New Project: Bombing Mission!

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To answer your questions, I'm using Max as a modeller, therefor the dataset would be max-files  :)
On occasion I use a primitive, however most of the time I start with a single face and push vertices around to create an object.
Oh, and no lights yet, just a skylight of the renderer.
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Then I assume all scenes will be rendered then recompiled for the FF7 engine?
I am assuming a lot probably :D

The hardest part is to guess the right position, some backgrounds are easy and detailed, but the current one is a real b*tch. I think many backgrounds do have faults in them. Probably due to time constrains (for instance compare NMKIN_2 with SMKIN_2, the upper right corner with the crane (or whatever it might be). The placement of the objects are overlapping, and not consistent with real space, but I guess that's why it's called Final Fantasy  ???

So without further delays, here's the update, enjoy. 8-)
<sniped image>
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Well the original backgrounds were hand drawn (starving anime artists of the late 90's likely), scanned then pixel edited to make the backgrounds look good. The data then was carved up (cells were used for certain parts) into blocks and stored accordingly.  Since TA plans on using the original FF7 engine this is your process (accept you are generating 2d files from 3d scenes) and you need to use the original background information to put the animated data back in. Down side to some of that is the animation rates may need some correlation so you don't have a speeding background (LOL) torches shoot fireballs type stuff (like any game that's animated faster than it originally was designed for).

I had wondered about the lighting, now I know, FF7 I believe rarely used actual lights (more like overlays to brighten sections). This was debated, I am sure Akari or Mickey knows far more than I do.

All the lighting was done by the 'artist' who drew the original scene. So it may be necessary to adjust the lighting so it's correct.

Cyb
 
Then I assume all scenes will be rendered then recompiled for the FF7 engine?
I am assuming a lot probably :D
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pretty much I guess.

Well the original backgrounds were hand drawn (starving anime artists of the late 90's likely), scanned then pixel edited to make the backgrounds look good. The data then was carved up (cells were used for certain parts) into blocks and stored accordingly.  Since TA plans on using the original FF7 engine this is your process (accept you are generating 2d files from 3d scenes) and you need to use the original background information to put the animated data back in.
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Yes I know, well the drawing part. Actually it was done by Kusanagi some of it can be seen in here (group of artists) and drawn in 3d (well in perspective that is :-))
Nice drawings I must say. Unfortunately there are only a few drawings of Midgar in those books...  :-(

Down side to some of that is the animation rates may need some correlation so you don't have a speeding background (LOL) torches shoot fireballs type stuff (like any game that's animated faster than it originally was designed for).

I had wondered about the lighting, now I know, FF7 I believe rarely used actual lights (more like overlays to brighten sections). This was debated, I am sure Akari or Mickey knows far more than I do.

All the lighting was done by the 'artist' who drew the original scene. So it may be necessary to adjust the lighting so it's correct.

Cyb
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If the background really are rendered as 2d, and it seems to be that way, then the lighting is indeed painted in or over, but it seems that it is possible to to reverse engeneer the lights in the backgrounds.
 
There are artwork images available somewere,mostly pencil drawings,even different styled screens that were scrapped.A few are hand colored and others have Kanjis drawn on it.

I read that the developers were ordered to make the game fully 3D but realized that they could not get on with the PSX and the PsyQ libs so they used the same movie rendering workstations like in "spirits within" to create realistic looking backgrounds that somehow dont look that wierd together with polygon objects,they used even the low poly models in many video sequences.
The beginning,ending and weapon attack videos indeed look like Tokio game show demos showing of new technology, perhaps the were created at early stage.

BTW The 2 reactors are very similar constructed,,if someone renders sector 7 slums and the train then you could extend to the second bombing (mission) until Cloud falls down the bridge!

I dont know if the PS 3 tech demo opening sequence could used legally.
 
If the background really are rendered as 2d, and it seems to be that way, then the lighting is indeed painted in or over, but it seems that it is possible to to reverse engeneer the lights in the backgrounds.
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I remember someone at MIT was researching reverse ray-tracing to find the original light source information transform the page into 3d data and then re-render it with a different lighting. It was fairly successful. There was also a person at CMU who did some reverse ray tracing to get geometry data for things in pictures as well (2006 I think the later was and 2002 was the MIT person). That aside I believe you are right, since the scenes have 'overlaid' illuminations in the block data I suppose using the alignment can be used for best guess on spot illumination.  To get the original lighting an initial best guess will be needed and looking at the walk map will also help I suspect along witch camera data).

If you need any help I can do my best. I've been incredibly busy for some damned reason (oh wait I work 50 hours a week that might be it LOL). Anyhow between this and that I might be able to give educated guesses (or you can do so yourself since you should be able to make reduced polygon geomtry to do test lighting on). Honestly I think this stuff would look incredible in POVray :D

Cyb
 
I had wondered about the lighting, now I know, FF7 I believe rarely used actual lights (more like overlays to brighten sections). This was debated, I am sure Akari or Mickey knows far more than I do.
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FFVII fields uses light and color matrixes as source for lighting calculations. Each model has it's own light and color matrix. It's not related with real lighting, just used to create more realistic view. KAWAI opcode can rotate this matrixes to simulate dynamic lighting.
 
FFVII fields uses light and color matrixes as source for lighting calculations. Each model has it's own light and color matrix. It's not related with real lighting, just used to create more realistic view. KAWAI opcode can rotate this matrixes to simulate dynamic lighting.
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Do you know if it would be possible, from this data, to extract and/or extrapolate enough information to create "real" light sources in field?
 
