[FF7PC] Remako HD Graphics Mod (AI enhanced field backgrounds) - [cancelled]

[CaptRobau]

THIS MOD HAS CEASED DEVELOPMENT, SEE THE BLOG POST HERE FOR AN EXPLANATION:
https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2021/03/remako-is-cancelled-and-heres-why.html

Return to a Midgar like you’ve never seen before, in this faithfully remastered graphics mod for Final Fantasy VII (PC). The Remako HD Graphics Mod features improved graphics with 4x the resolution of the original. This was accomplished by using state-of-the-art neural networks to upscale the game’s graphics.

The mod improves the quality of among other things the pre-rendered backgrounds, battle, world textures, as well as the game’s full-motion videos (FMVs). Remako is also compatible with many other mods, such as The Reunion (R03C) or 3D model mods, for the ultimate Final Fantasy 7 experience.

Remako Mod is compatible with all PC versions of FF7: the CD original, the Square Enix Store version, and the Steam release.

News
Version 1.0 has been released. Check out the release post I wrote on my blog:
https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2019/05/remako-mod-version-10-released.html

Screenshots

https://captrobau.blogspot.com/p/screenshots.html

Videos

https://captrobau.blogspot.com/p/videos.html

Downloads

Click on the link below to go to the download page.

https://captrobau.blogspot.com/p/download.html

Installation Guide

Getting Final Fantasy 7 ready for mods requires several steps. That's why I made this helpful install guide. I recommend everyone use it, even those who played the beta (as there have been some changes).

https://captrobau.blogspot.com/p/install-guide-ff7-mod-manager.html

Credits

• Satsuki for making the 4xCut tool, which was essential in getting my upscaled images into the game.
• Midnight Mode, who made a music track used in the FF7 Remako Mod Comparison Trailer. The track was licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
• The crew that made 7th Heaven, the mod manager for FF7.
• Fewtch for some hand-improved battle textures.[/i]

If you notice a bug, just post it in this thread (preferably with a screenshot).

What do you think?
Once you've got a chance to play Final Fantasy 7 with the Remako HD Graphics Mod, I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

 

[satsuki]

@CaptRobau
I tried the mod in about 30 screens at diffrent game positions so here's my impressions:
-Seems you have used my 4xcut tool to convert the background (would be cool to say it in the informations), as i said in this tool, i'll release a better version after i release my own ff7 pack, so all optimisation how can be included in the soft will be added/corrected.
-Seems you don't run through the game for bug hunting, almost all light pixel's bug (chorace for exemple) and black pixels (gon_i for exemple) witch aren't corrected in my released tool are showing ingame
-The upscale tool you used seems to produce good results on high quality background (like the gon_i) but seems to add "fake texture" so on textured "natural' stuff (dust, wood floor) the render seems great, but if you look at other elements the "human works" (bottle, fabric, boxes, painting...) it's look "muddy" or "fleecy" or "no right" (don't know to say this impression in english)
-The upscale tool you used seems to produce bad results on low quality background (like the blin ones) the results are grainy and kind of blurry just like if you're drawing a picture on a moving paper.
-because of the inconsistency of the upscale tool between screens elements types, some screens (like the farm one) have some elements eavily textured (the grass) and some other blurry (the house roof) at the same time

So to my mind, it's great you tryed this tool witch seems promising in some textures types, but if don't optimise the filtering, the game will be realy inconsistent from one screen to another and (to my mind) it will ruin your works because the "bad" screen will look even badder after a "good" screen.

Don't take it the bad way, it's only my opinion, i hope it can help you improve your works

@DLPB
The jpeg would be usefull for slow internet connexions but how about the transparency ?
I've read somewhere (if i remember) that your own corrected aali driver will be steam and 1.02english exe only, the french exe have be moded at some point for a full retranslation (with some font modification too so can't use the english exe for a full retranslation) so i realy hoppe you can relase a 1.02fr compliant driver or at least share your works so maybe another devel can adapt it (not me i can't understand this enough T_T).
Thanks

 

[satsuki]

Reunion R06 will allow for all versions to be used with the English 1.02   I've even added in the ability for all exe text to be pulled from external text file.  In other words, we won't have issues like incompatibility between versions anymore.

Great stuff ! but how about the modified font ?

