Field Scene Screens (non bombing mission) Gallery

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Ah so I assume that you speak french? Yeah it was so bad that we couldn't understand correctly the story, until now, the most french speaker don't know the correct story of the game. The guy who launch the project is Acro, the creator of http://ff7.fr/ (the biggest encyclopedia of FF7 that exists on the world, I think  ;D ) , the patch is almost finished, I can't wait! He even restored 2 missing quest of the game.
About costa Del sol,  now that I have a fresh Maya 2012+ an interessant render engine (VRay 2.0) , I think I will continue.
It's not finished, but here's a pic, just for fun  :)
I really don't like the wood texture :-\
Click to expand...
Well, I'm French, though I now live in the lands of elks and hockey players. It is true that back then you had to rely on your imagination to follow the story (I had it right though). I know of ff7.fr, I have been lurking around Acro's site for quite a while - a very thorough and impressive work. Still, now that I am used to English language in video games (video game voice acting is way better in English than French, which is the opposite in movie industry for some reason), I'm not looking forward to a French re-translation as much as before.
All the best for your progress on that Costa del Sol scene, and happy modelling!
 
Update - I started to use Blender's cloth physics...




... much to the agony of my poor old laptop  :|
 
Update - I started to use Blender's cloth physics...

... much to the agony of my poor old laptop  :|
Click to expand...
Blender uses Python for it's scripting correct?
I haven't used it in years heh. Probably should do an update and play with it. :D

Anyhow, the cloth physics is just a static mesh being bent over 3d objects correct? So you just apply it once. You haven't reduced the polygon count yet I assume then on the draped meshes?

Anyhow that's a good job thus far on the "man in pipe" field position. :D

Cyb
 
Thanks!

Blender indeed uses Python for its scripting.
Well, I don't know how experienced modellers would use the cloth physics, but this is how I did it. Let's take the case of the hanging clothes in the background:

I used a refined mesh for rectangular clothes, which I let fall onto the clothesline. The refined mesh is necessary for getting nice ripples. The collision physics (including self-collision) make the cloth ripple and wave dynamically with the cloth subject to gravity, and I let the "simulation" run until the cloth assume a "near-rest" position. It may not be very clear in the picture, but the clothes are hanging on both sides of the clothesline. So in that case, I had to compute all the animations between the release of the cloth and the "near-rest" position. Once all the animation is computed, I could access whatever frame and render it (I was interested in the "near-rest" position so I rendered the very last frame I calculated).
Probably there are much simpler ways to do what I did, if you have some tips I'll appreciate  :)
 
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Thanks!

Blender indeed uses Python for its scripting.
Well, I don't know how experienced modellers would use the cloth physics, but this is how I did it. Let's take the case of the hanging clothes in the background:

I used a refined mesh for rectangular clothes, which I let fall onto the clothesline. The refined mesh is necessary for getting nice ripples. The collision physics (including self-collision) make the cloth ripple and wave dynamically with the cloth subject to gravity, and I let the "simulation" run until the cloth assume a "near-rest" position. It may not be very clear in the picture, but the clothes are hanging on both sides of the clothesline. So in that case, I had to compute all the animations between the release of the cloth and the "near-rest" position. Once all the animation is computed, I could access whatever frame and render it (I was interested in the "near-rest" position so I rendered the very last frame I calculated).
Probably there are much simpler ways to do what I did, if you have some tips I'll appreciate  :)
Click to expand...
First I am not an expert at blender, however I suggest you export the final frame as a static model then do a polygon reduction on it. That should speed things up for you. Otherwise you will have however many polygons it used per mesh instead of the reduced count you probably can get concatenation strips of polygons into larger ones. There are a number of polygon reduction algorithms I believe for blender. You are just working on a static scene correct? Is the TV ever on in the game? I can't remember.

