Recreating the backgrounds

[Cervian]

First trial using @kavehth piece of software.
I'm sorry but I have an issue with renderer, so I can only give you viewport pictures.

[kavehth]

looks great, you should use the new version for modelling the computer.

[kavehth]

here is my progress on the cafe



the modelling is nearly done, now i have to work on the textures

[mogul]

here is my progress on the cafe

the modelling is nearly done, now i have to work on the textures

Stunning... Great work!

[JohnnyWalker2001]

WOW. That's amazing!

[JohnnyWalker2001]

Here's a very rare, unused version of the room from the original game, offering some detail that you might not have seen before.

[ultraneonoirantihero]

Wait, how did you make those scenes?

I see that you've made grimEdi and zbm2obj software that can extract Z-buffer and from it you can recreate crude 3D models.

But these 3D scenes just can't be from extracted Z-buffer? It looks like someone made them from scratch...

Sorry if I'm asking for a thing that might be answered, but I'm in quite a mess from my work and I just can't keep track of all topics here.

Also, has anyone answered if these widescreen backgrounds can be implemented in ResidualVM? The famous "drawing outside the box"?

P.S. EDIT: If you extract 3D room models from Z-buffer... then you still only have 4:3 images right? Not all rooms have alternative angles, like Mannys office. Only benefit is if someone builds new 3D rooms based upon extracted ones, you can have High-res room images. But that would require extracting textures from already low-res images or building them from scratch?

You guys accomplished the impossible, this is a great feat!

Not to be a party pooper, but project of this scale sounds like too much work for current manpower this forum has:

1. Extract 3D images with zbm2obj
2. Polish rough 3D models
3.A Extract textures from existing room images and upscale them
3.B Make new textures in high-res
4. Make new 3D content on the sides to fill in 16:9, and re-texture it
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for 200+ game locations
6. Make ResidualVM load new high-res backgrounds
7. Make ResidualVM run in higher resolution

This would require more manpower... or an automated process... or more users from DoubleFine forums who love GF.

Also, how are the animated backgrounds implemented in GF? The Edge of the World has animated waterfall as a background image?

P.P.S. Would it be possible to place high-res backgrounds into Remastered version with new recalculated Z-buffer images? Instead of making ResidualVM support higher resolutions (which sounds tough), maybe there is a way to replace backgrounds & z-buffer in remastered version? That would eliminate steps 6 & 7 mentioned above.

[kavehth]

Wait, how did you make those scenes?

I see that you've made grimEdi and zbm2obj software that can extract Z-buffer and from it you can recreate crude 3D models.

But these 3D scenes just can't be from extracted Z-buffer? It looks like someone made them from scratch...

Sorry if I'm asking for a thing that might be answered, but I'm in quite a mess from my work and I just can't keep track of all topics here.

You are right, I created the cafe from scratch, but because I had the models from the z-buffers it was a lot easier to match the scene to the original, I'm not sure how Cervian created the office but I'm assuming he did the same.

that being said when i started modeling, i didn't know we could get such good results from the z-buffers, now if you try the new version of zbm2obj the models look quite good, so maybe we don't need to recreate them from scratch and we can just clean up those models.

either way too me the modelling part is not the issue, i think we could create the models pretty fast from the z-buffers, but the real problem is the texturing and recreating the lighting and the feel of the original backgrounds, to me that is the most time consuming part. Maybe we can figure out a way to use the current backgrounds to retexture the models quickly but i don't know how yet.

Also, how are the animated backgrounds implemented in GF? The Edge of the World has animated waterfall as a background image?

as far as i know they are just a series of images in the same format as the backgrounds.

This would require more manpower... or an automated process... or more users from DoubleFine forums who love GF.

i agree we will need more people, but maybe if we created a couple of scenes we could get more people to help out.

Next I'm gonna try to create a hi-res .bm image from what I've created so far, and see if i can replace the background in the game.

[mogul]

Also, how are the animated backgrounds implemented in GF? The Edge of the World has animated waterfall as a background image?

as far as i know they are just a series of images in the same format as the backgrounds.

Some are Smush files, the same custom compressed video format used for the cutscenes, and in various other LucasArts games.

[ultraneonoirantihero]

Houston, warm up your engines:
http://forums.residualvm.org/viewtopic. ... 3766#p3765

As I said in the mentioned thread, I'll continue working on the backgrounds. I also need more tech info, as written in my follow up post.

[Nitrus]

either way too me the modelling part is not the issue, i think we could create the models pretty fast from the z-buffers, but the real problem is the texturing and recreating the lighting and the feel of the original backgrounds, to me that is the most time consuming part. Maybe we can figure out a way to use the current backgrounds to retexture the models quickly but i don't know how yet.

It's possible with camera projection, if you have the right camera angle, you can project an image on the geometry, like I've done here. In maya it can be done through Hypershade, I can explain it more in detail if you wish, I'm sure there's an equivalent in blender too.

[kavehth]

either way too me the modelling part is not the issue, i think we could create the models pretty fast from the z-buffers, but the real problem is the texturing and recreating the lighting and the feel of the original backgrounds, to me that is the most time consuming part. Maybe we can figure out a way to use the current backgrounds to retexture the models quickly but i don't know how yet.

It's possible with camera projection, if you have the right camera angle, you can project an image on the geometry, like I've done here. In maya it can be done through Hypershade, I can explain it more in detail if you wish, I'm sure there's an equivalent in blender too.

I know how to project the image onto the mesh, what i meant was figuring out a fast way to increase the quality of the textures without creating them from scratch, I'm just wondering how much we can do with the things that we already have before we start creating new stuff.

[kavehth]

I was able to make a program to convert my backgrounds to .bm files and get them in the remastered version, but i couldn't increase the resolution, it seems that backgrounds are always the same size. here is how it looks when i use a 1080 image



and here is a 480 image



so does anyone know if it would be possible to change the resolution? i thought maybe because the remastered is rendering at a higher resolution this might be possible. hopefully some one with better knowledge of the engine can tell me if this is possible or not.

[RodriTaku]

Hi! A lurker here very interested in the new direction the project is taking. I was wondering, kavehth, have you tried to do a rescaling of the zbuffer file that accompanies that background? I have no clue about how the engine works, but given that the game needs to load both the .zbm and the .bm, it may be overriding the resolution of the background to match that of the zbuffer...

[Nitrus]

Could be that absolute coordinate system again...
When we upscale MATs (model material images), we have to upscale the UVs for the model too.
E.G.: If the original image was 128x128, and we wanted a 512x512, we'd have to scale up the model's UVs times 4.
Have you tried doing this through ResidualVM, or just remastered? I vaguely remember a division by window width/height somewhere in the code, asking Botje/klusark/somaen will probably yield some answers.

P.S.: Check out this branch, it will probably aid you in the conversion for other formats too if you need them:
https://github.com/residualvm/residualv ... ster/tools

EDIT: Also, without checking any actual code, what RodriTaku said could have some merit, the dimensions of the ZBM could be the ones that are fetched for the scaling. Again, this is just a thought, I've not actually looked at any code to back it up.