Background Replacements

[Karac]

I've read posts around here about trying to get a hold of the crappy res backgrounds and 'enhancing' them with photoshop. But let's face it, you can't improve low res images without sacrificing detail. So what's to do...we need higher res copies of the backgrounds.

I don't remember the playstation version having such crappy quality backgrounds. Does anyone know of a way to extract these images from the playstation version or at least any ideas on where to start? You all know where I'm going with this(I'm sure I'm not the first person to suggest it.)

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

Yeah, the backgrounds on the PC version do seem to be very bad, and it would be nice to have higher res versions of them.

If you want to know more about the backgrounds in the PSX version, this might be a good place to start, but it seems that ripping backgrounds from the PSX version will be pretty difficult. In fact, because of the way they are stored, I'd be impressed if you were even able to view them.

 

[Furzball]

I would not trust getting the PSX versions viewable, rippable, or even useable by the pc version. What I do suggest is if you or anyone else has some skill in photoshop, please try and fix up the images.

 

[stormmedia]

Actually, if I recall correctly, we can't improved the background easily because even if we put filters in them they will always look blocky because the game itself limits the resolutions.  Even if you could filter them and make it look really nice in 1280x960 or more, once in the game it would still look blocky.  Beside, I'm not that sure that the PSX background were in higher resolution; keep in mind that in a television you have build-in filters. But I can't say for sure if they are the same resolution since I have never messed with PSX backgrounds myself.

 

[Karac]

I would not trust getting the PSX versions viewable, rippable, or even useable by the pc version. What I do suggest is if you or anyone else has some skill in photoshop, please try and fix up the images.

Right, it would be a complete pain in the ass to convert. I'm sure that if I did manage to get the images out of the PSX version they would most certainly be higher resolution images, however these wouldn't carry over to the PC's information of where the character models are and aren't allowed to go within the image. At any rate, I'm getting a copy of the PSX version as we speak and I'll look into it to as much as I can.

There's probably never going to be remake of FFVII and I guess there really shouldn't be one(it would never outdo the original), but, for me, it's an experience I'd like to have again and again. Like a good book that you pick up and read again every few years. And I think enhancing the quality of the PC version(the only version you could enhance) would only make for a better experience.

Right now, myself and shazman1984 are working on bringing the music up to date with Reason and other programs(Reason is probably the best sampling program available) and there are some other people about working on bringing the character models up to date. The combination of all these would make for that perfect experience everyone always wanted.

I step down from my soapbox now... :-D

 

[Timu Sumisu]

actually its quite easy to rip the backgrounds from the psx version... just use 7mimic, you can save any background.. very easy. However, the backgrounds are often animated in some way, and getting all the frames in may be tricky, as there are independant animation parts (like smoke n fire n stuff). Good luck... there are nearly 1000 images... lol

 

[NameSpoofer]

For PC, possible.

https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/3323/

 

[shazman1984]

well, if someone figures it out, im down to photoshop backgrounds. hoping the game doesnt kill the resolution itself.  lets keep hacking away this issue, although it would be the longest and most difficult task, it would be our bread and butter.

 

[Timu Sumisu]

Most of my work will be bent towards modifying the models, but if i need a break from that or hve the time, i'll gladly help photoshoppin stuff as well

 

[Karac]

OK...

So I opened up the psx iso and used 7mimic(thanks timu!) and there's is not a bit of difference in resolution between the pc and the psx versions. Stormmedia was right, it's the analog quality of the tvs I'm sure everone had when they first played it on playstation. The resolutions are exactly the same, therefore it is impossible to get a hold of any higher resolution images. But, I think I found a way to improve the images regardless. Blurring the images would smooth out some of the pixelation and static, but would lose detail. So that's pretty much ruled out. But I noticed that the backgrounds have a common quality with almost all psx games and other console games of that era: gamma lighting and colors with a complete lack of any hdr or bloom lighting. Most games had this very crude gamma lighting that caused a lot of weird colors and pixelation and, hey so does our backgrounds. When I looked at them further, I noticed that it wasn't exactly the low resolution that bugged the crap outta me, it was those random green and purple pixels that where strewn across other colors where they didn't belong, most likely due to the limited technology that went into rendering those backgrounds in the first place. I'm pretty savvy at photoshop and I tried to see if I could simulate bloom lighting with the backgrounds and get rid of those sh*tty colors. These are my results:

(All of the images above are, obviously, rendered down jpegs so the quality is a lot better with the actual bmps I've worked on. What I'm wanting everyone to see is the differences in color and lighting.)

Bloom and HDR lighting used in modern games take the unlighted gamma color information and apply whatever lighting engine to that information. I think that by looking at these backgrounds as the unlighted gamma colors and apply our own lighting via photoshop, we can get some good results. The best results we can possibly get anyways.

EDIT: I forgot to add this in. I checked into the pc version cutting down the native resolutions and found that it doesn't. I was playing the psx and pc side by side(via alt+tab) with psx emulator playing the game at 1240x1024 and the background qualities were exactly the same.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

I checked into the pc version cutting down the native resolutions and found that it doesn't. I was playing the psx and pc side by side(via alt+tab) with psx emulator playing the game at 1240x1024 and the background qualities were exactly the same.

I've just tried this with epsxe and the same thing happened: the PC version and the PSX version looked identical. Damn. The backgrounds looked a lot better on my TV and the colours were stronger as well. And let's not forget that low resolution images will always be much more noticeable on a monitor/laptop screen 50cm away than they are on a TV two metres away ;-)

Those photoshopped backgrounds are brilliant! How long did they take to make? Do you think that you could do all of them and make a patch?

 

[shazman1984]

excellent work karac, the excitement is building.

 

[Timu Sumisu]

I suggest before photoshoppin around too much, get that first image of the train in game, making sure it works. If ye can get that, post a side/side comparison via screenshots to compare the difference and if it seems worth the effort, then get to work on a whole lot more.

I'm not great with photoshop, but asuming you use a similar method for each image to enhance the quality, perhaps provide a step by step tutorial for people so we can quickly all send in work (make an agenda and designate work to different people), and it could all be sent to someone who could put it together as a patch. I'm out on a limb with this and it may take a bunch of work and each image will need specific work done on it, just putting out the idea.

Anyhow, get us some shots, as its more important to be able to get them ingame.

Keep up the great work!

 

[Karac]

So, as expected, it seems that this will be a lot more complicated. Apparently the FFVII engine has the images encoded into the .lgp files and loads them as a bunch of squares instead of a whole image, which makes sense...different layers act as images that are in front of or behind the character model. Problem is, no one has created a program that can extract the information as storable images so I can edit them and then re encode them as new .lgp and replace. I've checked out all of the other programs on the site and, to my knowledge, none of them can do what I want. https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/3323/ ... this thread shows the Borde actually edited a background, reinserted it and actually played it. I'm trying to get a hold of him and find out how.

Does anyone have any suggestions on this? I'm new to understanding the FFVII engine and my forte is in music and image editing in this case, so I'm kind of stumped at this point. These images I extracted are the ones from the psx version via 7mimic.

 

[qwerty103]

Yeah I hate the background too. I thought the Saint's high res patch will fix everything but it was only the character models. *sigh*

I wish someone can make a better background res for this...