Cyb
 
First I am not an expert at blender, however I suggest you export the final frame as a static model then do a polygon reduction on it. That should speed things up for you. Otherwise you will have however many polygons it used per mesh instead of the reduced count you probably can get concatenation strips of polygons into larger ones. There are a number of polygon reduction algorithms I believe for blender. You are just working on a static scene correct? Is the TV ever on in the game? I can't remember.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice. In fact, once the "animation" is fully computed, I can work on the scene without much problem. Still, exporting the stating frame is a good idea and would lighten the file a lot. I don't think I would even need to reduce the number of polys (still I would consider it for more complicated scenes, so thanks for the tip).
Concerning the TV: in game, the TV is on, but with a static screen which is overexposed. At this point I used the screen shown in Avalanche headquarters for UV mapping (the screen is not flat because it's an old TV). However I was wondering:
- Is it feasible to implement this scene into the game as a dynamic scene? In which case, we could play a movie on the screen (such as the post-bombing mission short FMV with the reactor exploding) to enhance all that.
- If it were possible to do the above, would TA go with this idea or stick to a purely static screen because the original game was so?
 
Those trophes are the shiniest thing in Midgar.
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I can put "make the trophies more dull" on my to do list, if you think that'd be better *nods*

After closer examination of my Hi-res render, I was considering the additional revisions:

- Instead of making corrugated metal sheets and grids with bumpmaps, I should do them with actual 3D meshes
- I should revise some junction between the floor and the mattress

There's something I could really use some advise about: overall, I feel like the place feels "too clean". I tried to fix it by putting some subtle "dust" textures, but I think it doesn't achieve the effect I would like. To be more specific, I feel like the scene needs to convey a certain "thickness" to the light, and I'm not sure how to do that. I thought about particle modelling (for floating dust) but I'm not sure that's the way to go. The lighting effects in the renders by anaho and Spoox are pretty awesome, and I really don't know how to do something like that.
 
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I can put "make the trophies more dull" on my to do list, if you think that'd be better *nods*

After closer examination of my Hi-res render, I was considering the additional revisions:

- Instead of making corrugated metal sheets and grids with bumpmaps, I should do them with actual 3D meshes
- I should revise some junction between the floor and the mattress

There's something I could really use some advise about: overall, I feel like the place feels "too clean". I tried to fix it by putting some subtle "dust" textures, but I think it doesn't achieve the effect I would like. To be more specific, I feel like the scene needs to convey a certain "thickness" to the light, and I'm not sure how to do that. I thought about particle modelling (for floating dust) but I'm not sure that's the way to go. The lighting effects in the renders by anaho and Spoox are pretty awesome, and I really don't know how to do something like that.
Click to expand...
I totally agree with your revisions, I was looking at the feet of your telly, and it doesn't look right due to missing mesh, also the shadows look to straight.
That can be fixed with replacing the bump map (partly) with actual meshes.

For the textures, it looks extremely clean, start by adding some noise, stains, scratches,rust, etc. to the maps.
Tone down the colors, look close to the reference what colors are used.
Tone down the illumination of the TV screen, right now it's too bright. (it's in the slums, the TV is an old one, just like the rest of the slums).
The general light (ambient) should be a bit warmer, it will change the overall color and feeling, do some experimentation with that. (I don't have the original as a reference right now).

As for comparing it with my renders, that's something totally different, I work in 3ds Max with a physical render engine. I don't have a lot of experience with Blender, so I can't give you much advise on the render settings you should or could use, but the above tips should (hopefully) help you on your way.

By the way, I'm impressed with what you've achieved so far, keep on going :-)
Also like the shinra-cola :D

- Is it feasible to implement this scene into the game as a dynamic scene? In which case, we could play a movie on the screen (such as the post-bombing mission short FMV with the reactor exploding) to enhance all that.
Click to expand...
I've been asking myself the same thing, when I worked on the TA Headquarters, as I made a complete animation for the screen, however the current FFVII engine uses layers where only two or three frames are displayed. However with the new engine Akari is working on it should be possible if we use the fields as models instead of pre-rendered backgrounds. With Ogre there are some plugins where you can map a video as a texture on a mesh... But I'm not sure if that is somewhere in the roadmap of QGears.

