[FF7PC-98] Re:Sampled - High Resolution Pre-Rendered Backgrounds (v2.0)

  • Thread starter Thread starter yarLson
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I compressed the png's using the most extreme settings on PNGout so they are not getting any smaller.  As for the comparisons.  Yeah, they might seem a bit sharper but in reality that sharpness is just an illusion made by photoshop with its sharpening tools.  In the end, I arrived where I did because I achieved a ratio of least distortion vs least blur.  Over sharpening just creates visual artifacts. 

Considering the scope of this project trying to use per scene editing would be impossibly inefficient and the gains would be minimal at best.  So yeah Omzy's pack might look better in some scenes and mine in others.  But my over all goal was reached and most of the fixable bugs (because lighting is not fixable right now) have been worked out by hand.  Anything than can be fixed in the future will be, but for the most part this project is complete.  I hope you enjoy it.
 
Hi there,

This mod looks amazing, it's pretty much exactly what I want because I feel that the pre-rendered backgrounds are the part of the game which has aged worst (just a shame they lost the hi-res originals).

I'm a bit of a noob at this whole modding thing, so had a question: why is it necessary to install a new graphics driver to run this mod?

I'm running upgraded character models just fine through the Steam version and was wondering why I can't just drag and drop files with this one too so I don't lose achievements and cloud saves. I understand there's probably technical reasons, but was wondering if it would even be possible to do with a few workarounds.
 
The game expects an exact size of the textures for the background to cut it properly. DotEmu didn't implement an external texture path when they have made the directx9 driver. It might be possible to use hashcodes but that's not an easy workaround, if you have followed ff8 moding lately.
 
Ok, that makes sense. I guess I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I blew money on something which has no real improvement to its predecessors. I was expecting for the backgrounds to look like the ones YarLson has made, but the only new things on there are lost if I want the game to look any better.

In any case, thanks for the work YarLson, they backgrounds look really great and I'll use them next time I play through the game :)
 
Just checking, but are these textures subject to the same problem with (8-bit palleted? or was it pallet animated?) textures as FacePalmer's?
 
I have found a bug:

yarlsons & omzys backgrounds screw up the whirlwind maze, you can’t tell when to cross through the waves.

If the bug cannot be fixed I would suggest updating the texture pack to have the original backgrounds for these scenes until a fix has been made.

I do not see the bug being mentioned on the main page of this thread so I can only assume it has not been reported as a known issue.

I was using 7th heaven to load the textures if that helps.
 
The whirlwind maze problem has more to do with Aali's Driver, not the textures.
 
oh, really, well in either case do you think yarsons and omzys pack should be replaced with the vanilla whirlwind maze textures until Aalis drivers get a fix for this.
 
Thanks for your work.

Have you tried waifux2 ? it's a new resizer used for anime and computer graphics resize.
It's realy slow (a fast cuda gpu version exist but not as good output as this gpu version) but provide wonderfull results on ff7 fields files.
You can find the package here (gui + cli) : http://inatsuka.com/extra/koroshell/

Her'es the result on ff7 field files (command used : waifu2x-converter_x64.exe" -i "d:\source\md1_1_0_00000000.png" --scale_ratio 4 -m scale -o "d:\4x\md1_1_0_00000000.png"):
wx4.jpg
 
Thanks for your work.

Have you tried waifux2 ? it's a new resizer used for anime and computer graphics resize.
It's realy slow (a fast cuda gpu version exist but not as good output as this gpu version) but provide wonderfull results on ff7 fields files.
You can find the package here (gui + cli) : http://inatsuka.com/extra/koroshell/

Her'es the result on ff7 field files (command used : waifu2x-converter_x64.exe" -i "d:\source\md1_1_0_00000000.png" --scale_ratio 4 -m scale -o "d:\4x\md1_1_0_00000000.png"):
wx4.jpg
Click to expand...
That IS pretty amazing results. How long did the process take for that one field? We need to get this done to all fields :)
 
It's not simple process my friend.  I am on my phone right now so I'll take a closer look at it when I get on a bigger screen but first impression is that it seems similar to fractals.  so I will play around with it myself to see if I can come up with something market fly improved from my current pack.  I still have my old script and a some documentation for manual edits so if I like it I can probably make a new pack fairly simply. Especially with my beefy new desktop.  Of course this is only if I find the results significantly improved and if I can get this program to work nicely with the existing photoshop script, otherwise it's too much work
 
About 15s for one png file with my [email protected].
As it's usable in commandline, you can easily make a batch file for it and let your computer do the job.
Waifu doesn't seem to use png transparency so you have to edit the waifu resized files to restore transparency (gimp for exemple) and it can take some time
 
It's not simple process my friend.  I am on my phone right now so I'll take a closer look at it when I get on a bigger screen but first impression is that it seems similar to fractals.  so I will play around with it myself to see if I can come up with something market fly improved from my current pack.  I still have my old script and a some documentation for manual edits so if I like it I can probably make a new pack fairly simply. Especially with my beefy new desktop.  off course this is only if I find the results significantly improved and if I can get this program to work nicely with the existing photoshop script, otherwise it's too much work
Click to expand...
By the way if you would make some new backgrounds with this, leave the noise filter out. I have found a tool (to be more correct it was Tawm who has found it) which is able to add posteffects like filmgrain to OpenGL based games.
https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/150209/
 
About 15s for one png file with my [email protected].
As it's usable in commandline, you can easily make a batch file for it and let your computer do the job.
Waifu doesn't seem to use png transparency so you have to edit the waifu resized files to restore transparency (gimp for exemple) and it can take some time
Click to expand...
I understand that, but thats the easy part the script takes care of all the layer editing which is a pain in the arse to do by hand, and to modify the script to work with an outside program may or may not be a simple process.  I could also batch process using this new program and modify the script to remove all the resizing and only handle layer edits but again we are getting into the area of "too much effort for the reward" area.

In any case I moved to my desktop now so I will try to play around with it for just a few moments before I have to leave.
 
wow you weren't kidding when you said it was slow, I have a 4960K and a gtx 970 and the damn thing took at least 6 minutes to process.  The cuda assisted version would be preferable; and on that note an implementation with english documentation would be supremely helpful so I could actually mess around with the perimeters a bit more.  I am interest by the "neural network" technology involved but overall I feel the results are very much akin to perfect resize; an extremely smudged look. 

I am sure if the source material were at least double the size this tech could work wonders but the limitation here is the fact that we are working with images of extremely low resolution and no matter how "intelligent" the algorithm even a human being has to add in details from his own imagination in order to make these scenes work in a higher resolution, because here the details are simply not present.  We are attempting to add something that is just not there with a computerized equation, and this algorithm though making a valiant effort seems to fall short of amazing me or completely blowing my expectations out of the water.

I may run some in game tests to see what it would actually look like in action however I can't say I am too motivated to continue with a whole new iteration of this project with these current results I am getting.
 
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