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Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2016 3:17 am
by ToasterMuffins
Wow this is pretty cool! Can't wait to try this out. Thanks!

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Wed May 03, 2017 5:24 am
by Anthus
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I did not read the entire thread. I am wondering if anyone has taken the textures from the Dreamcast version, and put them into the N64 version? Having higher res textures like this is possible via emulation, as seen in the Community OoT HD Texture Pack.

If this has not been done, is this possible for a game like Rayman 2? I know the N64 has some weird texture limits of 32x64 or something, so would more extensive hacking be required, or could this be handled by an emulator alone if someone swapped out all the texture files?

Again, sorry for the over-all noobishness of this post. Rayman 2 is my favorite game besides Link to the Past, and I've always preferred the emulated N64 version for it's polish (compared to other ports), camera controls, and nostalgia, so playing it with even better textures would be awesome. If it is as "simple" as dumping and replacing/ renaming texture files, it might be a fun little side project.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Wed May 03, 2017 6:45 am
by RayCarrot
I'm thinking it's a higher chance it'd work from the PC version since that's got a lot of leftover textures from the N64 version, but in higher quality. I'm however unsure if anyone has been able to hack the N64 textures. Or does any of the N64 emulators have built-in hacking features, like some GameCube ones, perhaps? In that case it'd probably be as simple as moving them over.

Edit: After some quick research there seems to be plugins which allow you to dump the textures (though only ones used on screen, so a full playthrough will be needed) and then to use hi-res version from external source (so the rom doesn't have to be hacked or repackaged in any way).

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Wed May 03, 2017 7:12 am
by Master
Hmm, we never did get a Dreamcast texture pack for the PC version. I recall us discussing it before when this thread was still pretty hot, I wonder if we could use this texture ripping technique to create a basic texture pack for now.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Wed May 03, 2017 9:06 am
by RayCarrot
Did the Dreamcast textures ever get ripped though? I also wonder if the PC version will really be able to handle them. I know for sure that you can't change the resolution on any of the textures, as I once did that by mistake and it just messed it up. The only reason for making a Dreamcast texture pack for the PC version then would be quality difference, which I'm not sure if there is any tbh.
About N64 modding, it definitely seems possible and I'm planning on doing a test for the HUD some time soon (since that's one of the biggest texture differences). If it works I might consider doing the entire game, though it would be a lot of work and I'm not sure I've got the time.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Wed May 03, 2017 11:36 am
by PluMGMK
Don't the texture dimensions have to be powers of two? Or am I getting mixed up with other game engines?

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 5:35 pm
by Adsolution
Carrot-master wrote:I know for sure that you can't change the resolution on any of the textures, as I once did that by mistake and it just messed it up.
In what way? And yeah, did you change it to another power of two resolution?

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 5:42 pm
by RayCarrot
I can't remember specifically, but I remember it was one of the letters I tried changing and that it for some reason showed parts of a second textures where it would appear. Perhaps I accidentally changed the aspect ratio as well, though I'm not sure since it was a while ago. So you're saying that it is actually possible increasing the resolution then?

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 2:43 am
by Anthus
I'm not sure about the exact resolutions of textures, but with the real hardware there was a limit, but this limit has been surpassed in some games with "HD" textures via various video plugins. Thanks for the replies guys. I'm currently trying to learn to rip N64 models, and I intend on ripping all the levels form this game, since it doesn't seem like anyone has done this, and there are virtually no maps that exist of the stages. It's never as easy as the video tutorials make it seem, cause there are so many different hardware configurations across the board, differing versions of software, etc.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 8:25 am
by Adsolution
Anthus wrote:I intend on ripping all the levels form this game, since it doesn't seem like anyone has done this
Are you referring to the N64 version? Because the PC versions have been ripped: viewtopic.php?f=89&t=25072

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 5:45 pm
by Rock_TBT
Adsolution wrote:
Anthus wrote:I intend on ripping all the levels form this game, since it doesn't seem like anyone has done this
Are you referring to the N64 version? Because the PC versions have been ripped: viewtopic.php?f=89&t=25072
Has Rayman 3 and Rayman Raving Rabbids levels been ripped as well?

I have ripped parts of Clearleaf Forest and some parts of RRR´s maps.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Fri May 05, 2017 11:33 pm
by Anthus
Adsolution wrote:
Anthus wrote:I intend on ripping all the levels form this game, since it doesn't seem like anyone has done this
Are you referring to the N64 version? Because the PC versions have been ripped: viewtopic.php?f=89&t=25072
That is absolutely awesome, I had no idea. I will be downloading this for sure. Thanks. This also saves me a ton of time.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 12:19 am
by ICUP321
So do you guys remember this unused texture that was found on Rayman 3 HD that made Rayman look like tarzan or something like that?
Image

I wondered how it would look like on him and since it was probably meant to be used on his Rayman 2 model, I decided to mod that texture over the original textures and this is the result:

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2017 9:00 pm
by Harpic fraîcheur
Looks kinda weird on Rayman 2. :P

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2017 9:33 pm
by PluMGMK
I love the way you jump towards the shrunken Jano. It's like, "You think you know all the nightmares of the Glade? Well check THIS out!" :P

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 11:09 pm
by deton24
Has anybody figured out what can be the maximum resolution of textures on PC version?
Mixer's tool from 1st post even resizes big textures automatically (e.g. from 500% bigger to 250%).
I was thinking that it would be good just to resize all textures with cubic/bspline filter, along with sharpening effect (e.g. in XnView). Faster solution than extracting and importing DC textures.