 

[CaptRobau]

@CaptRobau
I tried the mod in about 30 screens at diffrent game positions so here's my impressions:
-Seems you have used my 4xcut tool to convert the background (would be cool to say it in the informations), as i said in this tool, i'll release a better version after i release my own ff7 pack, so all optimisation how can be included in the soft will be added/corrected.
-Seems you don't run through the game for bug hunting, almost all light pixel's bug (chorace for exemple) and black pixels (gon_i for exemple) witch aren't corrected in my released tool are showing ingame
-The upscale tool you used seems to produce good results on high quality background (like the gon_i) but seems to add "fake texture" so on textured "natural' stuff (dust, wood floor) the render seems great, but if you look at other elements the "human works" (bottle, fabric, boxes, painting...) it's look "muddy" or "fleecy" or "no right" (don't know to say this impression in english)
-The upscale tool you used seems to produce bad results on low quality background (like the blin ones) the results are grainy and kind of blurry just like if you're drawing a picture on a moving paper.
-because of the inconsistency of the upscale tool between screens elements types, some screens (like the farm one) have some elements eavily textured (the grass) and some other blurry (the house roof) at the same time

So to my mind, it's great you tryed this tool witch seems promising in some textures types, but if don't optimise the filtering, the game will be realy inconsistent from one screen to another and (to my mind) it will ruin your works because the "bad" screen will look even badder after a "good" screen.

Don't take it the bad way, it's only my opinion, i hope it can help you improve your works

@DLPB
The jpeg would be usefull for slow internet connexions but how about the transparency ?
I've read somewhere (if i remember) that your own corrected aali driver will be steam and 1.02english exe only, the french exe have be moded at some point for a full retranslation (with some font modification too so can't use the english exe for a full retranslation) so i realy hoppe you can relase a 1.02fr compliant driver or at least share your works so maybe another devel can adapt it (not me i can't understand this enough T_T).
Thanks

Some very good points. I really appreciate the feedback.

It's very much an early beta release, and as I mention a few times on my site it has not been 100% tested yet. I'm just glad something of this project is out there. That keeps me motivated to stay on it and make it better over time. So this beta release now and then polishing it for a bug/graphical problem free v1.0.

Very good specific remarks. I'm not yet happy with blin and such either. Now that the basework is down, I'm going to go through all the scenes and see which needs tweaking. Not all settings work for all types of backgrounds.

I mentioned you and 4xcut on the credits page of my site, but that's easy to miss. So I added a credits list to this thread's OP as well. I'm very grateful for you mod. Made the whole process a lot easier!

 

[Granfalloon]

Really want to try this out!
But.. what's the best way to install this if I already installed the latest version of Reunion?
Do I still need to mess with 7th Heaven? I dunno if I can make that + my current version of FF7 with Reunion work, do I have to uninstall Reunion?

 

[Kaldarasha]

Nah, you can install 7th Heaven over the reunion. Just makee a backup of ff7.exe, if you install 7th Heaven with the gamesconverter and replace the the ff7.exe with the bacjul one. In ff7opengl.cfg you must change modpath = Reunion to modpath = textures and moving the content from the Reunion folder to the textures folder.

 

[EVLM44]

Hi firstly thanks for this awesome mod,but I am having some trouble getting everything working.

I have followed the guide but when the game starts I get a red error message that says "libPNG erro not a PNG file". Once the intro CGI is over I just see the normal backgrounds.

Im lauching through 7tth heaven and the remako mod is listed as being found.

 

[dycaite]

@satsuki
@CaptRobau

Instead of making 2 separate, competing mods, you guys should join forces - take the best from both worlds, make the best version of the mod. Just sayin'

 

[opengrip]

@satsuki
@CaptRobau

Instead of making 2 separate, competing mods, you guys should join forces - take the best from both worlds, make the best version of the mod. Just sayin'

They kind of already did join forces since captrobau is using satsuki's 4xcut tool which is optimizing the layering of the field scenes. The only other difference in this mod is the upscale method. I'm actually making my own pack as well using gigapixel but I am using additional work on top of that to clean up the image even more. And then there is the custom redone fields which you can find in the Team Avalanche section of the forum. So there will be lots of options. It definitely could be cool if someone goes through and takes the best from each field but until satsuki releases his updated 4xcut it won't be worth it as all of the packs will need to be optimized more either way until then.

 

[satsuki]

@satsuki
@CaptRobau

Instead of making 2 separate, competing mods, you guys should join forces - take the best from both worlds, make the best version of the mod. Just sayin'

Each IA upscale method need to be "mastered" to be realy effective, it's a long "try and die" process.
Right now i'm happy about with all screen of my pack (about 10 to 15 are not realy as a want, but gigapixel won't do a better job because these are realy low quality background and it seems that gigapixel don't do a great job with it).
I'm not hidding my works, i answered anyone how want help to deal with it but i want to do my own pack.
I tryed about 50 screen of this pack across the game to see the power of gigapixel but on each single screen i prefer the render of my current method, it's only a personnal preference.

People will be free to do choose one or another once both will be released... or a mix of both pack and release a mixed pack ^^

 

[satsuki]

Incredible work. Would it be possible to apply this process to the textures in the 3D battle screens? I think it has already been done for the world map with another algorithm, but I can't find it atm (a link would be greatly appreciated). If these three are done (backgrounds, world map, battle maps), that's the best version (graphically) we could hope to have. Only thing we'd be missing is applying the same algorithm and corrections to the FMVs, but I imagine that would be very, very tedious to do (15 images per second... and a lot of seconds to rework).

