Sonic Adventure DX ( 2003 Version )

[warm notch]

But the textures seems quite unstable, are the materials stable?

They actualy are, nvm

[warped fox]

I can't complain lol

[lavish frigate]

The sky does look a bit washed out comparing the two screenshots above 🤔

Why do the stretching come back @warped fox

[warped fox]

I don't know, happens when you swap textures out

if I don't used enhanced assets, it's fine

texture swap breaks it

don't know why

[lavish frigate]

Ah, ok, I think I know why

[warm notch]

No, their hashes aren't stable. How did you replace the water material? Did you apply to every water texture hash?

Or you just assigned a new material to the mesh?

[warped fox]

I need to recall how I did it, hang on lol

Actually @boreal niche made a quick vid on it for me.

#1148994432704725043 message

There should be a like a main mesh that you do this with, not the instances of it

that worked for me

[warm notch]

Yeah. The mesh_HASHES are unstable for me. Did you mark them as water texture? Can you send me your updated rtx.conf + mod.usda to analyse?

[warped fox]

ok hang on

[warm notch]

I applied to a mesh but it blinks every second, so the mesh hash repeats based on animation frames

[lavish frigate]

RE the sky looking washed out, it should just be a case of setting the "Sky Brightness" based on your preference (see: Game Setup -> Step 2 -> Sky Tuning) . Note if you decide to use the worldspace UI option, there will be less opportunity to modify the sky in the future when toolkit is available.

[warped fox]

Yea that's fine, I prefer having reflections right now though

[warm notch]

The sky is actually working as far as I understood Kyori, the problem is that reflection/bouncing rays aren't rendering it, only direct miss rays

ppl working on gmod were having that issue afaik

[lavish frigate]

Ok, can you show me how it looks with everything set to super shiney sonic mode? (Game Setup -> Material Options -> Legacy Material Defaults -> Roughness = 0.02)

I have a feeling its related to the sky brightness still but, would be good to confirm

[warm notch]

remix camera rotates the skydome with it, kind of weird, but if I use the game camera, I can see the sky just fine, only, it won't reflect

[warped fox]

this is as sky texture

worldspace ui

it's no contest

Sky just doesn't reflect

which, makes sense since it's kinda rendered infinitely

at least thats how it looks

but it's still a geometrical object, so hopefully there's a way to get it to reflect

I have noticed though, alpha based textures set as with opacity materials seem to have trouble reflecting in general

from what I've noticed, hence me switcing to translucent

[warm notch]

Oh boy, alex is actually right

[lavish frigate]

And how does it look when setting the sky brightness?

Say to 10

[warm notch]

Just bump up the sky brightness to like, 50 and it works

[warped fox]

I had to really crank it, but it's very subtle, not practical

[warm notch]

How much did you use?

[warped fox]

100

[warm notch]

Weird, it works fine on shiny soil bits for me, only the water that I didn't figure out the replacements yet aren't quite there

And I'm using 50

[warped fox]

How does it look as you look out to sea?

[lavish frigate]

Interesting. I will need to try some things to understand this issue

[warped fox]

There's no meshes underneath far out, need to get a good look at it

Yea ok it is reflecting

it's just.. not great lol

Man if we could get the worldspace look with sky textures, that'd be perfect

[warm notch]

Well yeah, the terrain below is actually reflecting, not the water surface

the sea bed

[warped fox]

ok yea, as I suspected

the opacity material with alpha doesn't reflect at all, that was the reason I looked into making it translucent

which works way better for water surfaces, apparently, lol

[warm notch]

Well, the mesh has sliding UVs, which then makes them unstable, and the textures are changing between 6+ frames, so the material is also unstable. I don't know how in the world you managed to replace them

[warped fox]

There's actually two layers there

there's one with the animated textures, and the one that has sliding uv's

two meshes, to be more clear

You want me to pack up the mod shit and send it over?

You can see what I did then

[warm notch]

Sure please, if you could sent me your setup I might be able to figure out

[warped fox]

👍

[warm notch]

If there are two layers, which one did you change?

[warped fox]

hang on, sorry I'm just messing with glass effects

[lavish frigate]

I see the bug, this is a good find!

[warped fox]

Nice!

Appreciate you looking into it, it's really helpful

and hopefully you're still doing your job, so no worries for not getting paid

lol

[warm notch]

Lets get alex a pizza after that

[warped fox]

Chef's kiss

[warm notch]

Pretty as "pretty" can be

[warped fox]

Ok let me pack all this up for you, gimme a sec

Do you need my captures as well? I won't imagine so

[warped fox]

I could play with this shit all day

[warm notch]

Hmm are you using the steam version or the 2003?

[warped fox]

Steam version, downgraded to 2004

https://sadxmodinstaller.unreliable.network/index.php/download-sadx-mod-installer/

I used this one, it's safe, but you may get a warning when trying to download and install it

[warm notch]

Weird, none of the textures in your rtx.conf exists on my game

[warped fox]

When you install this, it will give you an option to downgrade to 2004

[warm notch]

or my rtx.conf

[warped fox]

I thought it was the mod.usda that handled that?

[warm notch]

Nope. Yours have only this texture marked as water (first pic) while mine had a ton (second)

[warped fox]

was talking about this file

this is what handles the texture/model swaps etc

Where did you put that mods folder I sent you?

[warm notch]

Oh sure, that is correct. I'm analysing how did you get stable hashes for water meshes as so your replacements work. That is why I'm looking at the rtx.conf

[warped fox]

I don't think the rtx.conf will help you there

I also have no idea what you mean by stable hashes

[warm notch]

Maybe its the 2003 version who has stable hashes

Everytime a property of a mesh changes (like the sliding UVs), that mesh will have a new hash to uniquely identify it, the hash is computed based on several properties of the mesh (positions, uvs, normals, etc, I'm not sure which ones exactly)

[warped fox]

Ah I see

[warm notch]

So if you make a replacement for a mesh_123, it will only apply to that specific UV mapped mesh, next frame it won't apply

I got it to sort of work, but the mesh blinks with the new material a single frame every second

[warped fox]

Don't know what to tell you, I followed that video I showed you earlier and it just works

[warm notch]

If you open several captures of the water in OV, does the mesh has the same inst_HASH_x on any one of them?

[warped fox]

Yea I think so

I have two open, it auto applied the new one I brought in

[warm notch]

Hmm yeah, most likely this is what is happening

[warped fox]

it just appends _number

[warm notch]

If you open another capture and select the water plane, it will still have the hash 43E277...?

[warped fox]

Let me check

Yep, new capture has named it the same

[warm notch]

[copper copper]

damn the steam version works now? wild

if only sa2 had a chance of working 😩

wait i think i found a compromise

https://gamebanana.com/mods/49982

[warm notch]

Yes, it is working. Just need to set the graphics to lowest on the modloader setup

[copper copper]

thats awesome

[warm notch]

Testing out with skybox replacement using the same trick we used in U2

[urban mesa]

I'm sorry for asking, it's been a while for me, but does remix now support skybox replacement?

looks gorgeous too

[warm notch]

Yup. But you can't mark their textures as skybox in the runtime. They must be seem by the runtime as regular large spheres rendered in the sky so you replace those meshes with your custom with nice UV maps so you can slap a hdr map on it's material's emissive map

[royal ridge]

redhoge

[boreal niche]

This is a common issue actually. #1148142262895775844 message

Sky textures doesn't reflect and are not visible through thick glass

#general-remix message mirror

[boreal niche]

This issue exists in https://discord.com/channels/1028444667789967381/1110245358040260668 too but I couldn't find a image clearly representing it

[warped fox]

Few things I want to do today, big one is model a new capsule for items

[warped fox]

You mentioned this yesterday, what does kit.exe even do, and why can I close it?

