Ashley in a Capsule (Room 329) and Technical Improvements – Part 3

Hi! Today’s post is filled with quite interesting stuff!

Regular room update (room 329):

This room has been the toughest in terms of the remastering process. The original had everything I fear the most:

  • Laboratory, technological, and control panel textures. Most of these textures were ultra blurred and unrecognizable. In short: I sometimes had no idea what the hell I was re-creating! But this also makes me think that Capcom staff also didn’t always know exactly they were creating. My guess is that being 100% realistic wasn’t their goal.
  • Badly mapped and overly simplified 3D models. This forced me to remodel and touch up every single model (with the exception of some walls and the floor XD).
  • A complex area that is easily skippable. This room included a section with a huge variety of textures and a lot of small details for an area that’s easily skippable during a normal playthrough. It’s somewhat frustrating, but I hope you appreciate the efforts ðŸ˜€

I’m quite happy with the results after overcoming all of these obstacles. I consistently had the feeling that I was finishing a beta version of a game while remastering this area. An “unfinished work” vibe was present in every part of this room…

As I mentioned elsewhere, the huge amount of work for this area gave me some room for creativity. So, feel free to comment about the work-in-progress comparison shots and video!

Technical improvements – part 3:

I wanted to save this for a separate post, but the screenshots speak for themselves! I’m talking about Lighting Improvements. I found out a way to edit the real time-light sources. This is what I’m able modify so far:

  • Position: For example, I found that some light sources are located about 1 m away from the fire / candle. Now I can manually adjust their X Y and Z coordinates.
  • Intensity: Some giant torches generate a really faint light, while some small candles generate blinding lights. It’s quite unbalanced sometimes.
  • Colour
  • Range: Some lights sources are noticeable only if Leon is at a really short distance. It’s possible to increase their range so that the character is lit at larger distances.
  • Which models will the lights sources affect: Characters, enemies, the stage, and all kinds of combinations. Have you noticed how some lights reach the wall but don’t affect Leon? This light source feature is the reason.
  • Blinking: There are several kinds of blinking depending of the light source (fire, old electrical light, fluorescent, etc.). Now it’s possible to choose which effect will be used.
  • Adding new light sources at will! For example, the last candle in the first cave (room 102/112) doesn’t send out any real time light (only the fire and flare effect is there).

All these edits are possible by editing certain bytes inside the stages’ LIT files. The intent is to edit just the most obvious inaccuracies. Right now the possibilities are unlimited, so we’ll try to exercise sound judgement 😉

And that’s all for now! I’m keeping a few extra things for a future “Part 4″ hehe 😛

I’ll also post a few more examples of lighting improvements next time!

Have a nice weekend!!

 

[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”132″ exclusions=”1433″ sortorder=”1433,1406,1407,1408,1434,1410,1411,1412,1413,1414,1415,1416,1417,1418,1419,1420,1421,1422,1423,1424,1425,1426,1427,1428,1429,1430,1431,1432″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_basic_thumbnails” override_thumbnail_settings=”0″ thumbnail_width=”120″ thumbnail_height=”90″ thumbnail_crop=”1″ images_per_page=”28″ number_of_columns=”0″ ajax_pagination=”0″ show_all_in_lightbox=”0″ use_imagebrowser_effect=”0″ show_slideshow_link=”1″ slideshow_link_text=”[Show slideshow]” template=”/home/content/p3pewpnas04pod08_data05/91/2963091/html/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/products/photocrati_nextgen/modules/ngglegacy/view/gallery.php” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″] 

This entry was posted in Progress Updates and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

50 responses to “Ashley in a Capsule (Room 329) and Technical Improvements – Part 3”

  1. Snake says:

    Impressive, as usual. Kudos, keep on doing such a superb work 🙂

  2. Sergey Tokarev says:

    Great job again, Albert.

    – Adding new light sources at will!
    You never cease to surprise me. And this is all ‘HEX-modifying’ stuff, right? 😉

    By the way, did you try to find out a way to restore missing depth of field effect? I suppose it’s the same kind of problem as a broken water shader (or whatever it is).

    • albert says:

      Thanks!
      Yep. I feel like I’m in a Matrix movie. All day seeing those bytes floating everywhere XD
      Right now I have no idea about DoF… Anyway, that effect at HD resolutions looks quite bad and I suspect it was removed on purpose while they ported the game to the HD Revival Edition.

      • Sergey Tokarev says:

        Yeah I kinda know how you feel.
        You’re probably right. But they also broke specular highlights at some point xD I didn’t really like this ‘fake DoF’ effect and I wouldn’t bother about it anyway. But for some scenes it is necessary to cover extremely low-poly ganado models. I wonder if it’s possible to swap them with a hi-poly ones.

