Resident Evil Remake backgrounds question.

[Gemini]

Either way, how would i go about extracting them?

Not sure to be honest. I have never bothered checking too much into said video format. It's definitively something that uses interleaved data of several types such as depth buffers, alpha occlusion, and more stuff I can't remember exactly right now.

Another reason why i find that hard to believe is because of places like the Main Hall and the Dining Room, it is largely a static background but at certain times lightning strikes and appears through the windows and into the room, that surely cannot be a video file being played throughout.

Most places like those you mentioned store about 2-3 backgrounds per camera because of light effects. For example some indoor rooms have lit backgrounds, which are used for flash effects like gun shots, thunders, etc. Those don't require many frames, hence why they can be cached right away into memory and displayed with a quick blit. Video backgrounds, on the other hand, are way too great in terms of memory to be cached with a single read and are streamed instead.

[Undead Sega]

Sorry to bring this up again, but I almost forgot that someone somehow managed to extract them and make them into a sequence as they are in the game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkAWLVytLxg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3weYZWMXwMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLNXp6JlfTM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-gWWDv6gfk

Those are definitely not made of two frames out into a looped sequence either!

[biohazard_star]

Those are proof-of-concept video renders that were posted on the official JP REmake site. Capcom posted them online, along with the fly-through video of the mansion.

[Undead Sega]

Ahhh damnit!

But surely there must be a way to get those animated backgrounds, if the tool can get a couple of those frames then surely it can get all of them right?

[Undead Sega]

No?

Anyone?

[Lanzagranadas]

Only Capcom has the actual 3D backgrounds, the game disk as far as I know only stores the static image renders from those environments.

FX aren't static of course, so as long as you could identify the FX files and extract them into another software you might be able to recreate a FX animation loop with some of those static images, but a camera travelling between backgrounds if you don't have the original 3D assets is just impossible.
You can get some 3D backgrounds for the lab/mansion from REUC though, there're some of them on DeviantArt.

[Undead Sega]

I hear what you're saying, but I was not after the original assets (impossible!) but merely the actual animated backgrounds on the retail disk.

As I have been saying in my OP and in my other posts here, I am only able to extract like 2 frames of an animated background which to me is bizarre as you and me know it's definitely a sequence of images that should be stored.

This is what I am having problems with, I am currently using the "Resident Evil Remake Backgrounds Extractor", is this the only tool (or method) for extracting the backgrounds from the disc???

[Lanzagranadas]

I hear what you're saying, but I was not after the original assets (impossible!) but merely the actual animated backgrounds on the retail disk.

As I have been saying in my OP and in my other posts here, I am only able to extract like 2 frames of an animated background which to me is bizarre as you and me know it's definitely a sequence of images that should be stored.

This is what I am having problems with, I am currently using the "Resident Evil Remake Backgrounds Extractor", is this the only tool (or method) for extracting the backgrounds from the disc???

I don't know about extraction methods, but which two frames of a background you can extract? could you give an example?
In the "Background movie test 3", aside from water and fog effects (those are likely rendered in a different layer) the only thing that animates/moves are the ropes, and for simple actions like that actually two keyframes is enough to get an animation cycle, let's say, frame 1 and frame 10, then the game engine might be looping between those keyframes and adding inbetweens, which means you couldn't get the entire animation because inbetween frames are calculated in the game by mere interpolation.

[Undead Sega]

Well I did a very quick example/screenshot of what I am getting.

As you can see, I loaded one of the background archive files, in this case the Main Hall, and the first two backgrounds are the only representatives of any sort of animation going on for that particular shot.

The rest are the different angles and all consist of only TWO frames of animation (exactly what I'm showing now).

[biohazard_star]

That's probably because you don't really need more than two frames per angle to create the illusion of lightning lighting up a room. The lightning frame just needs to just pop up for a split second when the lightning sound effect plays, and that's pretty much it. Even flickering lights can be achieved this way.

[Lanzagranadas]

Judging by this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkAWLVytLxg I'd say the lightning effect consists in 3-4 different frames. Thing is, if you can only find two frames on the disk, I guess it's probably because the game switches between those two backgrounds (normal version and base lightning version) and then animates the contrast/saturation of the lightning version to create the illusion of stronger lightning peaks. But the game actually still has to work over two backgrounds instead of 4, which would be more data to process.

Using the base lightning background you might be able to recreate the extra frames by tweaking digital contrast/saturation/levels values with Photoshop or similar tools, not sure but it could be a possibility.

[Undead Sega]

I can see what you'[re trying to say, but unfortunately you are wrong. No. There is no way a console can manipulate the backgrounds inorder to give the certain lighting effects that would happen inbetween those frames, it is not at all trying to do somesort of photoshop by manipulating the levels for the highlights and specular, and create shadow effects that fall over some objects in the scene. It is impossible.

I think this would serve as a better example here:


as you can see the shadow in the background moves slightly, only two frames once again and the shadow is in different places, therefore there has to be frames in between them to fill that motion, something that no manipulation of the images can EVER do!

There are definitely frames missing on each animated background and there has to be a way of extracting them since they are in the background archives but only two frames of each shot only shows up!

[Jimmy_Jazz]

There is a difference between moving light sources and light sources being turned on and off.

You could blend between the backgrounds over time when the lighting hits, with a fast / instantaneous turn on and slow blend out. It wouldn't be very accurate, but enough to be more convincing simply switching the lighting off.

[Undead Sega]

But that isn't how it is done within the game, there is a sequence of images been played for these scene that contains animated backgrounds. You simply cannot fake the movement of light or shadows especially by just any blending technique.

My worry or concern is that these frames are not showing up, does anyone know why?

Might there be another method of extracting these backgrounds than the program that I'm currently using perhaps?