[HD Remake] WIP Sector 5 slums

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Amazing work Mayo! I can't help but notice you're using a Chinese font for 歓迎 and 漢 in the shop, I know it doesn't really matter given that it's a fantasy world but they feel a little out of place due to the inconsistency (or did the original scene use Chinese fonts for those too?).
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Actually, original scenes have a lot of kanji writings. For texturing, it's best to figure out what they were meant to be, so we can get the high-res version of them, so we do make some search. SpooX has been recently struggling with the original writings on the train car, for instance. For quite a lot of material, I was able to find information here:
http://www.glitterberri.com/final-fantasy-vii/map-analysis/map-analysis-part-5/
and I've been trusting this source so far (sometimes double-checking with my girlfriend who has rudimentary knowledge of Japanese).

All in all, I've made an effort in order to get some Japanese writings which would make sense to a Japanese reader - which is very tricky since I've pretty much no knowledge of the language myself. If you have some advice in that area, please let me know. Or did you mean that the font was specifically Chinese and would be unused for Japanese writings?
 
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Yeah sorry, the font in particular is Chinese, there are subtle differences in how the CJK characters are rendered depending on the font and that scene has a mix of both Japanese and Chinese fonts.
 
To be honest I thought that kanjis which were common to Chinese and Japanese could be written with whatever font. I have other fonts for kanjis which generally look more "modern" to my Westerner eyes, but in that particular case I wanted a more "rustic" kind of font for the kanjis you mentioned. If you could redirect me to someplace where I could find a variety of Japanese (rather than Chinese) True Type fonts, I'd appreciate.

If there is a place where Chinese fonts were possibly used in the original game, that would be in the Wall Market / Don Corneo's mansion. If you could please check out the corresponding scenes
http://www.glitterberri.com/final-fantasy-vii/map-analysis/map-analysis-part-2/
and let me know? I don't have a discriminating eye for that. If there are Chinese fonts used in any of these, then maybe I could get away with a Chinese/Japanese font mix in mds5_i. If not, well then I guess I'll have to re-texture these.

Anyway, that's an area where I could definitely use some help  :)
 
This clip from the unicode charts should give you a better idea of what I'm talking about

lPTTrwy.png


Take a look at 8FCE

To the untrained eye the characters are all pretty similar, but if you can read Chinese or Japanese the differences kind of stand out.

Don Corneo's might make sense in a Chinese font, although the feeling I always got from his den is that it's going out of it's way to be stereotypically Chinese, sort of how a lot of Chinese restaurants are decked out in Japan, in which case there is a very specific clerical script font that's always cheesily used. I'll have a look at all of the backgrounds and get back to you, perhaps we can find the original fonts used if they weren't hand drawn.




Ok so for the item shop I'd suggest a semi-cursive gyosho font for the welcome sign on the counter and the medicine jar at the back, something like Ricoh's HGGyoshotai. Here are some free fonts, the third and sixth are gyosho although these fonts only have the basic 1,000 or so educational kanji, so only 漢 is available. It should give you an idea for what to look out for though.

Incidentally those boxes at the back of the shop in the original field look like they say *配 to my eyes, can't make out the first character but it's a delivery company.

Corneo's place has a bit of a mix of stuff, but I think most of it would look good with a reisho font, the 5th font on the same page above is reisho. Then again if you want to stick as close to possible to the original design then perhaps only the golden lettering above the doors in the main hall should be reisho, the rest uses a gyosho font again, except for the gong outside which uses seal script (second to last font in the same list).
 
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Wow, that's a lot of useful information! Thanks  :)

You've given a good example, I see what the differences can be. I would guess a Westerner equivalent would be modified letters such as è, é, ç, þ, ţ, ž you can find in various European languages.
Thanks for the fonts, they're going to be useful. I'll see about re-texturing these elements of the item shop then.

If possible, I would very much like to have your help for "Quality Control" purposes - I have to rely on knowledgeable people if I want to keep Japanese writings in my scenes and have them make sense.
By the way, if you could double-check what I had already considered "final", that'd be much appreciated: in the indoor scenes of Aerith's house (a couple of pages earlier), I have textured many books and folders where I tried to write a title, I'd like to make sure it's consistent (and that I didn't write gibberish). I have also a number of scenes "in progress" where I'd like your review before I launch the final renders.
 