        Looking forward to your future updates.

  3. Zayden says:

    Wow lot of works on this section 😮

  4. Nozomi says:

    Albert, I think I’m in love with you

  5. Frank Nitty says:

    Freaking amazing how much improvement u made compared to the original. Capcom should be pleased behind the work u gone through to remaster what they failed to do. U guys never cease to amaze me

    • albert says:

      Thank you again Frank for your comments!
      I’d love to know what Capcom people think about this project 🙂

      • DarkSamus says:

        The gifts I passed on to you about a year ago were meant to show that Capcom 100% everything you are doing.

        Just to be clear…
        That gift was not from me. It was from Capcom themselves because they LOVE what you guys are creating.

        You (and Cris) are doing a HD upgrade that Capcom could never create themselves for a multitude of reasons.

  6. LV-426 says:

    You dudes are heros!

  7. LV-426 says:

    Here is my interpretation of one of the original textures. I believe it is the 24th picture down from the top. There are some blurry cables hanging down beneath some thin horizontal rows of gear. This looks a lot like a patch bay, where you can plug a cable into a slot on one of the rows to route a signal from one source to another. If you ever do a Google image search for “patch bay” you’ll get a better idea. Though your interpretation in the remastered image looks pretty great!

    • albert says:

      Yep, it seem that way. Thank you! I tryed to do something like that. I think The cables should be connected to those dark bands

  8. George Lincoln Rockwell says:

    I thought everybody said it was pretty much impossible to change the lighting. Oh well, good job.

  9. Vick S. Bateman says:

    Mind-blowing stuff Albert, you’re amazing man

  10. DarkSamus says:

    I 100% agree with everyone above.

    The updated Village and Castle release is going to be epic.
    I CAN’T WAIT!

  11. BG says:

    Yaaaass!!

    I mentioned the oddly dull fire light in spots in a previous post. Glad to see them able to be fixed. Looks magnificent!

    • Sergey Tokarev says:

      Huh, now that you mention it… Albert, is it possible to bring back high intensity fire effects like it was on GC/Wii?

      Wii: i.imgur.com/MZtQhln.png
      PC (default brightness, no filters) : i.imgur.com/0IGfqO4.png

      • albert says:

        I tried with no luck…
        That effect is completely broken. In fact, that broken effect is what makes some rooms more red in comparison with the original GC/Wii version. Every single room with wrong colours had this missing effect applied on some fires in GC/Wii.

  12. vvoyche says:

    YES!!! This is awesome stuff.
    Please consider sharing your findings at resident evil modding forum, I’d love to edit some of this stuff myself.

  13. terminento says:

    I love that drainage at the end of the ramp. Nice detail and good thinking.
    How did the idea come to you?

    • albert says:

      Not sure XD I guess I saw those tiles bending and I thought something was missing there. Everything was… too clean ¿?
      Thanks!

  14. terminento says:

    On an unrelated nore, seeing you guys edit the scenarios in 3DMax like any other scene created with that program sure opens a door to animating an re-rendering Ada’s scenes. I know I said this before, but I myself have already used recorded footage (of myself) to rotoscope and animate characters, so using the original videos as reference (and considering that the scenarios would be the same in this case, allowing to match camera angles perfectly) isn’t that far fetched 😉

    • Sergey Tokarev says:

      I thought that someone skilled enough could remake Ada’s scenes using something like Source Filmaker. Yeah, it will be a prerendered cutscene like before, but much easier to implement back in the game and video quality will be better.
      Still, there’s A LOT of work even with this method.

  15. V I D A L says:

    The passion you guys are putting into it is very inspiring. I know you guys are not looking for recognition, but I do hope Capcom do something about it when the project is finished.

  16. Dominic Tarason says:

    Looking great as usual! Although one detail I think is off is the blue brazier by the merchant – it’s not very clear in the original model, but there’s meant to be some kind of coals in the bottom of it that are burning blue, wheras in the updated version it’s just a shiny silver base, which still looks great in its own way, but doesn’t make too much sense.

    And that’s the only nitpick I can come up with. This seriously looks stunning.

    • albert says:

      Oh. I’m afraid it’s just the decorative ultra blurred texture 😛 No coals in there. In fact, you can notice just in this room some kind of inflamable liquid effect is used here (see it in motion)
      Thanks for the feedback! 🙂

  17. […] the mod’s development blog for years, delighted each time they post about things like discovering how to edit real-time lights, fixing lighting issues in the base game, finding buildings Capcom photographed, fixing errors […]