[HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

You may say that it's a professional quirk that I want things to be functional    That being said, I think my modelling is improved by looking at actual references, so why not check out the real deal?

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Well I prefer things be something close to right, it reminds me of a discussion someone had on Uncharted 3 about a section of the game where you crossed a ship in a storm. The original idea was too make the entire scene a repeated animation and fake the storm and that would be good. However the programmer said "why not make it a real wave simulation it's not like we don't have the power and more importantly it would not be predictable and thus more realistic".

Concerning the stones in the floor: using a displacement shader was a possibility that I examined in the first place. However, I couldn't find a proper displacement map which would remain faithful to the floor pattern of the original picture. If I were to draw the map myself with Paintshop, it would take pretty much the same time as making the actual mesh. Besides, making the mesh of the rock is less costly in terms of poly counts than subsufing the floor to the level required for a displacement shader, I think. So I eventually decided to go for making a mesh of the floor. In a sense, I feel like the time I am spending making this mesh will be compensated by the fact that texturing it will be much simpler that way.

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I concure actually, I prefer to do that because textures and faking it don't always work in all cases. I have been doing optical simulations using polycarbonate material index of refractions and it iritates the crap out of me that I can't vary the IOR based on the wavelength of light. Their are a number of interesting distortions one gets in materials that aren't obvious, for example IOR is non linear (and so plastic prismatic behavior is different than diamond glass or flourine based materials). I like things to look real not 'good enough' LOL. So if you actually create a flour that can be shaded in all circumstances it will save you time screwing around with other fiddling details such as stretching the uv map to look right in a fixed direction. I find it harder to twiddle textures than make shapes.

By the way, for reference, here are the wires, though they show some levels of subsurf (3 levels of subsurf on stair pillars and studs, 2 levels of subsurf on the rocks). As far as the unsubsurfed mesh is concerned, the stair pillars and studs are based on 16 sided cylinders, and each rock is actually based on 12 faces.

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I've a dumb question, I know blender supports python scripting etc. Isn't their surface brushes available to 'brush' on rock surfaces in fitted patterns? It seems like a common feature / need too me. I have seen a lot of games use surface normal textures or height fields to perform the same affect as individual rocks.  It's very similiar to using terrain making software.

Anyhow looks too me you are doing fine with what your working on and enjoying it. That's the important part, don't do stuff you can't enjoy.

Cyb

Well I prefer things be something close to right, it reminds me of a discussion someone had on Uncharted 3 about a section of the game where you crossed a ship in a storm. The original idea was too make the entire scene a repeated animation and fake the storm and that would be good. However the programmer said "why not make it a real wave simulation it's not like we don't have the power and more importantly it would not be predictable and thus more realistic".

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I've seen that interview too 

I concure actually, I prefer to do that because textures and faking it don't always work in all cases. I have been doing optical simulations using polycarbonate material index of refractions and it iritates the crap out of me that I can't vary the IOR based on the wavelength of light.

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You're doing optics with bulletproof glass?

Their are a number of interesting distortions one gets in materials that aren't obvious, for example IOR is non linear (and so plastic prismatic behavior is different than diamond glass or flourine based materials). I like things to look real not 'good enough' LOL. So if you actually create a flour that can be shaded in all circumstances it will save you time screwing around with other fiddling details such as stretching the uv map to look right in a fixed direction. I find it harder to twiddle textures than make shapes.

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Well, the nice thing of displacement shaders is that they don't fake shadowing and interaction with lights, they act as an actual transformation of the underlying mesh. However, the underlying mesh needs to be highly subsurfed and regular (rather based on squares than stretched rectangles, for instance) for them to work properly. In any case, I find texturing harder than building meshes too. On my recent "Item shop" scene (mds5_i), it took me actually 5 days to make the objects, and 4 weeks to texture them.

I've a dumb question, I know blender supports python scripting etc. Isn't their surface brushes available to 'brush' on rock surfaces in fitted patterns? It seems like a common feature / need too me. I have seen a lot of games use surface normal textures or height fields to perform the same affect as individual rocks.  It's very similiar to using terrain making software.

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Actually, I'm not exactly sure what you mean. At first I was wondering if you were speaking of a texture paint mode (and it's in Blender, I used it quite a bit to make grime textures on mds5_i), though as you mentioned height fields I don't know if you were speaking of displacement shaders (or tesselation) instead. And displacement shaders are a key element in terrain making software (I encountered them first when I fiddled with Terragen).

Anyhow looks too me you are doing fine with what your working on and enjoying it. That's the important part, don't do stuff you can't enjoy.

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Well, making all these rocks is a bit of a chore, but I'll be happy when it's done. It's a bit the "I am washing the dishes" moment of 3D modelling, it needs to be done before you can have something more enjoyable.

Progress update... huzzah! I made all the rocks  ;D



It's rendered at 50% of the size.

Sweet deal! Is any of this stuff on the repo yet?

On the repo, I only updated my completed scene (mds5_dk) and the blender files related to the outdoor scene of Aerith's house (eals_1) because I need hellbringer_616 to help me with the smoke simulation I want for modelling the waterfall (which requires lots of RAM and processing power). I still have things to modify about that one (you may say it's 95% done).
I haven't uploaded the item shop yet (mds5_i), I'll do that when it's completed. I only need a few textures (for the 3 posters) which my girlfriend will draw (hopefully within the next 2 weeks).
As for Aerith's house (indoors), I only started, though by finishing the rock floor I have already done a big tedious chunk of work. I am planning on modelling the entire interior in just one file. The ground floor model will give ealin_1 and ealin_12, the top floor is ealin_2. However, I am having considerable trouble to have proper camera alignment on ealin_2 (even with SpooX's almighty ShinraTool).
Is there anything else in particular you would like to get on the repo? (WIP renders? Blender files?)