 8)
 
I can put "make the trophies more dull" on my to do list, if you think that'd be better *nods*

After closer examination of my Hi-res render, I was considering the additional revisions:

- Instead of making corrugated metal sheets and grids with bumpmaps, I should do them with actual 3D meshes
- I should revise some junction between the floor and the mattress

There's something I could really use some advise about: overall, I feel like the place feels "too clean". I tried to fix it by putting some subtle "dust" textures, but I think it doesn't achieve the effect I would like. To be more specific, I feel like the scene needs to convey a certain "thickness" to the light, and I'm not sure how to do that. I thought about particle modelling (for floating dust) but I'm not sure that's the way to go. The lighting effects in the renders by anaho and Spoox are pretty awesome, and I really don't know how to do something like that.
Click to expand...
I believe in FF7 they have semitransparent overlays to simulate light in areas. That technique is used I believe in wall market (?) So to achieve a mottled atmosphere you could add a 'floating' textures that modulates everything like static. You will have to check what needs to be modified in the basic scene for animating the TV. Doors have triggers I believe there are lights that do the same thing. In wall market they have 'area' lights.  Anyhow by choosing the right dither pattern you can add a dusty look as your character moves around. It would seem like you will need to experiment with that a bit. Fortunately you can do that expost factor in the scene.
Second you probably wish to DARKEN the scene. In fact you could let the light from the TV be the 'modulation' for the scene. IE as the scene changes so can the 'area' light that covers the scene. So if you have a low ambient light you can add the light 'area' to increase the brightness of areas with the i/r^2 distance of the TV.

Can you export a POV scene file from Blender? I might be able to show you want I mean by applying the affects in a short movie. I suppose I could YoTub it so you can view the scene with 'animated' TV textures (like stained glass but animated).

For your scene you could make 2 scenes 1 with a darkened color setting and 1 with everything in white mostly and add media then use a light source from the TV to modulate the intensity of the overlay. After that you can play the overlay over the scene as part of the animation. I don't know how that would look but it might be worth a try.

Anyone remember how they added scene 'lights' for areas such as wall market? I believe there were tiles that had different colored light areas that lay transparently on the screen to brighten things like a light would (the light would be in front of the character so it might take a bit of tweaking).

Cyb
 
Thanks a lot for your feedback guys, good food for thoughts. Too bad I'm off for two weeks. I'll try to find the time to discuss these points. 'Later!
 
I'm back from my trip to Europe and can resume this discussion at last.
Before I get back to the points you guys mentioned, I would like to point out two things:
- I am totally unaware of how things are implemented/programmed/computed within the game (and how the game handles assets, objects, and scenes). Besides, I have no insight into that because the versions of FF7 I own are only the PlayStation ones (so no mods for me to play with, at least so far. Anyone knows if the recently released PC version is mod-compatible?)
- The particular scene I am trying to model is actually full of inconsistencies. Among other things: The wooden supports of the trophy shelf have wrong perspectives (which is why they cannot be modelled in 3D like in the original picture), the bed is too small compared with many items (such as cans and cigs - if the bed is 2m long, the cans are 25 cm tall), the lighting doesn't add up (the actual lighting devices should be casting blue-shaded or white light, but the scene shows warm colours). Thus some aspects of modelling are difficult to choose.

I totally agree with your revisions, I was looking at the feet of your telly, and it doesn't look right due to missing mesh, also the shadows look to straight.
That can be fixed with replacing the bump map (partly) with actual meshes.