If possible, I would very much like to have your help for "Quality Control" purposes - I have to rely on knowledgeable people if I want to keep Japanese writings in my scenes and have them make sense.
By the way, if you could double-check what I had already considered "final", that'd be much appreciated: in the indoor scenes of Aerith's house (a couple of pages earlier), I have textured many books and folders where I tried to write a title, I'd like to make sure it's consistent (and that I didn't write gibberish). I have also a number of scenes "in progress" where I'd like your review before I launch the final renders.
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Sure thing:

料理書 should just be 料理, although like a book in English called "Cuisine" it feels like it needs a little more, so perhaps 基本料理 - Basic cooking, or 家庭料理 - Home cooking (or if you're feeling cheeky チョコボ料理!)

For the photo albums (unless they're books on photography), Japanese photo albums ironically tend to have gibberish English (or often French) on them so these would look fine with an English title, like PHOTOS (or PHOTO for that authentic, grammatically incorrect feel).

作り方 is a little odd because it doesn't say what it's about. A gardening book might fit so perhaps 園芸, or 趣味の園芸 if you want to plagiarize a popular nhk series of magazines.

I can't quite make out the large green book and smaller blue book in the back, can you post the text?

I would also recommend to use a handwriting japanese font instead. I did a quick google search, you can download some here: http://www.freejapanesefont.com/category/handwriting/

Keep up the good work  :wink:
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Personally I'm not too sure about those, they're pen and pencil fonts, the cursive fonts I've seen so far are all brush fonts.
 
Thank you so much  :D

I'll definitely take your advice for the books. Below is an image where I pasted all the writings of the textures I had made for the writings on the book covers. I only have the writings as images, not as fonts, but I'm sure you could help me out on that one. Sadly enough, I actually can't recall exactly what each title was intended to be (I have done this texture job almost two years ago!). The titles which are horizontally written are on the front of the cover, the ones written vertically are for the cover sides. On the image below, there may be some redundancy between titles because I've just quickly combined all the titles of all book together.
kDwA0en.png


What I can recall, however, is that I wanted some books about cooking indeed (I think something like "Home cooking" would be the best), photo albums (wouldn't have guessed about the Engrish on that one), gardening and floral arrangements. I even think that for one of them, I copy/pasted the title of the oldest book in Japan which happened to be about gardening
I had set 作り方 for some books as I was trying to make "how-to" books such as "1001 tips for your home" including a variety of odd jobs, the kind which would cover "DIY table", "applying wallpapers" or "fix your plumbing".
 
I'm very grateful for your help, although I can't help feeling a little down because I have to rework all these textures, and re-render the images  :'(
 
Well to be honest this is all really nitpicky stuff so please don't feel like you need to go out of your way to fix things.

In any case:

ラーメン: Ramen, on the front of one of the cooking books. This is a bit strange because ramen isn't something you usually make at home in Japan, I mean it's certainly possible but uncommon (unless we're talking cup ramen but those don't have cookbooks  :-P). おかず is better imho, these are your typical small home cooking dishes that accompany rice.

作り方: DIY is just DIY in Japan, although it's not nearly as common a practice as western countries to fix up your own stuff, perhaps another gardening book like I mentioned above, so 園芸?

ユリ: Lily, but if you're going for an "encyclopaedia" style books series then perhaps this should be ユリ科, which would be the lily family (I just find it a bit odd that there's a single huge volume on just the lily).

料理書: As above probably better as 家庭料理, home cooking

裁縫: Needlework, fine
生け花: Ikebana, fine
花の百科事典: Flower encyclopaedia, fine
 
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Thanks! That's very insightful.
Well, all in all I think I can fix stuff without too much of a problem. I think that, if I have the means to be thorough and correct, I might as well do it right. Besides, your comments will be very useful if I wish to "recycle" some of these books on other scenes later.
And at least I'm happy to have gotten a couple of titles correctly :P
 
Now this is an interesting topic, could have used some of these insights while making the signs for midgar, those were a nightmare to decypher... Don't remember quite what I've put on them anymore. :-\
oh well, wonder if anyone will notice those tiny bits.