Upon further pondering and studying some of the backgrounds, I do think it was modelled in 3d after all (at the same studio that did make the spirits within).
Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series to use developers on both sides of the Pacific. The main game engine was developed at the Japanese offices of Squaresoft, supervised by Hironobu Sakaguchi, while the impressive video sequences were created at the new and expensive offices of Square USA in Honolulu, Hawaii. Squaresoft fully took advantage of the many talented and experienced computer animators and powerful computers this side of the Pacific.
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Not really based upon reading some old articles, although...
There were a huge number of people we had never worked with before. Up until that point Squaresoft’s teams had only ever dealt with the traditional 2D medium. All of a sudden we had new people coming in working with software like Power Animator and SoftImage that we had never heard of before. From an industry point of view, it was unbelievable what we were trying to achieve. That is why we all had this strong feeling; this great enthusiasm.
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but....
All the scenes which use FMV's are made in 3d, otherwise the camera line up would be very difficult to achieve.
furthermore, upon investigating NMKIN_2 for instance, when you take the pipes which go around the central tower, they have rendered reflections (that's why the corners are very hard to distinguish) same as with the left wall, you can see a mirror image from the stairs...
(take a close look at the original backgrounds)
Aside from the reflections, there's another hint in the way the materials are used, the pipe top left of the exit seems to have the same material as the wall behind, however it is really stretched.

But that's just my humble opinion  :-\ ???

Refs:
The Making Of: Final Fantasy VII, Edge, June 9, 2009
The making of Final Fantasy VII and how Squaresoft conquered the RPG market, Gek Siong Low, 2001

Now back to the subject at hand, I don't think it is that difficult to find the postion of the lights based on the highlights and shadows in the scenes, that should be doable.

Honestly I think this stuff would look incredible in POVray
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I haven't seen impressing renders out of POVray (that doesn't mean there aren't, but I haven't seen any (haven't searched either :wink:)
just googled some, and well I've seen a few. As my experince is much better with 3d Max as with any other 3d program, and looking at the way POV works, I think it will take too much time for me to spend some energy in doing so. The renderer(s) I use are pretty capable of making extreme realistic renderers, depending on the settings, materials and lighting, so I'll stick to those. The exeption I'm willing to make is the Gears engine (Ogre), but for that I have to optimize most of the models, otherwise you get a lot of artifacts on-screen. And with earlier discussion with Akari in mind (going for FFVII RT-3D  ;D).

Do you know if it would be possible, from this data, to extract and/or extrapolate enough information to create "real" light sources in field?
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Well, the coordinates of the walk mesh are known, my models are based upon the walkmesh, so technically speeking, the lights I use do have coordinates and can be exported, they only have to be transformed into FFVII coordinates, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Well that's all from me, sorry no pictures this time...  ::)
 
Do you know if it would be possible, from this data, to extract and/or extrapolate enough information to create "real" light sources in field?
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There is no real lights in game. It's just used to calculate polygon shading. Light and color matrixes rotates together with model so if you see midel shaded from left, when you rotate it it will be shaded from right.

For q-gears I thought about baking this color/light matrixes into vertexes like in battle models.
 
I know there aren't any real lights, I also have a basic understanding of how the lighting is applied. What I dont know is what kind of information it uses to do this "lighting". For example, at the bottom of the northern cave there is a bright green light coming from the center of the field, how is this effect achieved?
 
I know there aren't any real lights, I also have a basic understanding of how the lighting is applied. What I dont know is what kind of information it uses to do this "lighting". For example, at the bottom of the northern cave there is a bright green light coming from the center of the field, how is this effect achieved?
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Can you give me name of this field?

It uses two 3x3 matrixes. One for color and one for light. They are set to GTE when calculate vertex colors. They are defined in BSX.
 
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Haven't checked this for a while and just wondering but, are there any fields that are fully textured yet?
 
Haven't checked this for a while and just wondering but, are there any fields that are fully textured yet?
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nope, not as far as I know at least.
I know there aren't any real lights, I also have a basic understanding of how the lighting is applied. What I dont know is what kind of information it uses to do this "lighting". For example, at the bottom of the northern cave there is a bright green light coming from the center of the field, how is this effect achieved?
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I always thought lights were rendered as different layers within the background maps (visible with Palmer), I haven't looked at any bsx file yet, it might be interesting if there are any lights and positions in there....
 
Those sneaky bastards :P

This is what threw me off, here you can clearly see the light coming from the left:
las4_1_1.png


But standing on this side it is suddenly coming from the right:
las4_1_2.png


How is this possible you ask? I'm stupid, thats how :P

They are actually two different effects as shown by this picture:
las4_1_3.png


The green light is coming from the left but there is also a white light coming from the right.

I still have one question though, where is this green light defined? Is it somewhere in the field file?
 
Who cares, you are not remaking the backgrounds to be 100% the same way right. You want them to look better, so that is something you can easily correct. Anyway I do like some of the screens you got in here. Nice job Team Avalance ;)
 
Who cares, you are not remaking the backgrounds to be 100% the same way right.
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Actually, that is the plan, more or less. the idea is to have high resolution backgrounds that are as faithful to the original as possible. If people went around changing details willy-nilly, we'd have chaos.
 
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