Author Topic: [FF9PC] Field Background replacement (patch?) (Read 50176 times)

Meru · « **Reply #25 on:** 2017-02-19 10:29:18 »

Fraggoso
Okay I have an idea what could have happened.

You applied my patch to non-vanilla ff9 already patched by HW

it tried to patch one file, but it was already patched by HW so it said "Using latest patch ok", but then removed the file cause my patch is stupid (I am working on a fix)
it then patched 2nd file and said it is OK.

Fraggoso · « **Reply #26 on:** 2017-02-19 10:35:52 »

I just tested it as well and I can confirm it.
Without applying any patches to ffix (I thought at least the necessary things from the newest hw has to be copied over) and using your mod it works without any problems.

Thanks.

Meru · « **Reply #27 on:** 2017-02-19 11:46:12 »

~~Here~~ is an updated patch. It should be a little bit more sane...
Now it will not delete what it shouldn't. It also should support ffix-x86. There is probably still a room for improvement, also I barely tested it.

I have not added any new backgrounds. (but I completed Evil Forest

)

Edit: FFIX was updated on steam since the patch was made so I removed the link because it will probably not work. I'll make an update at some point.

Meru · « **Reply #28 on:** 2017-02-25 11:52:35 »

Uh, oh. So I've finished Cargo Ship... It was a hardest scene so far. HW bugs, PC port bugs (unlless they are HW export bugs too), and overall difficulty...
And in the end it still looks kinda ugly cause of these dirty edges, but generally plans haven't changed, most of the edges will have to wait.
Next one is Lindblum... I guess. Ouch, I hope there aren't as many animations as It looks.

Fraggoso · « **Reply #29 on:** 2017-02-25 11:54:09 »

Cargo shipped really sucked so far the most yes.
It gets better but Lind Blum also have some nasty animations.

Meru · « **Reply #30 on:** 2017-02-25 17:16:07 »

Quote from: Fraggoso on 2017-02-25 11:54:09

Cargo shipped really sucked so far the most yes.
It gets better but Lind Blum also have some nasty animations.

So far so good. Lindblum-the-town is pretty straightforward. I did like half of it today https://i.imgur.com/1ekOKuA.png, hopefully the rest would be the same.

Tetraspore · « **Reply #31 on:** 2017-02-27 17:14:24 »

Would anyone be interested in recreating entire scenes in 3D and re-rendering them for background use? I can probably manage to pull off some convincing ones that use mostly simple geometry. Hard-surface stuff, not so much the organic stuff.

Meru · « **Reply #32 on:** 2017-02-27 17:29:24 »

Quote from: Tetraspore on 2017-02-27 17:14:24

Would anyone be interested in recreating entire scenes in 3D and re-rendering them for background use? I can probably manage to pull off some convincing ones that use mostly simple geometry. Hard-surface stuff, not so much the organic stuff.

I am skeptical about that.
- too big of a project to complete in reasonable timeframe given very limited resources. I, for example, don't have that big of an attention span.
- too hard to make it look close enough to the original. If I'll render re-created scene at PSX resolution, I would expect it to look virtually identical. Anything less won't cut it.
- this game is not that popular overall. People are struggling with projects of that sort even with much more popular games.

Alexandr · « **Reply #33 on:** 2017-02-27 19:29:36 »

Ahh, it looks so good! Me hungry for this backgroundss

Meru · « **Reply #34 on:** 2017-03-02 09:21:00 »

So I've finished the first Disc. Also I made a small webpage. If you are curious about progress, from now on you can check it there.

zwuw · « **Reply #35 on:** 2017-03-03 01:45:51 »

I noticed color loss(washed out colors) in the two screenshots you provided when compared to the originals. The problem is visible in both waifu and yours. Does this happen with all of the backgrounds you're working with?

Meru · « **Reply #36 on:** 2017-03-03 08:27:05 »

Quote from: zwuw on 2017-03-03 01:45:51

I noticed color loss(washed out colors) in the two screenshots you provided when compared to the originals. The problem is visible in both waifu and yours. Does this happen with all of the backgrounds you're working with?

Are you talking about that locker-like thing at the back? If so then no, it is specific to that background. The process of making these textures is not fully automated and I may do manual changes to some parts of the backgrounds. I agree that this place may have to be tweaked a bit, but I try avoid doing so for the 1st pass (unless i see something really ugly or for test).
If you are talking about stone wall however, the way it looks like is what I believe it should look like. Most of the color loss in this case is due to it having less color noise.

There are other differences compared to the PC textures that are not visible on provided images. Many of my textures have a bit different levels (a bit brighter) It is a subject for a separate debate which is more correct, PSX or PC levels as there are reasons to think that either or both are incorrect. But for now I am going with psx ones. It shouldn't be very hard to switch to PC-like levels if I'll decide so in the future.