My final pack will have game background (with the "char" part for 3d stuff of the fields), battle background and world map.
All filtering done, verification on its way.
FMV don't be realy long to process (i've done it once) about 48h to 72h computing, but i need to found an efficiant way to clean up the spaciotemporal noise without kill the details, and that'll take lots of time

 

[EQ2Alyza]

As soon as you release the field, battle, and world textures together, I will add them to the 7H Catalog. I believe this is superior to all prior texture packs, so I may just replace them all with Remako HD as the only definitive texture pack to download.

 

[opengrip]

As soon as you release the field, battle, and world textures together, I will add them to the 7H Catalog. I believe this is superior to all prior texture packs, so I may just replace them all with Remako HD as the only definitive texture pack to download.

I am also working on a new pack for Echo-S and it is being beta tested now by our team and I know when Satsuki releases his pack that remako won't be the definite pack. Not to say any pack is better then the other but if you want to keep 7th heaven as updated as possible then I'm guessing it will have 3 new packs which will overwrite the 3 you have now

 

[Bonez]

Everything's beautiful. I did find one bug in my playthrough (I saved afterwards, so unfortunately no screenshot) at the gold saucer. The little cart thing you get in to go sight seeing around the saucer and to go on the date in is broken up into 4 equal sections. the top right and bottom left are fine, but the top left and bottom right are really super dark... At least I think that was caused by your mod, if not, sorry.

Edit: Had to go back for the keystone, so I was able to grab you a screenshot while I was there... Actually, now that I'm really looking at it, it doesn't look like it's been enhanced, either.

 

[MarkVitinus]

if I use with version 7TH mod 1.52 works? I installed with it and in Junon did not work, did I do something wrong?

 

[satsuki]

Everything's beautiful. I did find one bug in my playthrough (I saved afterwards, so unfortunately no screenshot) at the gold saucer. The little cart thing you get in to go sight seeing around the saucer and to go on the date in is broken up into 4 equal sections. the top right and bottom left are fine, but the top left and bottom right are really super dark... At least I think that was caused by your mod, if not, sorry.

Edit: Had to go back for the keystone, so I was able to grab you a screenshot while I was there... Actually, now that I'm really looking at it, it doesn't look like it's been enhanced, either.

It's an aali driver bug for black section, nothing you can do so far.
it's not enhanced because the "char" files haven't be filtered in is pack

 

[Bonez]

It's an aali driver bug for black section, nothing you can do so far.
it's not enhanced because the "char" files haven't be filtered in is pack

Got ya. My fault. Disregard, then!

 

[Esther]

Hi firstly thanks for this awesome mod,but I am having some trouble getting everything working.

I have followed the guide but when the game starts I get a red error message that says "libPNG erro not a PNG file". Once the intro CGI is over I just see the normal backgrounds.

Im lauching through 7tth heaven and the remako mod is listed as being found.

I get the same issue, I'm using Reunion and ChaOS (playing on steam converted)

 

[CaptRobau]

I'm not hidding my works, i answered anyone how want help to deal with it but i want to do my own pack.

...

People will be free to do choose one or another once both will be released... or a mix of both pack and release a mixed pack ^^

Please do, I like it a lot. You've done some great stuff with your mod. As you've said, when all the work has been done we should look at a way to give the community two great options/a combo of both. When everything is still in development, this is too hard to judge.

As soon as you release the field, battle, and world textures together, I will add them to the 7H Catalog. I believe this is superior to all prior texture packs, so I may just replace them all with Remako HD as the only definitive texture pack to download.

I suggest that when Satsuki's and my mod are in a non-beta state, we should look at which mod (or combination of mods) would be the best to add to the 7H Catalog. There's still a lot of work to be done and I don't feel we're at a point yet that you can say that just Remako should be the one to go in.

It's an aali driver bug for black section, nothing you can do so far.
it's not enhanced because the "char" files haven't be filtered in is pack

Thanks for the clarification.

if I use with version 7TH mod 1.52 works? I installed with it and in Junon did not work, did I do something wrong?

I have not tried it with 7th 1.52. Is there a reason why you haven't upgraded to 1.54?

Hi firstly thanks for this awesome mod,but I am having some trouble getting everything working.

I have followed the guide but when the game starts I get a red error message that says "libPNG erro not a PNG file". Once the intro CGI is over I just see the normal backgrounds.

Im lauching through 7tth heaven and the remako mod is listed as being found.

I will have to look into that. Haven't checked all combinations of mods yet.

 

[EQ2Alyza]

With what we currently have, it is. After this fully releases, if something new comes along that uses this same method (or better), then it will be added. The older mods will need to be retired to free up the limited storage space.