The original textures need to be analyzed several times in order to make sure the new source images match in terms of color, lighting, and even the material.įor example, a rock texture: It may sound like an easy challenge, and it is, if you don’t have an original texture you need to be faithful to. Most textures are re-created from scratch using some texture library images as a base. How exactly do you remaster the visuals? Do you redraw textures from the ground up, or have a specialized way to increase the resolution of the original without degrading their quality? I spoke with Marin over email about his experience tackling a project of this scale, balancing expectations from fans who are just as passionate about the game, how the team was able to deconstruct the game’s files, and more. Marin says he’s amassed over 4,500 Photoshop files and put in more than 9,000 hours of work (just on his part) to get to this point. The fan-funded Resident Evil 4 HD Project is almost at the finish line and should be wrapped up later in 2021. Eventually, every rock, wall, button, and dial will have been retouched by this small team of modders. If you own the Ultimate HD version of the game on Steam, you can actually test out an in-progress version of the texture pack right now. Other times, Marin is making hand-crafted textures based on high resolution stock photos or pictures that he’s taken himself. In some cases, they work with what Capcom already made, sharpening the images with a mix of off-the-shelf apps and custom-built tools. Screenshots showing the original Resident Evil 4 and the improved graphics of the HD Project. Even though Capcom published its own PC remaster in 2014, it wasn’t Marin’s idea of a true HD version of the game, so he and a small team have been poring through the game’s files to faithfully update every texture. “I collected a great number of locations the game’s developers use as source material,” Marin told The Verge.įast forward to 2021, and Marin is now seven years into a project to remaster Resident Evil 4’s blurry GameCube-era graphics into crisp HD, in part using high-resolution photos he’s taken of everything from surfaces and doors to general architecture that seemed to have made their way into the original game.

His trips followed in the steps of Capcom, which put bits of real-world architecture found across Europe into Resident Evil 4, which was originally released over 16 years ago.

At the Palau Güell in Barcelona, he took meticulous photos, not of the building itself, but of the marble floor and its unique veins. In Wales, he visited Raglan Castle to snap pictures of its stone wall. Albert Marin has taken some very specific vacations.

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