Are you planning on cutting up the pieces to put in game or do you need someone else to do that? If someone else is doing they cutting they are going to need to blender files to render masks.

When are you guys going to show pictures of your Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and First Ray models?

Sorry on the major delay in the smoke sim, I've been pulling 65 hour work weeks and have had zero time for anything. I'll see if i can't fire it up tonight or tomorrow

Sorry on the major delay in the smoke sim, I've been pulling 65 hour work weeks and have had zero time for anything. I'll see if i can't fire it up tonight or tomorrow

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Thanks for letting me know. I'll be greatful if you can run these tests, but don't worry about the delays and take some time for a rest 
As for the current scene: the wooden furniture is done except for the table, now I'll have to fill all these shelves and cupboards. Hopefully I should be able to finish Elmyra's CRT TV today (textures and all), I'll send a picture when that's done.

EDIT: ... and DONE!



I hope you like it!

I have the sinking feeling that nobody's on the forum to check out whatever trash I might upload 



(idiotic pun intended)

I dig through your trash all the time! Nice sink man

very punny of you!

Actually the CRT visual receiving system looks pretty darn good no aliasing patterns visable on the speaker section.

The sink looks ... like a sink! OH MY ... anyhow

Visually they aren't stunning but then again they weren't in the originalm so it's par for the course. They do add realism.

I always found it funny how many CRT's and stuff that Square threw in things, even though flat panels were known to be the wave of the future way back in 1989 (seriously). History is always interesting.

back to some fun erstwhile.

Cyb

Hey guys,

After some various delays, I finally managed to get a new render of my ealin_1 scene. It's still WIP of course (the furniture needs to be filled with miscellaneous stuff), but I hope it will also serve to get this forum out of the limbo.

Click for full res...



I hope you enjoy.

Everything's great now! I would prefer sharper and more realistic textures though if this was possible... Thank you for supporting this amazing game!

Everything's great now! I would prefer sharper and more realistic textures though if this was possible... Thank you for supporting this amazing game!

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Well... I did the best I could. I'm not sure what you mean by "sharper and more realistic textures" (there are already a number of dirtmaps/ambient occlusion textures)... is there any particular item or object in this scene you're concerned with?

Hey guys,

After some various delays, I finally managed to get a new render of my ealin_1 scene. It's still WIP of course (the furniture needs to be filled with miscellaneous stuff), but I hope it will also serve to get this forum out of the limbo.

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Looks pretty good too me. I could nit pick but that doesn't help. (For example not enough particulate matter how can a house be the clean, kind of sillyness).
The question is do YOU like it (LOL). I don't remember seeing the original and it might take me a bit to get FF7 up and working on the PC.
I can't say where my original playstation is, and it might take a bit to get PCSX working under linux (if I can get bloody Gentoo too boot again).

Anyhow good enough I say. If it has the right color and light balance. You aren't going for photo realistic so ... anyhow.

Cyb

All the original fields can be seen via the File Reconstruction Sheet, in the "LGP files" tab, at the "Field LGP" section (the scene I'm working on here is ealin_1). That can give you a good reference.
When setting the lights and the textures I always go back and forth between my renders and the original image to adjust the light and color balances, so I think I'm fine in that respect. Overall I'm quite happy with what I'm doing, given my limitations (in terms of talent, experience, time, hardware resources, and texture source files). Besides, I'm far from being as productive as I would like, so I can't really afford to model details such as stains of burnt grease on the side of the stove. I could dedicate more time on details if we were a hundred modellers on the project, but alas we are probably 4-5 people on the job, at best.

Thank you Mayo master! I appreciate all your hard effort you have already put on this. I admit the ambient occlusion idea was such a great thought! It livens up the mood a bit on this scene. By realistic I mean more depth to the texture. I get kind of a glossy feel when I watch this image. These are some reference pictures:















*textures created by the user "Insane Slug" for a re-texture project of "Zelda - The twilight princess"

Ok, I think I see your point. Honestly, I believe we could debate endlessly about textures in that respect, and every modeller might have a different idea about it. Nevertheless, let me explain a bit the take I had on texturing the furniture. Most of the texture images you showed are rather old worn wood textures, like if they had been exposed to the weather outside. However, when I see the furniture in Elmyra's home, I would rather have the idea that it is made of varnished wood, and that the house is well-kept and cleaned regularly. That's really the impression I get when I look at the original image. Thus I wanted a feel of "even if it may be somewhat old, it still looks rather new" in those textures. That's why I picked them in these styles, and that I had a very very light touch when it came to add dirt shaders. In fact, I did also add small scratches on many wood textures, but since they were made at a rather realistic scale you can hardly see them even in the high res picture.
One example describes that fairly well: the piece of furniture under the TV. It's a wooden piece of furniture with glass doors with magnet locks: those things were very popular around the end of the 90's (i.e. very modern if you compare that with the release date of the original game). Thus, it would make sense to make that piece of furniture look "new and modern" like if it's straight from your IKEA store, and not made with old worn wood. In a way, my take on Elmyra's home is about having an old house that has been renovated with modern equipment. With that in mind, I think the style of textures I picked is more appropriate.

Small update on various stuff...

Thanks to my girlfriend I finally have this poster texture for the mds5_i scene...


Now, in ealin_1, Elmyra is cooking some tamagoyaki...


I hope you like it!