For the textures, it looks extremely clean, start by adding some noise, stains, scratches,rust, etc. to the maps.
Tone down the colors, look close to the reference what colors are used.
Tone down the illumination of the TV screen, right now it's too bright. (it's in the slums, the TV is an old one, just like the rest of the slums).
The general light (ambient) should be a bit warmer, it will change the overall color and feeling, do some experimentation with that. (I don't have the original as a reference right now).
As for comparing it with my renders, that's something totally different, I work in 3ds Max with a physical render engine. I don't have a lot of experience with Blender, so I can't give you much advise on the render settings you should or could use, but the above tips should (hopefully) help you on your way.
By the way, I'm impressed with what you've achieved so far, keep on going :-)
Also like the shinra-cola :D
I've been asking myself the same thing, when I worked on the TA Headquarters, as I made a complete animation for the screen, however the current FFVII engine uses layers where only two or three frames are displayed. However with the new engine Akari is working on it should be possible if we use the fields as models instead of pre-rendered backgrounds. With Ogre there are some plugins where you can map a video as a texture on a mesh... But I'm not sure if that is somewhere in the roadmap of QGears.
 8)
Click to expand...
I will make an effort to make things "dirtier" with textures (though I did apply some in my previous render). As for the lighting, I am still unsure: the original scene actually does not look very dark. The TV does show a brightly overexposed area in its vicinity. Anyway, I'll play around with the lights some more. So far I tried to be consistent with the lighting as should be given by the TV, lamps, and such, more than with the resulting colours of the scene. I have 3 lights: the TV, a daylight neon tube in the ceiling of the "pipe", and an outside light coming from the surrounding market plaza (which looks blueish).   
Then, I know you can apply a video as a texture on a mesh in Blender, but we'll have to see how things can be implemented within the game indeed.

I believe in FF7 they have semitransparent overlays to simulate light in areas. That technique is used I believe in wall market (?) So to achieve a mottled atmosphere you could add a 'floating' textures that modulates everything like static. You will have to check what needs to be modified in the basic scene for animating the TV. Doors have triggers I believe there are lights that do the same thing. In wall market they have 'area' lights.  Anyhow by choosing the right dither pattern you can add a dusty look as your character moves around. It would seem like you will need to experiment with that a bit. Fortunately you can do that expost factor in the scene.
Second you probably wish to DARKEN the scene. In fact you could let the light from the TV be the 'modulation' for the scene. IE as the scene changes so can the 'area' light that covers the scene. So if you have a low ambient light you can add the light 'area' to increase the brightness of areas with the i/r^2 distance of the TV.
Can you export a POV scene file from Blender? I might be able to show you want I mean by applying the affects in a short movie. I suppose I could YoTub it so you can view the scene with 'animated' TV textures (like stained glass but animated).
For your scene you could make 2 scenes 1 with a darkened color setting and 1 with everything in white mostly and add media then use a light source from the TV to modulate the intensity of the overlay. After that you can play the overlay over the scene as part of the animation. I don't know how that would look but it might be worth a try.
Anyone remember how they added scene 'lights' for areas such as wall market? I believe there were tiles that had different colored light areas that lay transparently on the screen to brighten things like a light would (the light would be in front of the character so it might take a bit of tweaking).
Cyb
Click to expand...
If I get it right, do you mean to make an initial render with the 3d modelling software (i.e. Blender in my case) and then we can add extra layers accounting for changes in light, suspended dust, and such, with an image processor such as Photoshop or Paintshop? Or rather make several renders with different lighting conditions (namely the one from the TV) and have them "loop" within the game to create an "animated light"? Or use both techniques?

Anyway, I already have a bunch of things to try in order to improve the scene.
 