[boreal niche]

kit.exe is the usd composer

I said you can suspend it not kill it

[warped fox]

Is that through task manager?

Minimizing the app seems to do a decent job bringing my frames back

[boreal niche]

If you suspend, it basically pauses the program. This should free up cpu & gpu (not ram). Then you can resume it to continue from where you left off.

[warped fox]

I've never suspended and app in my entire life, it sounds useful lol

[boreal niche]

Yea it frees the vram afaik

[warped fox]

Damn, wish I knew about this all these years lol

[boreal niche]

It is extremely useful but it wasn't available with the default task manager until Win11

I am on Win10 so I use a 3rd party foss alternative

[warped fox]

So how do I suspend? Seems it's not as simple as right clicking and suspending >.>

efficiency?

[boreal niche]

It should be, check the details page

[warped fox]

I'll have to dig into it later, there's no suspend button, but I can see a bunch of apps that are suspended

[boreal niche]

Oh btw I didn't tested the win11 myself, Kim said that task manager has this ability in win11

[warped fox]

I'm sure they're right, I see suspended apps

[boreal niche]

If you can't find it you could either use sysinternals Process Explorer https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer
Or a free and open source task manager alternative: https://github.com/winsiderss/systeminformer

[warped fox]

Oh, I use process lasso

very useful

I'm sure they're basically the same though

[boreal niche]

Sysinformer

[warped fox]

Hmm, that is clean

I just.... paid for lasso lol

how much is that?

oh wait that's the free one

[boreal niche]

Process Explorer

[boreal niche]

Process Explorer makes it much easier to find out what dlls a program loaded or what handles it has

sysinformer might have the same feature but I didn't dig down its settings

[warped fox]

PE I may check out

[boreal niche]

This thing allows you to remove hidden windows drivers 💀

[warped fox]

Yea this is nice actually

being able to see what process are running and under which tree

that's nice

[warped fox]

@barren lichen you available a sec?

How about you @boreal niche

[barren lichen]

I am available

[warped fox]

can you pop into the streaming channel and let me know if the audio is playing, please?

[barren lichen]

Ok

[warped fox]

If not, I may have to set up a voicemeeter thingy

[barren lichen]

My stream is not loading

[warped fox]

Ugh

ok no worries

What's the best settings for discord, 1080p?

Just knocked it down th that, maybe it'll load for you now

[barren lichen]

Yeah it's okay

No wait

I still can't see stream

Infinite loading

[warped fox]

Hmm

[barren lichen]

Maybe a problem on my end

[warped fox]

Could be

[barren lichen]

oh

I see now

[warped fox]

any sound?

[barren lichen]

Nope

[warped fox]

Ok cool, know what to do now, thanks

How bout now?

[barren lichen]

Laggy, sound glitching

[warped fox]

hmm

are you downloading anything?

[barren lichen]

No lol

[warped fox]

Feck

[barren lichen]

But it's consuming way less kb/s like 28kb/s

Maybe because its a still image

Oh yeah

It works sometime

[warped fox]

I just removed sound echo etc

[barren lichen]

It works but with micro breaks

[warped fox]

dammit

gonna open on my phone

Well that didn't work lol

If you're talking, I won't hear shit

[barren lichen]

It's okay

No sound

[warped fox]

trying to fix it

now it's broken

I hate tech

[barren lichen]

Are you using obs?

go into discord and select your sound source

[warped fox]

Yea it's not that

[barren lichen]

It worked

Yes

[warped fox]

But I can't hear it lol

[barren lichen]

But I can

[warped fox]

I am not working in complete silence XD

[barren lichen]

Put up some heavy metal for a bit

[warped fox]

It plays for a few seconds and stops

[barren lichen]

Hmm

I can listen to the music bro

weird

[warped fox]

Oh it's working again

you hear it?

[barren lichen]

yes

[warped fox]

sweet, how's the quality?

[barren lichen]

Its okay

Audio is a bit trash sometimes but okay enough

[warped fox]

Has to be a way to improve it

[barren lichen]

dude audio is okay

[warped fox]

Screw it, wasted enough time on this lol

[barren lichen]

yeah stream is good, continue working

[warped fox]

I shall lol

[barren lichen]

I'm interested in seeing you model

hey umm

im on PC now but can't see your stream

[warped fox]

I'm not sure it's on my end dude

Net is looking fine on my end

[barren lichen]

ok i got in

seems like browser discord was bugging me out

[warped fox]

Oh I use the client

[barren lichen]

but no sound on my end lol

[warped fox]

ugh

[urban mesa]

the stream has sound for me

[warped fox]

Nice, thanks

refraction should just work now, I'm missing something

[barren lichen]

im no blender expert but damn, you model stuff very fast

[warped fox]

I have a lot of experience, it was my job lol

[barren lichen]

oh ok

lol

it works

[warped fox]

nah you can't see through it

[barren lichen]

the refractions are amazing

[warped fox]

it doesn't matter really, it's just to help me visualise

[barren lichen]

hmm

ok

[warped fox]

however it will bug the shit out of me

to google, hang on it's been while

It must be broken, I'm doing it right

whatever

[barren lichen]

im here dude, still watching

[barren lichen]

only way to test is to replace it in the game itself

[warped fox]

It works in game, I already did it

wanna see?

[barren lichen]

yep

[warped fox]

wrong save

forgot how to swap

got it lol

[barren lichen]

hmm

it works

[warped fox]

refracts lovely

[barren lichen]

you need to use the ApertureMDL something to get the transparency on certain parts

translucent it's called, right?

[warped fox]

Yea that's it

should work fine, it's it's working already

[boreal niche]

Nice

[barren lichen]

im going afk

[barren lichen]

i gtg dude, important stuff to do rn

[warped fox]

No worries mate, I'll be here a while.

[warped fox]

So they fixed the reflections for textures that are tagged as sky

However, the offset seems to be a bit off

I'm not sure how to go about fixing that, but the islands should be reflecting too

but it seems to be relfecting the higher parts of the sky texture

Overall though, I'm happy

Could be a scaling issue, I'll try with a new skydome

[warm notch]

Nah, it seems correct. By the pic, the water plane ended way before reaching the horizon, thus the reflections don't show the islands

[warped fox]

Not correct lol, this happens everywhere

The water plane extends beyond the skydome

[warm notch]

Hmm weird. for me it seems just the plane not stretching all the way to touch the sky sphere mesh. I'll take a look when back home.

[warped fox]

that's an illusion, trust me

[warm notch]

Oke 🙂

[copper copper]

for me everythings black in game

is there a specific setting i need to enable?

[warped fox]

what version are you using?

Started work on a new capsule model, obviously not finished, but it's getting there.

[copper copper]

steam with the conversion mods

[warped fox]

Did you tag the UI textures etc?

[copper copper]

yeah i did for the ui, problem is once i get in game my mouse locks up

even when i have the remix menu open

[warped fox]

Hmm, that used to be the issue, but it's since been fixed, have you got the latest remix files?

[copper copper]

yep, just downloaded them

[warped fox]

At which point does the game go black?

[copper copper]

once i start the actual story mode

[warped fox]

So once you get in game

[copper copper]

yes

[warped fox]

can you see the character in the character select screen?

