Messages

76

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-06 07:03:30 »

Just so you know, I have the image evaluator set up to not add any duplicate file names to the database. If you do dump any missing textures in the future don’t worry messing stuff up. Just putting it in the missing textures directory and I’ll take care of it.

Didn’t get a chance to work on much today. Made some progress fixing up Zack a little bit, as well as did some self-teaching for setting up “artboards” in photoshop so that whenever I make a change to the a character skin I can apply it to each texture and export it them all at once. My personal goal for this week is (at the least) finish up scaling any missing textures and set up artboards for all the character textures. You’re using photoshop, right? I’ll upload these artboards files to the GitHub page so that you/others can utilize them.

By the way, I think we should set up a discord. It would be easier to communicate.

77

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-04 19:16:13 »

Do you have texture saving enabled? If you saved the non-upscaled textures would you mind uploading them to the missed textures directory? That’s where I’ve been putting any “masters” that got missed on the initial upscale. It would make it easier for me.

Edit: looking at the github it looks like one of my pull requests didn’t work right... once I get back to my pc tonight I’ll have to double check. I thought I got a big portion of those already.

78

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-04 14:46:26 »

Yeah I saw that! 

My goal isn’t perfection, either. If you look in the priority folders those are textures I thought were particularly bad looking & prominent.

I will put the one animation for Zack on my list. I might be relatively inactive for the next few days, just a heads up.

79

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-04 06:17:24 »

I got kinda bored with the foliage textures so I decided to put a bit of time in improving the details on zack.

80

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-03 04:54:46 »

I got some feedback saying that downloading this from github is very slow - here is a google drive link to the version we have now: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xj4KSkRlcfxIlmmRYiCLhOmc4P6A_-Kw/view?usp=sharing


Keep in mind that the github page will always have the latest available version - I will try to remember to update this link as things progress.

81

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-02 04:05:29 »

Posting an example here so the work can be seen:


Original


AI upscaled... I put a background on this one to make sure the artifacts could be clearly seen



A little bit of TLC put on it and it looks much better. I kind of have a process now so hopefully the rest of them should be done in the next few days.

Devina, continue working as you are, I think its a good idea. Just make sure you push your work to the repository. I recommend you get the github desktop application that way you'll have a working folder on your harddrive to more easily get your work uploaded. The best way to make sure we don't do overlapping work is to work in different areas and to keep the branch up to date.

82

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-01 22:17:23 »

That looks very very good. Great job!

As for the world map, check out the /edits/linked objects folder and open world_map.psb . Assuming you're using photoshop it is a smart object that will update in your documents if its modified. Here's a png tho.


As far as the source, I took a depth map meant for a 3d printer and essentially colorized/texturized it.
 
Yesterday I was mostly working on improving the texture viewer. Today I'm working on the foliage textures. I haven't pushed anything yet. I decided to do these first because the AI really did a bad job and they require a bunch of tedious editing. I've taken a big chunk out of it so far though.

83

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-07-01 01:43:13 »

Yeah, the way the emulator dumps the textures really works against us. I wish there were a better way to distinguish what we were dealing with.

I spent waaaay too long today fiddling with this. I guess you could say the whole thing is a learning experience! Whatever my next project is will hopefully go smoother.

Anyways, I got the evaluator able to filter by the available categories. It could be implemented a little better but I think I'm almost at the point where it works for what we need it for and I won't be really improving it much. Tomorrow I will add a search field so that you can search by filename.
Honestly its too difficult to go search for specific textures so what I'm doing is just getting myself into a category and working at it one by one.

84

Releases / Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-30 03:36:03 »

Devina, I edited your idea a little bit. I tried to put the psd file on git but apparently it was too big.

Otherwise, some work done on the backend stuff for the texture gallery/viewer.  Eventually I'd like to develop it as a more flexible tool so that other people making similar projects will be able to utilize it. I've got two more days in a row off from my day job so hopefully I'll be able to implement all the features in that time.

For those wondering what I'm talking about:



If you run "eval_img.py" (python required - instructions on github) you can use this program to compare the original texture vs the upscaled texture, as well as open up both files in your favorite editor/viewer. Hopefully I will get some updates done soon which will let users apply filters to easily find the texture that they want to edit.

85

Releases / FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-26 05:46:35 »

After a couple of months of work, I'm finally ready to present to you all the first beta for my (much bigger than imagined) quarantine project.

Here's some screenshots:











A big thank you is necessary to Devina and KaosuReido of this very forum, whose work in upscaling the FF7CC UI inspired me to start working on this project.

Downloads:
Download FF7CCUP on Github.

Please note: This modification requires the US Version of the game ONLY (GameID ULUS10336).

For the best experience, I suggest using Github Desktop.