I'm back from my trip to Europe and can resume this discussion at last.
Before I get back to the points you guys mentioned, I would like to point out two things:
- I am totally unaware of how things are implemented/programmed/computed within the game (and how the game handles assets, objects, and scenes). Besides, I have no insight into that because the versions of FF7 I own are only the PlayStation ones (so no mods for me to play with, at least so far. Anyone knows if the recently released PC version is mod-compatible?)
Click to expand...
It's secureROM'd so this is not going to happen without some questionable operations. I have no idea if the new data is remotely similar. Currently people are just wanting to use the new engine so it works on there newer PCs. It appears it is mostly a rework of the graphics engine so it can run better on newer systems.
- The particular scene I am trying to model is actually full of inconsistencies. Among other things: The wooden supports of the trophy shelf have wrong perspectives (which is why they cannot be modelled in 3D like in the original picture), the bed is too small compared with many items (such as cans and cigs - if the bed is 2m long, the cans are 25 cm tall), the lighting doesn't add up (the actual lighting devices should be casting blue-shaded or white light, but the scene shows warm colours). Thus some aspects of modelling are difficult to choose.
Click to expand...
Well as I was saying earlier there are many paths to get to where you want to go.  It would be good to use the actual engine to do so apart from just making it a higher resolution.  The original scene makers drew something and it was scanned in (very much how Anime is done by drawing certain amounts of a scene and overlaying sections etc). The person who ran the FF7 project was a film major so they used a more movie like method. It wasn't designed to be realistic (in any fashion).
I will make an effort to make things "dirtier" with textures (though I did apply some in my previous render). As for the lighting, I am still unsure: the original scene actually does not look very dark. The TV does show a brightly overexposed area in its vicinity. Anyway, I'll play around with the lights some more. So far I tried to be consistent with the lighting as should be given by the TV, lamps, and such, more than with the resulting colours of the scene. I have 3 lights: the TV, a daylight neon tube in the ceiling of the "pipe", and an outside light coming from the surrounding market plaza (which looks blueish).   
Then, I know you can apply a video as a texture on a mesh in Blender, but we'll have to see how things can be implemented within the game indeed.
Click to expand...
FF7 has no scene lighting instead it has cameras and 'modulation tiles', these tiles brighten sections of the background. Did you notice they never had spot lights ANYWHERE in the game except if they were fixed or in a movie?
See further on about my thoughts. It doesn't HAVE to be a major challenge although I suppose one could make it difficult (LOL).
If I get it right, do you mean to make an initial render with the 3d modelling software (i.e. Blender in my case) and then we can add extra layers accounting for changes in light, suspended dust, and such, with an image processor such as Photoshop or Paintshop? Or rather make several renders with different lighting conditions (namely the one from the TV) and have them "loop" within the game to create an "animated light"? Or use both techniques?

Anyway, I already have a bunch of things to try in order to improve the scene.
Click to expand...
The scene is made up of a complex tile scheme that handles the background, foreground, and animation, all of which are controlled by the field script.  They use this to add moving fountains water flowing (repeated sequences). Tiles can have transparent pixels. I believe FF7's engine Added those on top of the existing color image. So essentially it increase scene brightness doing that.  The physical tiles exist in a MIM file so those need to be generated as well.

It is too bad one cannot use a battle scene instead of the field scene data. Unfortunately the engine does not allow flexibility to move inside a battle scene. I suppose to open doors leave etc one could just make the objects enemies and 'attack' them. Still it would not be the same.

Anyhow FF7 field screens consist of a background (everything is in front of it), sprites (player can walk behind or in front) and animated sprites (like the pitcher plants in the ancient forest or the water scene in the city of the ancients).  So when you are making a re-render keep these elements in mind.  The animated sprites can be transparent (so you could have slowly moving dust and light overlaying everyone in the scene). They can also be turned on and off (doors closing et al). It does add up if you aren't careful however (consumes more tile space).

The PSX builds scenes (see this image to clue yourself in) from data in the PSX VRAM. The PC information is here.
 
Latest update on the "This guy are sick" field screen...



For comparison, here is the original...



Lots of small details added (click for the high-res) - corrugated metal made with mesh instead of bumpmap, grid, nails, screws, dirt, texture and mapping revisions... I also spent some time on the lights and tried a couple of things with Blender's options for Mist - I don't think I can do much better than this. Even though the scene may seem somewhat brightly lit, I would like to point out that my render has a colour scheme which is actually slightly darker than the original.
I think at this point the only additions I would consider would be about making more dirt textures.
 
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That looks amazing, I thought i was looking at an actual highres render from the game, Nice one!

Should pick up one of the few fields the bombing mission hasn't done yet :P
 
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