Also, with SadX, did you set the graphics to Lowest?

[copper copper]

yeah i can, but it looks like its using shaders for it (bad polygonal shading)

[copper copper]

yep.

[warped fox]

Do you have that new lighting engine mod enabled?

[copper copper]

also, its not entirely black, some textures show up. i think theres just no light source

yes

[warped fox]

Turn that off

[copper copper]

ah

so lantern engine?

[warped fox]

yea that's it

also make sure you're using a DX8 wrapper

[copper copper]

yeah im using the one that comes with the loader

[warped fox]

ahh ok cool

can you bring up the remix menu?

You need to tag the sky textures as sky, otherwise it blots out the sun, lol

it's pretty dark otherwise

[copper copper]

yeah i can, but only until i have control of the character

then my input gets locked

[warped fox]

try this config for the .trex folder

[copper copper]

thanks

yeah that seems to have fixed it

and the lighting works now as well

[warped fox]

Nice

Awesome

[copper copper]

and i dont see the character model in character select

[warped fox]

Yea tagging stuff as UI will seem to draw over him

and tagging the textures as worldspace UI does nothing

[copper copper]

lol the SA2 conversion mod works

ah much better with sky auto detection on

[warped fox]

Look at that bounce lighting from the grass, looks great

[copper copper]

yeah

man if only SA2 ever had a chance of actually working

this is a nice compromise though

[warped fox]

What was wrong with SA2 then?

I never tried it

[copper copper]

the rendering is like.... emulated entirely with shaders or something

[warped fox]

Oh really? Damn

that sucks

[copper copper]

yeah

so theres nothing to capture

you enable vertex shader capture and it just renders the raster

maybe someday there will be some something that gets it working, but im guessing probably not

[warped fox]

Remix: Shader version lol

long ways off yet

[copper copper]

my worry is that its doing something super jank to emulate the rendering of the gamecube or something

because if its doing something nonstandard then theres no hope

lol it looks like one of those bad hd remakes where they just import the levels into unreal and make a youtube video about it

[warped fox]

except it's the real deal! 😄

[copper copper]

man even with bad textures this stuff looks so good

[lavish frigate]

It does look really strange. I think the problem is the game skybox was really small, and now we're treating the sky as infinitely far away so its a bit odd. I will take a closer look into what options there are.

One thing I will say though, the code says you can replace sky textures (they can even be HDR textures e.g. BC6H where the sun is defined as a super bright spot). To do so, just use a standard material replacement for the original games texture. I see we dont have any good tests for this feature, so YMMV, but Im interested in knowing what you run into

[warped fox]

I'll give that a shot tomorrow, thanks for work you're doing

[lavish frigate]

Also, just merged a change that will fix the texture stretching on replacement materials

🤞

[warped fox]

Ugh, as soon as I go to bed, lol

I'll check it tomorrow, first thing in the morning, thanks Alex, really appreciate the work you're doing here.

[lavish frigate]

No rush at all

[warm notch]

There are 2 problems with replacing sky though:

• The original game mesh is really bad. It is a weird cylindrical shape with an open top, and there is another separate "cap" mesh to cover the hole up top, and the UVs won't play nice with HDR maps. It is much preferable to replace the whole mesh by a properly UV mapped sphere, like blender's default UV sphere.
• The issue I registered yesterday about sky meshes not being replaceable: https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/issues/39

[lavish frigate]

I see, yes, you'd be constrained to the original games mesh/UVs with the current replacement capabilities. Replacing the original game mesh in this case would be, tricky for that system to handle currently.

Do you have an example of a HDR map you'd like us to support? Would be nice if you could add that to the ticket so we have something to test with

Of course, the benefit of using the original games mesh, is that the current system actually renders the sky to a texture using the original games shaders (which means it would support any dynamic sky there may be). If we supported replacing the sky wholesale with a mesh/texture, it would be largely static...

[warm notch]

I attached a zip containing a Sphere mesh USD and a HDR dds texture to test already, should be game ready

[warped fox]

@warm notch , They can be captured, in this case at least, you just need to increase the search distance, but otherwise yea, you can't seem to replace them if they're tagged as sky

can replace the texture, but that's not super helpful right now

@lavish frigate I could of sworn there was a way to increase the size of the skydome on one of the builds, unless that was part of the Portal build, I'm not sure, I know I saw it.

@lavish frigate good job, you done fixed the issue with textures.

Now I can finally get to balancing

Oh my god, and somehow capturing now works correctly XD

[barren lichen]

how shit

does that mean

replacements are possible?

[warped fox]

Yes

I mean they were anyway, but were just broken

fixed now

So I think the issue with the skydome is that it's just too small, far too close to the camera, which is causing the weird reflections, if you get the camera low enough, it will reflect the islands.

I think in this case, maybe a skydome scale slider would help

[barren lichen]

is it due to the skybox being too large?

i mean it is pretty big

[warped fox]

No, it's too small, lol

Way too small

but it's a product of it's time, but it won't work for out purposes

[boreal niche]

Its almost like a football field lol

[warped fox]

Yep, way too small for a skydome

They used it as their view distance essentially

[boreal niche]

The shape is weird too

[warped fox]

Nah I think I scaled it by accident lol

so technically it's smaller than that

[barren lichen]

Couldn't we remove it and replace it with our own skydome

Like how @quaint sage did with chess titans

(Sorry for the ping, had to bring it up 🙂)

[warped fox]

I don't think we can replace it right now

[barren lichen]

Are the hashes stable?

[warped fox]

https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/issues/39

E-Man raised the issue about it

not just this game affected

If I attempt to change the skydome in anyway, the game doesn't like it, either freezes or black screen

I really wish remix would capture meshes as whole, rather than separate materials, smoothing groups etc

[quaint sage]

My sky dome USD is included in the mod files for chess titans if you fancy having a go.

[warped fox]

may be engine specific, if I try to do anything with the skydome in this game, it really doesn't like it

[warped fox]

I'm currently trying to find a decent palm tree pack to purchase, there's a lot of crap out there

https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/plant/other/coconut-palm-trees-asset-1 Think we have a winner

I can always make adjustments if needed

Hmm, or I could go for the modular approach

https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/plant/other/modular-coconut-palm-trees-cocos-nucifera

[barren lichen]

Are these free?

Looks good

[warped fox]

Nah, I'll be buying them

There are some things I'm just not willing to model, lol

I could, but it's just a pain

[copper copper]

It would be pretty cool if remix had a sky replacement feature or something that would just generate a sky with clouds and what it automatically and we could just remove the built in skybox

[warped fox]

Volumetric clouds and stuff, yes please

[warped fox]

@lavish frigate Sorry for the tag, when you get a minute, do you know why my custom textures appear darker than how they should actually be? I'm using SRGB for the sand, but it's a lot darker than it should be

Non metalness etc

That's in omniverse.

This is ingame, could be a normal issue, but I'm not sure

Even when I mess with exposture values to match the ingame scene, it still doesn't match up

It's a shame that composer doesn't show stage lighting accurately

[warm notch]

Yes, I did that in the files I posted earlier yesterday, but you should untag the textures from being "Sky Textures", as mentioned in the issue I raised

[warped fox]

I figured it out, seems like converting via Chainner causes the textures to get darker, but using the nvidia texture tools seems to be 1to1

[warped fox]

Actually no, there is something going on with chainner, nvtt works when I restart the game, and when I export with Chainner, the texture will be darker, one instance where it didn't even load at all and was invisible

@copper copper sorry moving it here, didn't want to bog down general

I will make a new chain from scratch, see what happens

[warm notch]

Did you try updating chainner? Maybe it was a known issue that got fixed

I recall someone else also havin that issue a while ago

[warped fox]

Yea chainner is updated

Nah, just rebuilt the chain, same issue

Seems to be something with BC7 sRGB from chainner, as the other maps seem to work fine

although I'm going to double check now lol

Nope. definitely an issue with Chainner, and I'm on 0.19.4

@copper copper

Here's some information you may find useful, on the left is from nvtt, and on t he right is from Chainner. Seems Chainner is outputting more colours

They are both using sRGB BC7

[copper copper]

Interesting, maybe that's the compression amount/quality then?

