original though 
 

98

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

« on: 2013-01-13 19:53:17 »

you really can overdo things....stairs, regulations, next you're going to stamp an ISO number on the door... 
as for the stones on the floor, go either with a displacement map, or even a modifier, in that way you can paint the stones and be done with it. I would love to see some wires of the current scene.
Nice start though, I see you refined the stair-pillars.
 

99

Team Avalanche / Re: [HD Remake] Gallery J....

« on: 2013-01-05 18:06:39 »

I prefere not to have water in my laptop, although I did put my keyboard under the faucet one time.... 

100

Team Avalanche / Re: The Market

« on: 2013-01-05 18:05:05 »

nice start, and welcome back