Windows installation instructions:

• Install PPSSPP.
• Open PPSSPP and run FF7CC
• While the game is running, press ESC then open SETTINGS
• Go to TOOLS then DEVELOPER TOOLS
  
• Uncheck "Save new textures"
• Check "Replace textures"
• Click "Create/Open textures.ini file for current game" (This will make sure you have the required folders set up for the rest of the installation if for whatever reason they don't exist already). On the text file that opens, go to "file>save as" and see which directory it is in. This is your Game Directory
• Exit the game or close PPSSPP. (PPSSPP will not reload the textures.ini file until you exit to the main menu)
• Download and install Github Desktop.
• Go to the FF7CCUP Github Repository and press the green "Code" button, then "Open with Github Desktop."
  If you would prefer not to use Github Desktop, download the zip and extract the contents into the Game Directory.
  
• Clone the repository to the PPSSPP documents folder:
  • Default directory: C:\Users\[username]\Documents\PPSSPP\PSP\TEXTURES\ULUS10336\
  • Retroarch: [retroarch directory]\saves\PSP\TEXTURES\ULUS10336\
• Let the repository download. Grab a coffee or whatever. Relax.
• Open PPSSPP and enjoy the game.

86

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-26 05:25:47 »

I'm going to make a thread in the main graphical releases forum.

87

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-25 22:40:32 »

Only about 500 more textures to organize, gonna take a break for right now. I should finish by tonight.

88

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-23 02:49:04 »

I completely understand that. Hopefully I will be able to finish within the next few days.

89

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-22 22:19:28 »

I'm about 3/5 done with the sorting now. I decided to just focus on that for the time being as (hopefully) it would make the project more accessible for additional people to collaborate.

90

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-19 01:54:43 »

The sorting looks a bit confusing so I'll leave it to you.

Right now, I'm going to work on the Genesis monitors at the beginning of the game.
I think it'd be easier to redesign the UI a little, but I plan on doing more later.

Before:


After (WIP):



How do you feel about using the Remake's version of the logo?


Original:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/f/f7/Shinra_Electric_Power_Company_logo_from_Compilation_of_Final_Fantasy_VII.png/revision/latest?cb=20200513020619

Remake:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/8/82/Shinra_Electric_Power_Company_logo_from_Final_Fantasy_VII_Remake.png/revision/latest?cb=20200513021046

The only difference is that it's Shinra, not Shin-Ra.

This would mean there would be more consistency between the two games, and it's called "Shinra" in text during Crisis Core.

All that sounds fine to me. I've made the sorting less confusing/work better but I don't mind doing all of it. Its kinda mind-numbing but easy, too.

By the way, I figured out how they were doing the transparency. Just put everything into a group and add a mask to it, then fill it with something less than white



Just keep the H & S values at 0 and adjust the B value (Brightness). Now you can make all of your layers the exact same transparency non-destructively.

91

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-16 04:33:08 »

https://github.com/eqprog/FF7CCUP/tree/sorting
This is the current branch I'm working on.

Use eval_img.py to sort out images. Press the open button if you want to edit an image - it will open both the original and the upscaled image in whatever your default editor is.
Bug warning: There's currently a bug/oversight in this - the evaluator will organize the textures as you edit them HOWEVER I still need to add a tracker to the database to make note of the previous category because its currently not smart enough to move it out of whatever folder it gets put into after being moved from the default directory. Just be really sure its in the right category before you press next otherwise it will have to be manually moved into the right directory until I fix this! If you just want to edit the image and not worry about sorting it, that's fine. Just leave the category as "New".

Also, I haven't actually tested it with the game however I am pretty sure it will work. If anyone else wants to test it, please let me know.

92

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-15 20:08:45 »

Well, I'll be having more sub-categories, but that's basically what I'm doing. The evaluator will take care of that - hopefully by tonight. It will also generate the textures.ini file based on that so no worries there.

edit: beat the game. It took a little longer than I thought it would sooo maybe I won't finish the rest of my goals today. We will see.

edit 2: pushing update now

93

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-15 15:38:22 »

Thank you. The project has ended up being much bigger in scope than I initially envisioned so your encouraging words sincerely help to motivate me, laujclan! Today I'm both off of work and have no additional obligations. I'm going to finish the game today and I will have hopefully all the textures dumped. I didn't use a guide while playing through the game so unfortunately that means I might be missing some.

Plan for today:

• Finish game
  
• Upscale remaining dumps
• Finish sorting textures with Evaluator
• Add feature to organize upscaled textures in Directories
• Update textures.ini
• Update github to include branches for each texture category
• Update github master branch for currently functioning version

After I get done with this I will publish information about the github page, which will be public and open to contributions from the community.

Keep in mind:

• Any contributions must be the contributor's original works.
• Do not include Images taken from GIS or other such sources unless you can demonstrate that they are in the public domain or a public license. (In the later case adequate citation and/or credit must be provided)
• Do not contribute artwork from another creator's project.

The last point there is a touchy subject - obviously we cannot distribute other people's work without explicit permission. Technically speaking, even hosting the dumped textures online is a copyright violation (I really hope this doesn't bite me in the ass...) and I wouldn't want to land myself in even more trouble by offending members of the community. Furthermore, without being able to verify that other's work are their own I would prefer not to include contributions from other projects unless the originality of their work can be verified.