[warped fox]

It could be, nvtt is set to default

I don't know if I have the same level of control in chainner, not too familiar with it, but the dropdown menus for saving files only give dds formats

Oh and compression I guess

wonder if I should try a different one

[copper copper]

Yeah try it

[warped fox]

Bah, none of them give the result I'm looking for, but the colour amount does change, so I doubt it's to do with that

nvtt

Chainner

DXGI format is different slightly

not sure why, but chainner adds SRGB and is set to 99, nvtt is 98

if that makes any sense?

Also alpha mode is set to straight intead of opaque in the nvtt one

[copper copper]

Maybe try saving with linear rather than srgb

Could also be that alpha mode

[royal ridge]

So I’m guessing that the project got split into two, one for the steam version and the other for the pc disk version

[warped fox]

There's no real plan, I'm just doing my own thing and seeing where it goes, I just want to have a project to work on tbh

Also, I can't seem to change the alpha mode in chainner, and linear is meant for greyscale, doesn't make much sense to use that mode

[copper copper]

i dont think it has that option right now. and sorry, i don't know shit about how DDS works

MSchmidt is working on doing something related to alpha though, i think he's gonna be adding some stuff within the next week

probably best to just export to png and use nvtt in the meantime

[warped fox]

Ahh I see, I thought it was your baby, didn't mean to come across as pushy or anything, just wanted to help 😁

[copper copper]

chaiNNer is my baby but uhh it's also co-parented by MSchmidt lol. He's done so much for the project, and actually has more commits in the repo than I do. The extent of DDS support that it currently has is all him

[warm notch]

Oh, I didn't know you guys were the maintainers of chainner. Thats pretty cool

[copper copper]

yeah its probably the one project i've actually stayed committed to the longest and haven't lost interest in yet 😆

it helps that people actually use it. didn't have anything like that before chaiNNer

Unfortunately it still lacks a lot of things, like as you can see there's a lot of DDS stuff missing

[copper copper]

And btw you didn't come across as pushy, anything like this where there's some kind of issue with a saved output or needed settings to do something, is something i prioritize generally. I'm just not the one that knows what to do for this

[warped fox]

Fair enough, it's a great little tool and I see a great future for it, the way I see it, I help you, that helps me and everyone else.

[copper copper]

yep, a lot of features are only there because people suggested them, or bugs fixed only because people report them. Feedback like this is always good

and btw, i might make a separate remix mod for SADX using the SA2 conversion mod -- maybe. I'd at least like to see city escape with pbr textures and some models replaced

could probably even model swap in some ones from generations

[warped fox]

I liked SA2, but I missed the hub world and stuff, which is why I thing SA1 was the better game

SA2 was a nice leap in style and graphics though

[copper copper]

i never finished SADX because i had borrowed it from a friend, got stuck at some point, and then had to give the game back

but SA2 i actally played all the way through

and i played it just generally way more, so i'm more fond of it

[warped fox]

Sonic has seen better days, to be honest.

[urban mesa]

woah

nice modeling

[warped fox]

I'm still plugging away with it, just experimenting with shapes, I don't wanna go too overboard, it's still Sonic, so it's pretty basic

[warped fox]

S'ok guys I saved him...

Just missing a body

Also yes, I'm bored, just having some fun before moving on to the low poly, baking etc

[warm notch]

Given how basic this game is, also so little objects are on screen at any given time, I'd totally go overboard and let full high poly assets, specially considering that polycount has very little impact on performance in raytracing as compared with raster

[royal ridge]

for me it does not

💀

oh wait

capturing is working!

hell yeah

[warped fox]

Yeaaaaa

I'm currently building a tool that will make texture conversion much easier

[royal ridge]

i need to try octotex

[royal ridge]

i have one

but it's not that easy to use

[warped fox]

Mine will be as simple as right clicking on an image, and converting straight to DDS, It'll be based on workflow though, so it'll be expected to name your textures correctly

_Normal, _Roughness, _Alebedo etc

[royal ridge]

hmm

sounds good

[warped fox]

And automatically converts normals to Octahedral

[royal ridge]

wait, isn't that thing already exists?

wait

[warped fox]

Not as far as I know

even if it does, I'm just doing it for fun and learning

[royal ridge]

ok i can't find it

wishing you a good luck ❤️

[warped fox]

Chainner is nice, but it's overkill for my needs, and I don't like the idea of having another tool in my arsenal just for making octahedral normal maps

[royal ridge]

yeah

im understanding you

btw wait

[warped fox]

?

[royal ridge]

this script allows you to convert normals to octohedral

it's from nvidia as i understand

[warped fox]

Ah they're using numpy as well lol

That looks a lot better than mine though

Where'd you get that?

[royal ridge]

im using this script

[royal ridge]

it's somewhere on the server

i can't find it anymore

im a blind kinda

[warped fox]

Well, that's super useful, so thanks a lot for that, mine isn't anywhere near as robust as this, so I'll just use this lol

plus this way, I know it's correct.

[royal ridge]

oh it's done

upscaled

[warped fox]

Might want to invert the roughness, but looking cool

[royal ridge]

yeah

[barren lichen]

Texture tiling issue

Can't we make it seamless

[royal ridge]

oh i see

[royal ridge]

this game has alot of tiling issues

even sand

if you try to generate a roughness map, it won't tile

idk why

ok i gonna upload these textures as mod

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vYKyWPLUDL0KuSKxU9Z1PvSmhTocWG7V/view?usp=sharing

there's it

[royal ridge]

woah

oh noo sanic

[barren lichen]

wrong textures on the top

[royal ridge]

yeah

Cannot get road texture to capture

[royal ridge]

k I'll try to make some more modern animations for sonic later

[royal ridge]

ugh

[urban mesa]

amazing

[royal ridge]

if someone want's to try it

here you go

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d1k4e0e0SzRwgZuggJxIEdc08CLIj3Xo/view?usp=drive_link

[fiery lion]

Why not just port the anims already available for the current version?

[royal ridge]

nah i hust wanted to try

and decided not to do that

hello btw

[fiery lion]

Hi

I used to mod this game when I was a kid

Nothing fantastic though

The stuff I'm seeing looks great

[royal ridge]

thanks

[fiery lion]

Look, idk how the whole RTX thing works or how to set it up, but if you need someone to throw some concepts, models, or textures your way, reach out to me

[royal ridge]

im only developing the tool, idk if i continue to make stuff for sonic

but the chances are high

[fiery lion]

Oh okay

Well whatever the case

I literally specialize in 3D Modeling and VFX stuff, just graduated from college doing this type of work not too long ago

So if you need someone to do a few simple assets for you, I'm open to doing it

Don't gotta credit me or anything

[royal ridge]

How about to make a little team?