But it turned during conversion that my resized textures are recognized as 32 bit without alpha channel (I think all of them).
Probably it supposes to be 16 bit, and with alpha channel, am I right? (every original had an alpha channel). Game crashes (after overwriting 1st textures folder) or hangs during loading (after overwriting all). Even cnt explorer (by Szymski) works really slow with these textures… Maybe we meet here also with some archive format limitation.
How to automatically preserve alpha channel for all files after resizing? I saved them all into TGA again, and then converted into GF. (probably alpha channel is not lost after unpacking).
I made the batch conversion of all textures in XnView, and a batch file in bat to convert everything from GF to CNT file (cooperates with Mixer’s tool)
https://yadi.sk/d/NdwDQLSj3UAX4G

In a matter of DC textures, which can be obtainable currently only with texmod on nullDC (if nothing changed in this matter), it not preserves original filenames, and leaves memory calls as file names. So, in case of applying them to PC, renaming 1500 textures will be difficult (and some DC textures will be extra ones). It's easier to make the whole package for DC version because memory calls during injecting will remain the same. And I don't think that DC textures look much better than resized PC ones with sharpening filter, especially because PC engine limits us to some extent (max resolution?).
And also I don't know on which limits we can encounter during injecting textures on DC, and whether it makes any difference in comparison to possible success modding textures inside DC files (probably hard).
I already checked R2 PC version in a matter of compatibility with texmod and umod, and both - Glide and DX renderers on various render libraries (unmodded, dgVoodoo, nGlide, D3DWine and others) don't want to cooperate. It cooperates with DC version on nullDC (reicast generally runs on Windows but has no any GUI options, and only older versions render Rayman properly, and with fixed effects, in comparison to nullDC).

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2018 7:37 pm
by ICUP321
deton24 wrote:Has anybody figured out what can be the maximum resolution of textures on PC version?
Mixer's tool from 1st post even resizes big textures automatically (e.g. from 500% bigger to 250%).
I was thinking that it would be good just to resize all textures with cubic/bspline filter, along with sharpening effect (e.g. in XnView). Faster solution than extracting and importing DC textures.

But it turned during conversion that my resized textures are recognized as 32 bit without alpha channel (I think all of them).
Probably it supposes to be 16 bit, and with alpha channel, am I right? (every original had an alpha channel). Game crashes (after overwriting 1st textures folder) or hangs during loading (after overwriting all). Even cnt explorer (by Szymski) works really slow with these textures… Maybe we meet here also with some archive format limitation.
How to automatically preserve alpha channel for all files after resizing? I saved them all into TGA again, and then converted into GF. (probably alpha channel is not lost after unpacking).
I made the batch conversion of all textures in XnView, and a batch file in bat to convert everything from GF to CNT file (cooperates with Mixer’s tool)
https://yadi.sk/d/NdwDQLSj3UAX4G

In a matter of DC textures, which can be obtainable currently only with texmod on nullDC (if nothing changed in this matter), it not preserves original filenames, and leaves memory calls as file names. So, in case of applying them to PC, renaming 1500 textures will be difficult (and some DC textures will be extra ones). It's easier to make the whole package for DC version because memory calls during injecting will remain the same. And I don't think that DC textures look much better than resized PC ones with sharpening filter, especially because PC engine limits us to some extent (max resolution?).
And also I don't know on which limits we can encounter during injecting textures on DC, and whether it makes any difference in comparison to possible success modding textures inside DC files (probably hard).
I already checked R2 PC version in a matter of compatibility with texmod and umod, and both - Glide and DX renderers on various render libraries (unmodded, dgVoodoo, nGlide, D3DWine and others) don't want to cooperate. It cooperates with DC version on nullDC (reicast generally runs on Windows but has no any GUI options, and only older versions render Rayman properly, and with fixed effects, in comparison to nullDC).
I can tell you right now that the DreamCast version's textures are lower quality than the PC version's. The reason is because Ubisoft compressed them when they compiled them for DreamCast. As for modding in higher quality textures in the PC version, that's not gonna happen because the game crashes when you put higher or lower quality textures in the game. I tried modding in a higher quality texture that I found on the early demo build of Rayman 2 but the game crashed immediately. The game also doesn't like lower-res textures either unless it's textures that don't use alpha channels like Rayman's shirt. I am saying this from modding experience with this game.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:18 pm
by absynthe1812
I'm new when it comes to all this so I'm not really sure what I'm doing... but when I used XnView to view the textures, they are all .gf files and no image shows up in the program. Does anyone know what I'm supposed to do?

Edit: Also when I run Convert_all.bat, there is a message under each line saying "'gf2.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file."

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 12:02 am
by Haruka
ICUP321 wrote:So do you guys remember this unused texture that was found on Rayman 3 HD that made Rayman look like tarzan or something like that?
Image
I still have many questions about the original purpose for that texture :P.

Re: Rayman 2 - Texture Hacking - Tutorial!

Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 12:13 am
by Birds858
Haruka wrote:
ICUP321 wrote:So do you guys remember this unused texture that was found on Rayman 3 HD that made Rayman look like tarzan or something like that?
Image
I still have many questions about the original purpose for that texture :P.
Maybe Rayman was planned to have different skins in the beta or it’s just a joke of the developer :lol:.