[FF7] Dramatically improved pre-rendered backgrounds - FacePalmer (v3.0)

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if I like the way your script turns out I'll work on the special cases by hand for you. Then we can finally have a finished product :D


If they are anything like some of the special cases I've come across, you won't finish by Monday...absolutely no way. One of the shinra building backgrounds took me a total of about 9 hours.

Do you know if this script would work on a mac or am I gonna have to high jack my friends computer to test it out?
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If it was blin69_1, which actually requires the lights to be on to fill in the background's edges, I finished that one yesterday. It was pretty tricky, but the script took care of all except 00000000 and 00065664 / 00065665 (lights), so I was able to get it done in about 2 hours. If it was blin66_2 and blin66_6 (shinra meeting room), the script took care of almost every image in that one except a couple which look simple to fix. I also wrote chorace into the script, but we might want to do that one anyways because there is a tiny anomaly if you look close enough.

I don't see any reason it wouldn't work on a mac since I'm pretty sure all javascripts for photoshop work for any platform (but don't hold me to that). So if you've got perfect resize and perfectum, you might be good to go. I'm not sure if it works on anything other than cs5.1, but I wouldn't be surprised as almost all functions I use are basic ones.

Edit
I was comparing:
Film Grain 15% + Perfectum 40: Loss of too much detail, right amount of noise
Film Grain 15% + Perfectum 20: Right amount of detail, too much noise
Perfectum 40: Loss of too much detail, not enough noise
Perfectum 20: Right amount of detail, slightly not enough noise

So my conclusion is that between 10 and 30 smoothing is probably best in Perfectum, while less film grain should be used (~10). The film grain does add a little to the realism of the scene but given that the characters themselves are simply shaded polygons I think its best that the backgrounds match, so I've opted to go with Perfectum 20 without film grain. Tell me if you think this is the right choice. At this point I need to make a hard decision because once I start doing the special cases I don't want to have to redo them with different settings.
 
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well if I end up using your script I can just change it to my liking, but I am thinking now that I used a setting of 30. I personally really love the grain with perfectum but its up to your taste. I am not using film grain however, just regular grain. I don't want to hinder your artistic opinion but I will say that when I made the decision, I had the Team Avalanche high res field models in mind (which are unreleased at this point) and not the originals.
 
well if I end up using your script I can just change it to my liking, but I am thinking now that I used a setting of 30. I personally really love the grain with perfectum but its up to your taste. I am not using film grain however, just regular grain. I don't want to hinder your artistic opinion but I will say that when I made the decision, I had the Team Avalanche high res field models in mind (which are unreleased at this point) and not the originals.
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Fair enough, I tried to make it easy to modify the script by placing all adjustable parameters at the top, although the perfectum filter needs to be re-recorded and pasted into the script if you want to change it from 20 since it has a weird way of coding its parameters (seemingly random numbers). Everything else, including the grain option (i meant grain, not film grain) is in there and needs minimal effort to be changed. The worst part is running a machine for hours to get all the images processed, but that can't really be avoided.

Also, if anyone has downloaded the script today, you might want to wait until tomorrow to get the most recent one because i've been constantly changing things and fixing bugs and have reuploaded the file several times.

Edit
Its getting late and I need to wake up early for my orientation, so it looks like I'm done. yarLson, if you've got the time and equipment, can you fix the rest of the special cases? I've fixed the ones that have strikethrough font and will upload that file when I find the best method to upload the rest of the images. There may be some special cases that I've missed, but those will most likely be figured out by playing the game. If there is something wrong with the script let me know and if I can find the time to fix it I will. This marks the end of my dedicated effort on this project, but I'll pop in when I can to check on things. Expect the images (all non-special cases and the special cases I've fixed) to be uploaded in the next week or so unless someone else with the required tools decides to beat me to it  :-P
 
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I always get:

Error 24:folderList.getFiles is no function
Line:107
->   fileList = folderList.getFiles("*.png")//List of all layers in texture

Any ideas?

I have Photoshop CS 5.1 Extended 12.1 or do I need a different version?

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Fixed it by using the 32bit Version. Seems like 64bit doesn't work.
 
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Just wanted to say thanks for your work on this Omzy. Seem like soon we will have at least 1 version of a comprehensive field bg overhaul. very exciting.
 
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I always get:

Error 24:folderList.getFiles is no function
Line:107
->   fileList = folderList.getFiles("*.png")//List of all layers in texture

Any ideas?

I have Photoshop CS 5.1 Extended 12.1 or do I need a different version?

-----------------

Fixed it by using the 32bit Version. Seems like 64bit doesn't work.
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Glad to see you got it working. I haven't tested it on any other machines so let me know how it is doing.

And I will upload the images probably next week since I'm totally swamped this week. Can barely write replies here.  :cry:
 
I have decided to post pone work a bit longer, I am finally going to be getting a new PC. This baby was designed specifically for graphical applications so I am pretty excited. The reason I decided to wait is because I'd rather not fiddle with trying to get this stuff to work on a Mac. I should have it within the next week or two if everything goes through okay. If it doesn't I'll just use the bloody Mac. But anyway, once I start work again I will be testing out your script. I wanted to ask, if I like its function, would you mind if I used it on my project. Also if you could provide me with a list of all the special cases that need to be done by hand that would be great.
 
This script can be used by anyone for anything, totally open source. You can also modify it to your liking and include credits if you so choose. The special cases I've found off the bat are listed in the first post, however there may be more minor ones I missed that will surface when the game is played.

To add to that, there are a few backgrounds that the script stops on for some reason. For the time being, just skip those when they crash the program and consider them special cases.
 