But I need to finish my tool

[fiery lion]

Sure

[royal ridge]

For now there's a uv map problem

And it can't export back to USDA

[fiery lion]

Idk what USDA is

When I used to mod this game, you had to extract from a file called CHRMODELS.dll

[royal ridge]

Rtx remix saves the models as the USD files

[fiery lion]

What exactly do you want to do?

Change the model?

[royal ridge]

Yup

But not as a regular mod for sadx

But as a mod for RTXRemix

[fiery lion]

Hmm

I'm not sure how that would work tbh

Again, I've never used RTXRemix nor know how to set it up

[royal ridge]

That'll allow you to use more polygons for example, and fps will be higher

[fiery lion]

What's preventing you from using the original method?

[royal ridge]

Don't wanna mess with it

[fiery lion]

Ah okay, well

It may prove difficult tbh

[royal ridge]

And high poly models makes fps with remix lower

[fiery lion]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOjqya7KIf0

[royal ridge]

I will need sadx mods only for music, sounds, Animations

[fiery lion]

This is probably the way I would've done it, but if you're saying high poly models will be a problem, then maybe you could vert edit the existing model

[fiery lion]

Music can be done with a simple .wav replacement, I remember that much

[royal ridge]

The textures and models will be replaced with remix

[fiery lion]

Animations I've never done for SADX tbh

But I think I know someone who has

[royal ridge]

I've wanted to just replace sadx models to generations one

But idk

It'll be the fastest method I think

[fiery lion]

That's been done already

https://gamebanana.com/mods/247935

[royal ridge]

I mean through rtx remix bro

It'll look outstanding if we do that with proper PBR

[fiery lion]

Wait

If you're just trying to get PBR on the model

[royal ridge]

Even default models looks great

[fiery lion]

Why not just get the model in the normal way, then only edit the textures in RTX Remix?

[royal ridge]

I need more polygons...

Or wdym

[fiery lion]

Like follow the tutorial to import a model into the game the normal way

[fiery lion]

Like do what's done in this video

And get the model in the game

Then

Only use Remix to edit the textures

It'll probably be more efficient this way too since I know that there's a different model for each frame of animation in that game

When a cutscene plays, his head will probably break or the game will crash

[royal ridge]

I told you before

He fps will die

[barren lichen]

@royal ridge you got HALO CE to test?

[royal ridge]

It's better to replace the model through remix

[royal ridge]

Nope

[fiery lion]

Hmm

You could probably get away with the 3DS model lol

Or the PS2 unleashed model

I honestly don't know any other potential workaround since again, I've never used RTX Remix or know how to help troubleshoot that specific issue

I'm just the art guy

[royal ridge]

Why you trying to avoid remix

[fiery lion]

I'm not trying to avoid it, it just seems a bit complicated to setup from what I've seen

Though of course

I haven't really checked this server for months so

My initial interests were to mod SH3 and Prince of Persia with it

But I couldn't figure out how to hook it into the game

[royal ridge]

I'll just need a models with an obj extension

I'm working on a tool that in theory should make life easier

[fiery lion]

Wait

That's all you need?

https://www.models-resource.com/3ds/sonicgenerations/model/38602/

https://www.models-resource.com/wii/sonicunleashed/model/4146/

[royal ridge]

Basically, yeah

But the tool does not able to write models back for now

[fiery lion]

Is the tool for RTX Remix or for the game?

[royal ridge]

Only convert captured models as obj

For rtx remix

[fiery lion]

Damn, that would mean that you could only use static models

The head may still break in game or crash

[fiery lion]

Like during cutscenes

[royal ridge]

Do you think that?

[fiery lion]

Well obj is static

[royal ridge]

We need to try still

[fiery lion]

So yeah

If it were fbx it's a different story

There's animation in fbx

There isn't any animation data in obj

[royal ridge]

Oh wait

It'll be animated

You're replacing the meshes

Game uses it

But still thinks that the old meshes are here

And animates them

[fiery lion]

There's a couple of issues though

There's a problem with auto weld

If you're importing static models, you might get breaking in the legs, arms, and feet

Because they're divided in to 3 separate parts on the legs and 2 in the feet

[royal ridge]

Yeah probably

So obj does not support weights?

[fiery lion]

On top of that, there's still nothing accounting for the animation data stored in each character's head

No

Obj is just static geometry

Fbx is what you want for animation

[royal ridge]

Welp remix do not gives you the weight

So I think that it's ok

Still we can use low poly sonic model in the game

[fiery lion]

You can still replace the model, but what I'm saying is, you'll probably run into issues with some things that Remix won't be able to fix

[royal ridge]

And everything else will be high poly

[fiery lion]

Sure

That works too

[royal ridge]

K it's a bit late for me, cya tomorrow!

[fiery lion]

Same

[royal ridge]

I'm a big sonic fan btw

😛

[fiery lion]

9:28 AM

Haven't slept yet

I used to be a Sonic fan lol

[royal ridge]

Oh Jesus

[royal ridge]

I think the word "used to" actually better applies more for me too

[fiery lion]

12 years ago

This was back when we had to do it the shitty way and 3DSMax would only let us edit 1 model at a time

And it was this ugly light gray UI

[void egret]

Would Remix even be able to handle the chunk-style models?

Same for the heads: they're animated by transitioning the vertices between about 30 different possible heads.

Well, for Sonic, 20.

For that matter, nobody's actually bothered trying to cover them all in their model mods. It's possible, but it hasn't been done.

[fiery lion]

That's exactly what I was getting at before

[royal ridge]

Didn't tried yet

I'm training new ai models for pbr

And working on two additional models

For emission and metalness

[royal ridge]

Tails, you gonna crash, AAAGH

[royal ridge]

im happy

now i can export models with octotex

now i need to place them right way with capture.usd

and write them back to the replacements.usda

[void egret]

I just realized all the land tables are bunched up in that second image lol

[royal ridge]

hehehe

[void egret]

I'll be honest I kind of think a Remix version of adventure is a lost cause over just remaking the whole game in either an engine that supports ray tracing or just has very good lighting from the start just because a lot of the work that would go into remaking some of these assets would seem to demand as much.

[void egret]

I also don't think it can be brute forced through upscaling and making textures PBR alone.

I'm still interested in the results either way

[royal ridge]

download?

[high void]

So can anyone provide on tutorial on how install rtx remix onto the game to get it looking like this? I already have the pc version installed

I tried remix on the game myself a long while ago but it was just broken geometry mess

[wooden orbit]

Remix should be able to render these just fine, but it probably won't have a stable hash, meaning they won't be replaceable. You should still be able to replace the material.

[void egret]

So you could still do replacements at the game's level itself, and just use Remix for extra materials?

[royal ridge]

Yes, but the fps will be lower

[void egret]

By how much

[royal ridge]

in another game, if i create a car with alot of polygons

fps will drop from 60+

to 15 or so

im on 3080

idk maybe with a better cpu situation will be better

[royal ridge]

there's alot of polygons yeah

[void egret]

It can't be that bad unless the object itself is just really high poly

[wooden orbit]

The game is probably doing the skinning / vertex blending on the CPU, which is really slow for high poly meshes. even on modern CPUs.

so yes, you can absolutely replace the meshes using the game's normal non-remix modding flows. Just be aware of the performance constraints on those.

for Portal RTX, Remix didn't support animated meshes yet, so all the skinned replacements were done as normal Source mods. for Portal Prelude RTC we ported all of those over to Remix replacements and saw a significant performance improvement.