94

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-12 23:30:51 »

Original:


AI Upscaled | Modified


Pretty happy with this one too as its very visible to the player.

95

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-08 01:37:57 »

Yes, it’s nice! I sent you the invite Devina. There should be some pretty basic instructions in the commits, let me know if you need any help getting things up and running.

For the evaluator, you can put in a custom name for the texture - for now it only saves the name in the database but the plan at the end is that the evaluator or a separate script will rename the textures, organize them into folders based on their categories, and then generate a textures.ini file. I figure not every texture need a custom name.

There is a photoshop action I included. Really the most useful one is FFCC mask which will tighten up a lot of the fuzzy edges however it’s not perfect. The dodge and burn action creates two adjustment layers for lightening and darkening the images. See some of the psds in the edits folder for examples. It can really bring out a lot of detail in a subtle yet non-destructive manner.

One action I didn’t include is this one by PiXimperfect for frequency separation. I use it to help remove some of the random ripple textures that the AI adds in some instances. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hgR_1mWShxYesDBkA_WveXdmwmnbkZ3r/view - check out this video for a basic overview on how it works. https://youtu.be/-iGB2BfEu20 Basically it separates the image texture data from the color data so you can remove/edit the perceived texture without messing with the color too much.

As far as fixing random color artifacts I use the brush tool set to the “color” or “hue” blending mode. A lot can be done as well by using the match color feature under adjust image and using the original texture as a source.

And at the end of the day some are just going to have to have a lot of manual fixing.

Edit: one last note: this doesn’t have all of the textures quite yet. My work schedule got changed up so I really haven’t had too much free time to complete my play through but now that we have GitHub I’ll just add the new textures to the repository whenever I’m done.

Edit 2: use the wip edits branch for now.

96

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-07 13:54:41 »

Devina email me @gmail.com with your github username

97

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-05 04:53:04 »

Devina,

I’m nearing completion of my evaluator tool. It might be unnecessary in end but I feel that it will streamline the workflow. You mentioned using github in a previous post. I’m aware of what it is of course but honestly I have no idea how to use it. Can we in fact upload images there?

Changing topics  Right now the evaluator uses SQLite for the database (which is strictly offline), but if multiple users are to use it I would need to have an online database. It seems like a waste to pay money to host a database that is less than 500kb... but I’ll see what can be done.

Edit: Probably what is just split the textures into chunks and divide them up... I think I’m getting in over my head with the server stuff.

https://imgur.com/GkssnZz

98

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-03 16:21:44 »

What do you all think of this textured look?

Edit:

You've been keeping multiple save files in case you need to go back, right? In case you don't, I have like 10-15 prepped. You can also assign a button in PPSSPP to quickly enable/disable textures by pressing a button so you can easily compare what looks better or worse.

I've been checking out various areas and it looks good! Of course, we'll need to go back and look for all those messed-up 2D elements like posters and road signs that got messed up.

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/77WDPNNX

Some errors I noticed:

- The pavement outlines of the bricks are gone
- The beach skies and waves at Costa beach are messed up
- The soft glows at the highway look pixelated, because a lighting texture got upscaled in a bad way.

Yes, I actually have a lot of saves but I might have missed some areas earlier in the game before I realized that you can only have 5 save states.  If I need a certain area I will let you know - thanks.

The fine transparency/detail textures (fog, clouds, water etc) will probably best be left as is unless you or someone else has the skill to fix them. Both ESRGAN and Topaz apply really weird color artifacts to the edges because weren’t designed with transparency in mind I guess. They can usually be seen around the black halo effects in the form of hyper-blue or red pixels. I’m not capable enough to fix them accurately with transparency and honestly they scale up on their own good enough.

I have developed a few techniques that have helped to reduce/remove the artifacts in non-transparent textures though. Once I get off work I’ll try to create a step-by-step guide and a couple of actions I’ve created.

99

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-02 04:59:00 »

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tJFU5elrxa6qebSbycpGzO4nxNmtAGC8/view?usp=sharing

Getting pretty close to finishing, sharing what I have so far. I'm right at Chapter 8 in the game and I'm about 20% done with the missions, so I should have nearly all the textures. I'll edit this message later with a readme.

Everything in the link goes in the ULUS10336 Directory.

100

WIP / Re: [CC:FF7 PSP] Crisis Core UI Upscale Project

« on: 2020-06-01 04:56:18 »

Its almost ready....



So far I've got it displaying all of the textures I've dumped so far and it saves all the relevant attributes and categorizations in a database and even remembers where the user left off.

Just a few more things to get implemented:

Show upscaled texture in right panel and switch/compare against ESRGAN copy
Add buttons to open up upscaled texture in user's default editor/viewer
Filters to only display certain categories

Work has picked up again and there is rioting and other nonsense going on in my city (and I don't even live in the North!) so progress isn't going as fast as I'd like but I'm still working a little on it every day.