What texture type is this (GameCube)

[Retrojunkies]

Hi

In Resident Evil on the Cube it has layers for its pre rendered backgrounds, the background itself, then one for its transparency and one for lighting.

The lighting textures look like this



But what is it exactly and how would you create a new version so it matches your remastered background texture.

If I try myself assuming it was alpha or anything, you can't see the characters model, just your shadows.



I need to re create this as it'll show in game causing ghosting of that and my recreated texture

 

[emcintosh]

That looks like (the least significant bits of) a distance map - the stairs in the top left corner have fairly constant colours, and the ground floor changes quite slowly apart from the one horizontal line where the values wrap around from yellow to pink (…1.8m, 1.9m, 2.0m…), while vertical surfaces (walls, bannister columns) have a repeating gradient.

 

[Retrojunkies]

Sorry not following, I mean for example image type/file type in order to recreate it from scratch

If i save an image as any other format, png, png alpha, colour profile... in game ends up removing your character as seen in pic.

I plan on fully remastering this game and having it ghosting over the new textures is off putting.

Also shame the game also uses video backgrounds in certain areas.... not sure how I'd dump them as frames to remaster.

 

[emcintosh]

Sorry not following, I mean for example image type/file type in order to recreate it from scratch

If i save an image as any other format, png, png alpha, colour profile... in game ends up removing your character as seen in pic.

I plan on fully remastering this game and having it ghosting over the new textures is off putting.

Also shame the game also uses video backgrounds in certain areas.... not sure how I'd dump them as frames to remaster.

My point is that the image doesn't seem to be about lighting directly, but about geometry. Which is rather important if you're representing a 3D environment with a pre-rendered 2D image - the game needs to know which bits you can walk on (same height) vs. fall off (change to lower height) vs. bonk when you touch (change to much higher height).

So as long as you aren't e.g. adding more surface geometry when you add more detail to the textures, I would expect it to just need upscaling by the same factor your new textures are. Nearest-neighbour scaling would be OK, but you might get some jagged edges when your character is partly hidden by something above them.

If you're recreating the room from scratch, I imagine that your modelling program can generate a Z-buffer for the scene. You would need to adjust the output so that you get the same number of yellow-to-pink bands as in the original (think about the sudden changes as being the contour lines you might see on a map), rather than having a single gradient from e.g. black for near to white for far. Can't you just look at the original file to figure out the format you need?

 

[Retrojunkies]

Those textures are the lighting, they only apply where areas have flickering lights or thunder.

The depth is all in the default pre rendered texture to make it look 3d.

Then an alpha layer, like lighting, only apply where areas are supposed to let the player show.

Example, gaps in stair cases, banister or holes in walls.

The lighting isnt displayed if for example the above image where its shadowed.

I think if it were like to set the 3d environment, it wouldn't be visible and itd be for every texture.

Im wanting to know how capcom would have made this image file format if that makes sense?

Dolphin as far as I know when dumping texture is only png files, not 3d modeling files.

 

[emcintosh]

What effect is the lighting supposed to have? Is it for changing how the player model looks? Working out where its shadow should be cast? Or just brightening appropriate parts of the background when you get a lightning flash or the light flickers to brighter? The shadow in your 'ghosted' image isn't physically realistic - look at where the gun is compared to its shadow - the chandelier is to the right of the character, but the shadow (which should then be to the left of the character) seems to be being cast by a light in the top left of the screen.

If you invert the 'lighting flash' image, do you get shadowed areas lighting up instead when there's a lightning flash? I would expect a mask like this to have the sides of objects facing the window as bright, and the far sides dark.

The depth information I'm suggesting the image represents would be like an alpha layer - if the character is on the stairs, we should have parts of them hidden behind the bannister (which is closer to our viewpoint than they are), but they should show between the pillars (blocking our view of the carpet, which is further away than the character).

I don't see how the example image you showed us could be to do with the lighting, whereas it does look like the contours I've had to unwrap when doing electron microscopy to work out where in space the view of the crystal I'm looking at is. Can you give another example?

Feel free to stop me if you're confident of what the image represents and my comments aren't helping. I just can't see it being what you suggest it is.