[fiery lion]

^

That's what I was getting at as well

[smoky shale]

i would love to see station square in RTX

[smoky shale]

tried to add rtx to SA1 but remix menu doesnt pop up

[copper copper]

Did you set your conf file to be shader model 0?

If not, do that

[hasty heath]

this looks firee

my personal take on the model thing is maybe look for models that resemble either the DX models or the DC models, just having say generations sonic in adventure feels off, only criticism I’ve got is that like, the sand looks awkward ig

[void egret]

My solution would probably be to take the Secret Rings models and have someone at least bake some really nice materials for them even if they couldn't really be much higher poly than they were on the Wii, But considering the reaction to even bothering with in-game replacements at all over Remix replacements is "oh my god that's going to slow everything down so much oh my god" I guess that's maybe too optimistic of a goal.

I guess for an example their Brawl models are about the same and their trophies conveniently pre-posed to give an idea of what that they all look like.

[void egret]

Eggman would be pretty funny to see actually because his entire mouth is hidden so they didn't have to deal with syncing his voice.

[winged gale]

Hey there! Is there a group working on an RTX version of this game? or are you guys doing your own separate things?

[void egret]

As far as I can tell there is no group and Alex's stuff has remained his own.

There is some interest outside of this server, but I'm not sure how far that will go.

[balmy sandal]

Damn, so is RTX Remix dead for this game? New to the beta and was most looking forward to this and SA2, and both of them look nearly insurmountable with the current iteration of remix.

[copper copper]

SADX is actually at least possible. Nobody's actively working on a project but that doesn't mean it's dead

SA2 on the other hand doesn't work at all lol

[balmy sandal]

Strictly speaking though, it's only the 2003 version of SADX right? Also -- for SA2 is it a complete impossibility? It feels like the type of thing that could eventually see support

[copper copper]

no actually the steam version is better

that wasn't the case originally but if you turn shadermodel to 0 and install a few mods it works great

[void egret]

what do you mean the steam version is better lol

I mean hypothetically sure it could work but you don't want to be using that version because the 2003 version is the one all the mods are made for, including all the patches the mod loader provides such as widescreen.

And 9 times out of 10 a "mod" made for it is not a mod made for it, it's just an installer that will replace it with the 2003 version.

Such as: https://sadxmodinstaller.unreliable.network/

Bettersadx is similar but outdated and stop calling the mods included "bettersadx"

[copper copper]

I mean it actually works with remix instead of being super glitchy

No need to be rude about it, why don't you try it yourself and see? If you can get the 2003 version to work well with remix, that'll be big news

@royal ridge would you mind confirming of this is still the case?

[royal ridge]

Idk really, didn't tried remix for a long

But 2003 version objectively will be better for many reasons

I'm telling you as a sonic fan

🫶🏻

[copper copper]

Sure it would be better, but I just thought we ended up with the conclusion that the steam version works better with remix

It doesn't really matter if the original 2003 version is better for modding if remix isn't as compatible with it

[warm notch]

IIRC, the 2003 and steam version had just some minor differences about some mesh hashes being stable in one version and unstable in another. I'm using the steam version, had to install this sadx mod manager to get a bunch of mods enabled and then it worked. Idk a thing about sonic modding community or sonic games in general, jsut played this one when I was a kid, but on the remix side for me theyre equally promising, the steam one obviously having the convenience of accessibility throgh steam, so maybe a bigger player base for the mod? idk

These ones

[copper copper]

Ah ok, well if they're equal then I guess we're just good to go

[void egret]

But what I'm saying is that the fact mod manager is working means you are playing the 2003 version

[copper copper]

Do you still need a dx8 wrapper when using the mod manager with the steam version in order for remix to work?

Sorry but it's been a while since I've tried this

[void egret]

It's used by and included with Lantern Engine so It's probably working in the background.

[copper copper]

I think for remix to work you have to disable the lantern engine

[void egret]

What I'm saying is that it's probably installed because of that and Alex and the others didn't even notice

Also I'm not trying to sound like I'm confronting anyone in particular but it is a pain point of a general lack of education about how this all works

I'm just trying to offer perspective and clarity as someone who's been around this for a long time and watched a lot of this stuff come into existence

[copper copper]

Thank you, that make sense

[warm notch]

yup. I have lantern disabled in the mod manager and using d3d8.dll stub file

first time I tried I had lantern enabled and remix didn't hook. Later on I disabled and it worked

[balmy sandal]

Wait, so for a dunce like myself – what do I have to do to get remix working with SADX steam? Just install these mods or is there more?

[wispy elk]

No rtx

[balmy sandal]

rip

[copper copper]

you install the better sadx mod, disable the lantern engine, then setup remix with it normally i think

maybe also configure the shadermodel to 0 in the dxvk config

[void egret]

Again, betterSADX is outdated.

https://sadxmodinstaller.unreliable.network/

Honestly maybe even this method is outdated and they built it right into the new mod loader, I'm not sure.

Maybe not: Whatever the case, the installer will get you as close as possible to having everything ready and the update processes in the mod manager will clean up the rest.

[balmy sandal]

I'm so sorry for being dense -- but you're saying the regular mod manager process will get me there? (Rather than bettersadx)

Thanks for your help folks

Also -- do auxillary things such as the DC character pack or other such mods affect Remix? (I.e. should I just be going forward with a vanilla as possible mod loader install)

[void egret]

The installer that I linked will help you convert the vanilla Steam release. The only thing you should need to install for RTX compatibility is Lantern Engine, but even if you don't otherwise just get d3d8.dll and follow the other directions.

[balmy sandal]

So Lantern SHOULD be enabled? Just asking because Joey mentioned disabling it

[void egret]

It shouldn't, it's just an easy way to get the dll.

[balmy sandal]

copy

[void egret]

I would also say don't use anything non-vanilla like DC Characters or Dreamcast Conversion since a full project is just going to replace everything anyways.

Well... I don't know. Dreamcast Characters is completely redundant, but otherwise That's actually going to be a personal choice, I guess, since some levels are modified on a technical level by Dreamcast Conversion and people generally prefer it.

[balmy sandal]

And when you say " just get d3d8.dll and follow the other directions" the d3d8.dll is just a DirectX 8 wrapper right? And in terms of "other instructions" are you just referring to setting up Remix in general?

Apologies for all the questions. First time doing something like this.

[void egret]

Yes and Setting up remix, yeah.

[balmy sandal]

Copy that, appreciate

[balmy sandal]

Final clarifying question --
I should install lantern engine, but disable it. Because installing lantern is just a convenient way to obtain the wrapper?

[void egret]

Yeah

[balmy sandal]

Cool cool, thank you for your help!

Game has loaded up and seems to be doing something differently than before. Thank you so much! Any other setup tips / troubleshooting stuff I should be aware of unique to SADX?

Like the chaos 0 fight is entirely black for some reason lmao

[void egret]

I swear someone said something about shader=0

[balmy sandal]

omg yes you're right so sorry

Actually, they mentioned a dxvk config, which I'm having trouble locating. Is it usually found in the remix base folder or in the sadx folder? seems like something that would be remix centric

[balmy sandal]

Okay, so I think I got it working! But now I'm having an issue where I can't open the Alt+X menu after the game launches. Any wisdom?

For anybody who faces the same issue -- disabling geforce experience overlay fixed this for me ^^^

[void egret]

Unfortunately I can't really help with the Remix part because I can't use it myself.