Meru · « **Reply #37 on:** 2017-03-03 08:52:36 »

Here is a different version. Do you like this one more? I'm not sure I do. What works for one (part of the) background, not necessarily works for another. At this moment I cant say what the final version of this one would be. Maybe this, maybe that or (most likely) a combination of two.

Edit: woops, wrong link. Fixd.

zwuw · « **Reply #38 on:** 2017-03-03 13:32:20 »

Although the visual impact might seem subtle on Guardhouse's first picture, it can get much worse on other backgrounds with more color intensity and micro details if that problem persists. "Main Street" is a better example where more prominent colors are too washed out or fading out, and important details are lost because of that.

I agree it's important to apply chroma denoising on FF9 (PSX) backgrounds and it's normal for color properties to change with resizing and filtering, especially on sources like this. But I believe that washed/fading out color problem in fine details can be avoided, giving your backgrounds better visual quality and fidelity. Your last picture doesn't have that problem so I think it'll be easier for you to identify what's causing it.

Meru · « **Reply #39 on:** 2017-03-03 14:11:12 »

Quote from: zwuw on 2017-03-03 13:32:20

Although the visual impact might seem subtle on Guardhouse's first picture, it can get much worse on other backgrounds with more color intensity and micro details if that problem persists. "Main Street" is a better example where more prominent colors are too washed out or fading out, and important details are lost because of that.

I agree it's important to apply chroma denoising on FF9 (PSX) backgrounds and it's normal for color properties to change with resizing and filtering, especially on sources like this. But I believe that washed/fading out color problem in fine details can be avoided, giving your backgrounds better visual quality and fidelity. Your last picture doesn't have that problem so I think it'll be easier for you to identify what's causing it.

It is pretty hard to guess what are you talking about.
Flags on windows (or whatever that is) or flowers (if they are flowers), that sort of thing?
If so, this is known. From computer's perspective there is no difference between details and noise so just like any kind of image processing, this is a trade-off between removing what I consider bad and keeping what I consider to be good. It is practically impossible to tune processing in such a way that will fit all parts of every image.
Posted images may be a bit outdated, but they are made in a way that produces consistently-pleasant results for me across all images. Anything else requires manual tweaks (like limiting processing for certain parts ff the image) which I'm not doing much. For now this is a very low-priority stuff for me because I quite like the results as is. Huge amount of work on edges and animations concerns me much more.

Quote from: zwuw on 2017-03-03 13:32:20

But I believe that washed/fading out color problem in fine details can be avoided,

To put it simply, no it can not be avoided. An attempt to do so also exposes stuff that I do not want to see. On the main street image, except flowers and flags I do not want to see anything else on other parts of the image (not counting badly made sky that, I believe, was fixed since.)

Edit: you said that last picture of Guardhouse does not have a problem. Well, for me it does. The most obvious things like "lockers" look better indeed, but I don't like most of the other things. And this will affect some of the other images much more strongly. That said, most of the stuff that you call a "problem" is most likely made on purpose and/or known but not sure when or if it will be changed.

zwuw · « **Reply #40 on:** 2017-03-03 17:58:58 »

What I was trying to explain is that the last picture doesn't have that specific problem and you wouldn't need to waste much time finding out what you'd have to change in your workflow.
In the following picture, I applied heavy denoising while trying to keep most of the detail:
http://i.imgur.com/9LvGGYr.jpg

It's not a perfect example and it has different states than yours. I just want to point out that, even with this denoising strength, it doesn't get that kind of problem and neither does your last picture, even if I clean it up. These are the places with more noticeable color loss in "Main Street":

http://imgur.com/a/P9bau

I've had similar problems in the past because of incorrect colorspace conversion, bit depth and compression so I thought I should tell you about this while you're still working on the backgrounds, in case you're not aware of it. In my pov, there's no trade-off regarding this problem, there's only doing it right or wrong. If you think it's fine the way it is and people like it, that's all that matters.

Meru · « **Reply #41 on:** 2017-03-03 18:30:33 »

Quote from: zwuw on 2017-03-03 17:58:58

What I was trying to explain is that the last picture doesn't have that specific problem and you wouldn't need to waste much time finding out what you'd have to change in your workflow.
In the following picture, I applied heavy denoising while trying to keep most of the detail:
http://i.imgur.com/9LvGGYr.jpg

It's not a perfect example and it has different states than yours. I just want to point out that, even with this denoising strength, it doesn't get that kind of problem and neither does your last picture, even if I clean it up. These are the places with more noticeable color loss in "Main Street":

http://imgur.com/a/P9bau

I've had similar problems in the past because of incorrect colorspace conversion, bit depth and compression so I thought I should tell you about this while you're still working on the backgrounds, in case you're not aware of it. In my pov, there's no trade-off regarding this problem, there's only doing it right or wrong. If you think it's fine the way it is and people like it, that's all that matters.