 8)
 
Quick update:

mds5_i and ealin_12 were patched, following luksy's remarks, with corrections on the fonts used for the writings (Japanese instead of Chinese), as well as corrections on the book titles on ealin_12. New versions have been uploaded on the repo.
Otherwise, I've been working on the layering of mds5_w, which was another pain in the butt. I have all the alpha-masks ready for the layers. All I need is to finish a couple of textures (notes and posters stuck to the shelf and behind the seat on the left), make the final render and then it should be straightforward. Hopefully the remaining scenes (5min_1, 5min_2, and mds5_m) should be much less complicated to layer and cut out - I'm just missing a couple of textures in each of these scenes.
Since my adventures with the rendering and layering of mds5_1, my workflow has changed a little: I make a rough alpha-test render (with small amount of samples), which I use to prepare the layers. Depending on the results, the modelling may have to change (objects added, or moved), especially if we're in the case of "space not displayed by background layer, not covered by foreground objects". I go through the iterative process Model > Rough render > Cut and layer > test in game until the layering in the game fits the desired result. All that needs to be done afterwards is to make one final render (with lots of samples for high quality), then use the layer cuts from the rough renders as alpha masks on the final render to generate the layers in high quality quickly. Add post-processing effects (light glows, god rays, etc.) and there you have it.
 
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Quick update:

All the alpha masks for the layers of 5min1_1 and 5min1_2 are done. I'm currently making the final render for 5min1_1, it should be finished Friday evening (UTC-7). A list of what remains to be done:
- Get the alpha masks for the layers of mds5_m.
- Finish 1 texture for 5min1_2, revise a couple of meshes, and make the final render for that scene.
- Finish 3 textures for mds5_w, make the final render for that scene.
- Finish 1 texture for mds5_m, add a couple of very simple objects, make the final render for that scene.

And that should wrap things up. Optional would be to patch mds5_1, because I had to change a bit the layout of mds5_w, which affects what can be viewed from the outside of the weapon shop.
 
Hey how do we get access to the repository to use and test these scenes? I've been trying to get registered on the forums for a while just now finally succeeded instead of getting an error. I'm using the set of sewer fields you released and it looks amazing in game!
 
The file repository is on restricted access, so you can't have these fields right now. However, once I finish all the scenes I've been working on (hopefully by the end of the month), I'll make a public release where these scenes will be just as available as the ones you already got. I also have plans to get that included in the next pack of the 7th Heaven mod.
Just a little patience  ;)
 
Hi folks,

mds5_1 is finally done and uploaded to the repo. Below is the final render with light layers:

Again, anyone who wishes to try it without having access to the repo, please PM me. I hope you like it.
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Ahh, very well. I only requested because of your post there.
 
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Oh, well actually you're the first to make a personal request. If you wish to test a scene as preview, I can email you the corresponding files. Just for a quick reminder, at the moment I have the ground floor and top floor of Aerith's house (ealin_1/ealin_12, and ealin_2, respectively), the outdoor of Aerith's house (eals_1), the main sector 5 market scene (mds5_1), the item shop (mds5_i) and the "main in pipe" scene (mds5_dk). Just let me know the ones you'd like to try.
That being said, I have the whole package coming up soon enough (about a week), which will have 5min1_1, 5min1_2, mds5_w, and mds5_m in addition - I'd also like to make a small patch on mds5_1 for that release.
 
Quick update:

- mds5_w is complete, ready to be in game.
- mds5_1 has been patched to reflect the changes made to mds5_w. It's ready to be in game.
- 5min1_1 and 5min1_2 are almost done. Final renders are done, I only need to add post-processing effects (ie. glows and volumetric lighting effects) for both scenes.
- mds5_m is currently in the final render. I still need to cut the layers for that scene (although it shouldn't be too complicated) and add post-processing effects.

None of this is on the repo yet.
So... the end is within sight. Any recommendation about where to upload the files for the public release?
 
Technically they're images right? So you could use something as simple and reliable as imgur. I think your best bet would be zip files on Google drive or Dropbox, however.

I'll download them early if you'd like but I don't mind waiting. Didn't realize you were so close to release.
 
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