[balmy sandal]

Oh dang! Well, I got it working. For anybody who's clueless like me, here's what I did to get it working with Steam SADX based on the advice of Shilz and Joey:

1. Download SADX mod manager and install Lantern
2. Disable Lantern
3. Download SADX conf file found here: https://www.moddb.com/downloads/rtxconf-sonic-adventure-dx-directors-cut1
4. Place RTX runtime files into main folder
5. Disable geforce experience overlay
6. Disable any dreamcast mods for the time being, and try a capture.

At this point now, I'm messing with texture / material replacements. SADX has a pretty short render distance so Emerald Coast has required quite a few captures so far,

[balmy sandal]

The beta definitely makes texture editing and PBR stuff easy for artists. Loving it so far!

The one issue I'm running into so far in terms of modifying assets is the water. I'm guessing it's because it's an animated texture?

In the editor it's looking like this, but in game it's a sort of flashing texture

also, randomly this area of emerald coast does this

[void egret]

[balmy sandal]

Interestingly, if I turn DC conversion off, and make the same modification to the materials, I do not have the same issue. I'm wondering if maybe I keep the SADX water mod enabled if something changes. Further testing tomorrow!

[balmy sandal]

This shit made me laugh

[void egret]

[balmy sandal]

Something similar to this actually happens when I'm in the tornado in windy valley. Haven't been able to figure it out as of yet

If anybody has any ideas let me know

[void egret]

If I had to take a guess, it might have something to do with transparency.

[fickle bane]

so i'm very very late to the party, but i've been working on sonic adventure on and off for a few months now, just recently picking it back up again. i wanted to reveal my progress once i had a bit more of station square's pool finished, but it seems like the game is getting a bit of attention now.
i've been making a few textures and assets from scratch, including station square's daytime skybox (found the original source texture, edited it, and saved as an exr), the switch/button object, a pool parasol & tableset, pool tile textures, etc. modeling isn't my strong suit but i've been learning as i go. again, my short-term goal is to finish station square's pool area, then work from there.

i am also using Dreamcast Conversion as a base, just for personal preference. i'd like to have a non-dc version at some point but that's for the very distant future

[fickle bane]

a couple of problems i've run into so far, sorting by importance:

• culling is a big problem. every object offscreen is culled. rtx remix's anti-culling causes offscreen objects to.. technically exist? but their textures flicker rapidly, faces disappear, and the game tends to crash a lot (warn: Still waiting on the Present semaphore to be released...). to attempt to remedy this, i'm making a companion mod to work in tandem with rtx remix. i've managed to find the function that culls SET objects and overwrite it, so that's one part out of the way, but i've been struggling to find the function that culls landtable objects, aka the level terrain. i'll keep searching and i'll ask around in the modding server eventually, but if i can't find anything, i could most likely add a custom SET object to every single level, then use it as an anchor for all of the replaced terrain.

[copper copper]

That's awesome

[fickle bane]

• player characters have unstable hashes. the game uses CPU skinning and also stitches vertices together in realtime. NPCs seem to have stable hashes, though their parts are not stitched together. can't imagine any replacement assets looking good here. there are already a few game mods that replace certain player characters with higher poly versions, so it is certainly possible

certain parts of characters also have jiggle physics, causing even more hash instability. turning this off is trivial but wouldn't fix much, though i thought it was worth noting

...god knows what's going on with tails' tails

• a majority, if not all of the stages can be completed with rtx remix... in a vacuum. when launching the game directly into each level and event cutscene that i've tried, they seem to work without crashing. but when launching the game normally and making my way to the exact same event and level, i get strange crashes relating to warn: Still waiting on the Present semaphore to be released... not sure what could be causing this

• every single subtitle is its own hash. every. single. one. i had no idea that subtitles were generating textures in realtime. but that, uh, sucks. i could go in and select every single vanilla subtitle and set it to UI texture so it gets rendered, but that does not seem feasible. or fun. or sane.
  fixed by using HD GUI 2!

[copper copper]

aren't those issues fixed by disabling shaders?

or am i thinking of something else

[fickle bane]

i'm not super sure honestly

[void egret]

Interesting approach to the tables.

[void egret]

Actually really bold of that place to allow for glasses in their pool section lol

[void egret]

From what I remember you can merge vertices in any mesh you want but I imagine that would pile up a pretty heavy load with all the NPCs.

[heady token]

is there a way to replace it with standard skeletal skinning via remix or no?

[warm notch]

When you tag a texture as UI, remix will forward that draw to render as the original game is asking, but so will happen with every following draw call until the frame ends. If you manage to tag an UI element that is being rendered before the subtitles, they should also render just fine.
Also, there is an heuristic settings you can enable that could help: "Orthographic is UI". It should assume that every element being rendered using orthographic (no FOV angle) should be UI

[warm notch]

This is really weird. It is almost as if his tail had each face scaled inwards along their individual normals . Or maybe the skinning weights just got messes up

[fickle bane]

i figured out the problem, it's two things:

1, i had a mod on that restored a lost effect from the dreamcast version - "onion skin blur", which adds fake motion blur to tails' tails, sonic and knuckles' feet when running, etc. disabled and it looks a bit better. but now the real problem is
2, tails literally has three sets of tails, to simulate faster motion when he spins them. they're a lot easier to notice when they aren't in resting position.

no one has made a mod that removes the fake tails, but i'm hoping it's pretty trivial? it's something i can look into later

[balmy sandal]

First of all this looks so sick. When I get some time I'm excited to share some of my own texture work. Aside from a few textures, I'm utilizing AI so it's awesome to see somebody homegrowing most of their assets. I haven't begun modeling new assets yet but you've inspired me! Those umbrellas are dope.

Secondly, this is why I've decided to work off the base game. Using the DC Conversion as a base is preferable but I found it to cause a lot more issues for whatever reason.

I mean base game + the normal stuff you need to get everything running

[balmy sandal]

I'm wondering if for the time being it's optimal to install such a mod and use that as a base?

[fickle bane]

so after checking, there's a few general model mods here and there that either use the DX models as a base, or just straight up use models from newer sonic games.. which isn't quite what i want. there's one hd dreamcast sonic, but it is unfinished, is missing mouth morphs, and was last updated 3 years ago

i definitely do want to tackle hd character models at some point. it'd likely have to be from scratch, and i'd be limited in terms of poly count as it'd have to be modded ingame rather than through rtx remix due to cpu skinning

personally i'm aiming to be as faithful to the dreamcast models/textures as possible

[void egret]

There's basically no mods with custom morphs

[fickle bane]

i remember that it's tedious, but not impossible?

[void egret]

Of course it's not impossible but the higher poly you go the more work is required.

Coincidentally was just fed a tweet that mentioned this one. https://vxtwitter.com/Voltrix77/status/1690643239529840640

Oh you'd also probably have to add entirely new welds, that Secret Rings model doesn't have any where the body meets the legs.

[fickle bane]

this is still for the distant future, but i saw that weighted character models were released late last year (still cpu skinned unfortunately), i think that removes the need for manual welds, right?

https://github.com/X-Hax/SADXWeightedCharacters/releases/latest

[fickle bane]

another texture remade.. but i should really get to remodeling the hotel/pool exterior lol

original vs recreation (albedo)

[flint pewter]

I wonder if you know about the source photos being found?