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I rendered some backgrounds, how do I get em to work with Aali's?
 
I rendered some backgrounds, how do I get em to work with Aali's?
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You've got to batch import them in Palmer 0.6b (the Palmer Frontend makes it easier, see the Palmer thread for those). After you've done that, you can drag and drop the files into your mod folder and they will work if you've set the paths up right in the config file.
 
Is there a tutorial? I converted some files with photoshop. What to do next to ge them working.
 
This is from the first post
:
Instructions
1) Extract flevel.lgp using UnLGP
2) Copy and paste the script into a text editor and save as a .jsx
3) This script must be placed into %Photoshop%\Presets\Scripts
4) Batch export layers to PNGs in Palmer
5) Place all of these folders inside %Photoshop%\ff7TexturesIN\
6) Open Photoshop, run File->Scripts->FacePalmer
7) Open Palmer again and batch import the folders in %Photoshop%\ff7TexturesOUT\
8 ) Place all new folders in Palmer's output folder into %FFVII%\mods\%modpath%\field\
9) Play the game!

For setting up the modpath, just change modpath in ff7 config to FacePalmer\ and put field folders in mods\FacePalmer\field\

Here are the links to Palmer and the Frontend:
http://backup.ninjaloot.se/share/palmer-0.6b.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/?a0btb4nc6o7hpx8
 
7) Open Palmer again and batch import the folders in %Photoshop%\ff7TexturesOUT\
Figured out how it works.

I have a problem converting bonevil2:
Error 1233
Line 584
--> app.open(composite.File)

I had to resize the bonevile2 772 png manually with paint, but it worked.
 
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Yes, that is a bug I just found, a few files have the wrong sizes by like 1 pixel. Until I have time to fix it, just manually fix them and continue.

Edit: Retrospectively, this comment doesn't make sense. He was talking about something different that I have since fixed.
 
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The problem is hyou 5_2 there are like 20-30 little files that facepalmer fails. It is pretty timeconsuming to resize them manually. It seems like only the very small files make problems.
 
Yah, until I can fix it, just skip that one. It happens on like 3% of the files. I'd like to see someone get some stuff in game and let me know how it looks and feels if you're able. Rough spots can be ironed out easily.
 
I just took the 3% and rendered them on my own. I just used Irfan View to batch-convert them to 400% and then used Perfectum. Looks pretty much the same then facepalmer skript and works with palmer batch-import :-)
 
Looks pretty much the same then facepalmer skript and works with palmer batch-import :-)
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It will only look the same if you got lucky and only had to resize some alpha animations. If you did that to anything else that has to fit together like background + foreground + foreground animations, lines will show up everywhere. That's the basic reason for developing FacePalmer, because you can't simply batch resize everything.

Edit: Ok, I understand what you mean now. Those files should be fine to resize on your own since they are just layovers and not dependent on the background. I just fixed a bug that caused FacePalmer to stop periodically on several files (the 3% I was talking about). Now it should only stop if you run out of memory / crash for some reason (although the program should not leak). I'll look into why it messes up hyou5_2 and I'll try to post an updated script shortly.

It will still stop on a couple files like trnad_1 and las4_3 since they do not have a background (00000000), so just remove them from your input folder. I've added them to the list of special cases that will be released.

And for the record, hyou5_2 contains 257 files...  ;D

Update: I'm currently in the process of uploading all the files. That means you guys can expect something to play with within a day or two...  :mrgreen:
Keep in mind, there are a few special cases that have yet to be fixed and integrated. These will be completed and distributed as time permits.
 
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ugg I should have been more thorough about this is prior explanation but you should have added a feature to add in black behind the bottom layer and behind all lighting layers. You see, perfect resize doesn't fit the proportions exactly, it's usually a few pixels off of the original and without the black behind it you can get some weird, though usually hardly noticeable cutoffs. It gets really bad in the lighting layers however and can get pretty blocky and unattractive. All of which can be easily avoided by a little bit of black. Black doesn't show at all in the lighting layers, and any transparency in the bottom layer will be changed to black anyway so it doesn't affect quality in any negative ways. I'll try and add it in myself if you don't much mind.

In the end I will probably end up using your script. I will spend the majority of the rest of the project time cleaning up and error correcting. While scripts are convenient, I should expect some level of err, and that kinda thing just doesn't "jive" well with me.
 
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ugg I should have been more thorough about this is prior explanation but you should have added a feature to add in black behind the bottom layer and behind all lighting layers. You see, perfect resize doesn't fit the proportions exactly, it's usually a few pixels off of the original and without the black behind it you can get some weird, though usually hardly noticeable cutoffs. It gets really bad in the lighting layers however and can get pretty blocky and unattractive. All of which can be easily avoided by a little bit of black. Black doesn't show at all in the lighting layers, and any transparency in the bottom layer will be changed to black anyway so it doesn't affect quality in any negative ways. I'll try and add it in myself if you don't much mind.

In the end I will probably end up using your script. I will spend the majority of the rest of the project time cleaning up and error correcting. While scripts are convenient, I should expect some level of err, and that kinda thing just doesn't "jive" well with me.
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I did put a black background behind everything except the non-alpha parallax layers, so that shouldn't be an issue. I playtested from the beginning up to the sector 7 slums last night and all looked well except 2 very minor things that are hardly noticeable unless you're looking for them. My biggest concern is the special cases once I get all this uploaded, and there are only like 10 to fix (I did half) before everything is 100%. And by 100% I mean from what I can see right now. I'm sure people will report errors as it is playtested and those can be addressed then.
 
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