Sure I got what do you mean even 1st time. This is not a bitdepth or colorspace issue. In fact even if there would be an issue, It would probably affect the image less. And compression is not involved at all.
Too bad we're doing it with this dark image, but oh well...

Denoising strength on your image does not match the one on mine. Look at the wall's edge near the door, just above the lamp thing. How much stronger processing you should apply to make it look like mine color-wise? Quite a bit stronger, regardless of the method, I suppose. What will happen with other things (such as the ones you outlined) if you'll do so? Most likely same as the "problem" that you described. (Achieving similar effect by tweaking color values doesn't count).
That's the trade-off. Sure this particular dark wall is an awful example and it probably doesn't needs this much of stuff.

Now the things you marked on main street image. I agree that some of these places may look better. The question is how to make it so without affecting other parts of the image? The answer is not possible, unless on image-by-image case-by-case basis.

As for people, I don't know nor care what they like.

Meru · « **Reply #42 on:** 2017-03-03 19:12:22 »

BTW you seem to think that I applied some smoothing on top of the upscaled image. Which is not exactly the case.

For example one of the requirements is to be able to turn this: https://i.imgur.com/oDgx1qk.png into this: https://i.imgur.com/aOG5nWu.png (this is 4x point upscaled for better viewing)
In my case this is done on upscaling step. Probably can be done by smoothing it out, but I can only imagine what it will look like.
Edit: Achieving this without turning everything else into a blurred mess, like original waifu does is not easy. The price are the things you marked on the main street image. Perhaps it can be improved some more. Current version meets my goal, which is to make images that look better than the one in PC version and make the difference between backgrounds and 3d characters less apparent. It is not my goal to re-draw, re-create or make the best possible images in general. The limit to how good it can be is rather high. However with that, the timeframe at which it can be done extends indefinitely. I have some soft dedlines I've set for myself and I work with the intention to meet them, more or less.

Meru · « **Reply #43 on:** 2017-03-04 10:58:47 »

zwuw
Here is a hopefully better explanation. Below is a some random patch of grass straight from PSX. 4x Lanczos+4x Point

See these colorful spots? These used to be some kind of flowers or something.
They are too small and subtle to be upscaled reliably. Features they belong to are not present in the upscaled version. So an attempt to keep them creates out-of-place colorful blobs.
So they are being filtered out on purpose.
It does looks similar to reducing chroma subsampling of the PSX image. But this is not the case. There are no reasons to do that stuff anyway.

The tradeoff I am talking about is: making those parts that you pointed out better means keeping more of these colorful blobs. Which is not something I want. I choose to remove blobs completely. There are much less parts that suffer from color loss than the ones that benefit from it. Those that suffer can be fixed manually at some later point. Or not fixed at all, cause personally I'm ok with them as is.

Meru · « **Reply #44 on:** 2017-03-05 18:46:37 »

Updated 1st post with latest version of the images. They are of the same scale. Just had to cut them a bit to better fit on the screen. ALso they are like ~5mb so wait up till they fully load.

Meru · « **Reply #45 on:** 2017-03-09 16:53:53 »

I knew Cleyra will be a pain in the ass... It is killing me (Probably not the final version)

Fraggoso · « **Reply #46 on:** 2017-03-09 17:05:31 »

It's really weird how Silicon Studio made so ugly masks to begin with.
Even if you straight upres them with bilinear filtering you don't end up with that fucked up mask that Silicon Studio has. :/

It looks good to me.

Meru · « **Reply #47 on:** 2017-03-10 13:22:39 »

So yeah. While that sand looked okay to me at 1st, it was really an overkill. Static parts are still fine, but animations ended up being ugly. Less extreme version would probably look something like that.

Meru · « **Reply #48 on:** 2017-03-25 08:12:36 »

In case someone is curious, things are going a bit slower. Most of the backgrounds on disc3 require more manual work than before.
Also I planned to make a release when main backgrounds are done, but due to various reasons this will likely not happen. Will think about releasing something after I'll do 2nd pass of edits for 1st disc Alexandria backgrounds. Plus I need to do some testing. I'm sure there are some backgrounds that will be broken in-game.

Meru · « **Reply #49 on:** 2017-04-09 11:57:58 »

Don't have much time lately but I pulled my strawberries together and finally made a (hopefully) working patch that contains Disc1 backgrounds.

Most of these backgrounds need more work, but I want to add other discs 1st. Then I'll see what can be done about it.

Theoretically patch will work if the game will be updated on steam (unless the update will be very huge). But it is made in a very hacky way so it will definitely not work on XP and Linux/Wine.

It is barely tested. I have no idea what will happen if you'll reach backgrounds that are not yet added. Maybe black screen.