[fickle bane]

oh yeah, somehow i forgot about the source photos.. which is funny because i literally used them for roughly recreating station square's sky (might try remaking it again later)

[warm notch]

"How much saturation should we add?"
-YES

[fickle bane]

yeah LOL

[fickle bane]

you mean this mod? https://gamebanana.com/wips/76263

[void egret]

texture looks nice

[flint pewter]

yes

[fickle bane]

i might look into it if necessary

[fickle bane]

by the way, easy fix for this is just using the HD GUI 2 mod. they rewrote the code for subtitles, so the font texture is just one hash that is reused for every subtitle in the game, instead of each generating its own hash on the fly. i thought i tested it months ago, guess not. i'll just make that mod another requirement (or at least a strong recommendation..)

[fiery lion]

This doesn't work with the steam version, right?

Only the old early 2k pc port?

[fickle bane]

yes, it requires converting the steam version to the original pc port

it has infinitely more modding support

[fiery lion]

If you run me through setup, I'd be happy to help

I used to mod this game when I was a kid

Knew Dude, Mainmemory, ItsEasyActually, Fiamonder, and some others

[fickle bane]

i believe the conversion is done with this installer https://sadxmodinstaller.unreliable.network/
as for assistance with the mod, things are super early as of rn, and while i do have big ambitions for the project, i don't have much actually made yet. for now i'd like to lay down a bit more groundwork before asking for help :p

[stuck ember]

really recommend using this for some of the textures

also since i'm in the team for that project

so if you need any help with source textures and stuff

then i'm here for that

[fickle bane]

building the hotel exterior. progress is slow as i'm pretty bad at modeling, but it's going good. mirror and array modifiers are doing a majority of the work, lol

most of the rooms are going to be real exteriors instead of textures (not too detailed, but just detailed enough!). i need to close those two sets of curtains because they can't have rooms in them. the reason for that is.. well..

..the rooms would clip into the lounge

i'd love to find a way to turn lights on inside the rooms only at night, but i'm a bit stumped on that for now. i can't attach it to the nighttime skybox, as the skybox is the same for each area in station square...

reluctantly, i could add an anchor object through code that only exists at night, but... blegh, coding

just kind of brainstorming for the future. right now i just gotta finish this building

[void egret]

[fiery lion]

Well I can maybe help with 3D stuff

I've been doing this stuff since I was like 12 so

Also, unrelated but, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcpkZL0llbc not sure if this grabs your attention

[livid geyser]

this one looks great so far, definitely gonna wait on replaying SA1 for a while :)

[void egret]

You'll be waiting a pretty long time I think.

[fickle bane]

got a majority of the exterior modeled, textured, and loaded ingame. not quite finished yet, but learning a lot as i go. there's still some kinks to iron out here and there (i don't like the pink brick texture at all lol, expecting POM to do all of the work was a poor choice. definitely redoing) but progress is going smoothly.

it also has no culling issues... but that is a workaround that i don't expect to work everywhere. i'm only lucky that this area is small and has a mesh with a huge culling radius.

[copper copper]

Amazing

[livid geyser]

Lighting's barely touched if at all and it looks pretty out there

[fickle bane]

took a small break but just redid the brick material. it was ugly, and now it is not (i think).

[livid geyser]

Not bad :3

[heady token]

this looks amazing, however i think you might want to be more sparing with the polycounts on background objects such as those tables and chairs.

[livid geyser]

Pretty sure those assets aren't even replaced, and even if they are, poly count isn't an issue at all as in this renderer... the polys are rendered per-pixel and not per-tri, if anything texture size becomes more of an issue in terms of optimisation in this workflow

[heady token]

they are remade

[delicate lance]

Those are 100% new tables and chairs

LOL. Ninja'd.

[heady token]

lol

also im pretty sure lighting is only calcucated per pixel

polygons still need to be rendered before any rays can be traced against them

plus cyberpunk path tracing still uses lods

[copper copper]

I don't think this is true for full path tracing

Idk how it actually works under the hood, but I know poly count is waaaaay less of an issue using path tracing. Like to the point where it kinda doesn't matter

#general-remix message

So, yeah poly count matters, but it matters differently from traditional rendering

[livid geyser]

Moreso for RAM usage and file size than making the cores chug

[copper copper]

Right

[livid geyser]

People have done some crazy poly tests and there's not really a limit in that department

[copper copper]

@wooden orbit sorry for the ping, but would you mind confirming how remix handles poly rendering? It doesn't render any polygons before doing the path tracing right? It just renders literally the entire scene using PT, so poly count isn't a factor like it would be under RT or raster?

[wooden orbit]

umm, general sentiment is mostly right, but I some of the particulars aren't quite right.

1. If a draw call is marked as worldspace UI, or is after the first normal UI call (or if the camera is in certain states), it will just be rendered as normal rasterized triangles.

2. For all of the original game's draw calls that Remix processes and path traces, we have to do a bunch of CPU processing to identify and track them. So increasing poly count of the original game's draw calls can cause a lot of CPU overhead within remix.

3. If the extra triangles are brought in as Remix replacements, then the polygons are handled in a pretty optimized way. When doing full path tracing, the cost of the most expensive parts scales with the log of the triangle count (instead of linearly with triangle count, like raster renders always have).

Note that there are still parts of the pipeline that scale linearly with triangle count, but those parts are much cheaper, or don't have to be done every frame.

TLDR: Remix can handle very high triangle count replacement assets, so long as they're applied using the Remix replacement pipeline.

High poly draw calls coming from the original game can actually be more expensive (CPU side) than they would have been originally.

as an example, I threw in the sponza base scene as a remix replacement once, with the curtain add on, and we handled it fine:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/topic-technology/graphics-research/samples.html

[livid geyser]

Thanx for the extra notes

[heady token]

ah ok

[copper copper]

Yes, thanks Mark!

[subtle edge]

How would you get the 2003 ver?

I only have steam ver

[livid geyser]

it was in retail from 2003-2004

[subtle edge]

?

Is there a way I can get it now?

[livid geyser]

not officially

[subtle edge]

And unofficially?

Wait

Is it part of that disc pack that had SA1, Riders, Heroes and Some classic collection of some kind???

[livid geyser]

not sure what ur talking about

I don't remember if there was a PC port of Riders

there was a release of Heroes but it was trash from what I remember

[subtle edge]

I had an old collection of disks

It was a case, and it had a pack of Sa1, Heroes, Riders, and some type of classic collection

[livid geyser]

if you (still) have the original disc that's awesome

[subtle edge]

Photo from online

[subtle edge]

Might need to go digging lol

[subtle edge]

Anyone know where I can find these files?

[royal ridge]

I think some mod loader can can lower your game version

[subtle edge]

?

For steam ver?

[royal ridge]

Exactly

But I can't remember, sorry

[subtle edge]

All g

But where can I find the old RTX-Remix files

In here?

[royal ridge]

I've downloaded them from unofficial sources 🤫

But I have the portal in my steam so

[livid geyser]

there are mods that fix specific issues of the porting process from the 360/ps3 version but nothing will make it exactly like the 2004 version because they're still compiled in their own ways

[subtle edge]

I have portal too.

Which files do I copy over lol

That's what I'm asking

[royal ridge]

Isn't one of the mod loaders replaces the exe file to the original one?

[livid geyser]

so is 0.4 of the runtime broken with SADX?

[royal ridge]

I can't remember too

[subtle edge]

What the hell bro

[royal ridge]

Didn't touched all that for a long time

Bro

[livid geyser]

I don't know, but if it does then cool if that doesn't break anything

[subtle edge]

How am I meant to do this then 😭

I'm dumb as shit

[royal ridge]

I can't even try it, cuz I have no rtx GPU anymore

[subtle edge]

??

What happened to your old rtx gpu

[royal ridge]

It's standing still on my shelf, I can't use it because of the old power supply