Decensored VIPER stuff

[Saika]

Looking better, I HOPE the images I posted help more so, I HOPE u can see them I used Discord to upload them.

The Pubic hair hair looks a bit... strange imo, U maybe wanna fix it.

Going to try just putting links, cus its not that easy to upload Sogna/Viper images to websits now a days, they get taken down really fast as well, its hard to pass on images to some of u guys since almost no one in here dosent have Twitter/FB/Discord/etc... makes it a BIT hard to pass images tbh.

Ill just put the direct link and so that way it cant be shown, hope it works, also it be in spoilers cus some images are big.

I hope it works or helps as well u can see whats going on behine that censored, this are the best images that u can see Miki's lips as well the junk.

Really, they take down Viper images these days?
why not just upload directly to this site? 
do you have trouble uploading to the site?
If anything else, Imgur has been reliable in my experience, don't really use much other image hosts.

I use to use Photobucket and some of the other places I use to upload images have been taken down, so its hard to fine place to upload images.

Also I dont know how to upload images here directly ^^'
Its been WAY to long since I uploaded a direct image here or if I recall,  it could not been done till a few years.

[HellotoYouSir]

I'll try get round to it at some point, but it's very time consuming. Need to go over layers multiple times.
This one is abit easier than the others because it's simple top down perspective, you can eye-ball alot of it.

[黒い灯影]

I use to use Photobucket and some of the other places I use to upload images have been taken down, so its hard to fine place to upload images.

Also I dont know how to upload images here directly ^^'
Its been WAY to long since I uploaded a direct image here or if I recall,  it could not been done till a few years.

Its simple to upload here, if you have the files on your computer....
I attached a pic to show you, When you're about to post by pressing "Reply" (not using the Quick Reply below),
there's an option below the text box "Attachments and other options", click that.. and attach your pics.

[Saika]

I see, its better to know now thx, Ill put the 4 pic that way.

[janusmaxwell]

So, I graduated college, giving me a lot more free time to work on all sorts of things...kinda.  Among those are all the Viper decensoring stuff that I had started, but then had to save to an external hard-drive when my computer started getting filled.  Said hard-drive is now skipping when I plug it in, so I can't actually get those files back, so THAT'S just a joy to deal with...

ANYWAY! I've started over from scratch on most of the VIPER stuff I'd been working on, but on the flipside, I now know a lot more about editing and decensoring than I did before, and I can use it as an opportunity to make the process easier/better.  HOPEFULLY, anyway.

To whit, I decided to take the gif of Makoto giving a guy head, split up the frames, and put them through the One of the Waifu, or Waifu2x site.
http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

I've found that, regarding the frames from Viper Gifs, there's a strange bit of clarity you get when the "Reduce Jpeg Artifacting" option is set to the second-highest level.  That's for some gifs though, not all of them, and the frames I'm using, I ONLY doubled the size without any artifact reduction.  just wanted to start simple, I guess.

The Imgur Gallery has the individual frames AND the double-sized ones following the originals.

https://imgur.com/a/2rKnjJ3

Now, that said, I am screwing around with other gifs and noticed something weird/funny/possibly useful.  This doesn't work with the Makoto Oral gifs or others from the same game. But when I open gifs from, say VIPER-GTB, using Windows Photo Gallery, it has a strange effect.  Rather than being able to see the next slide of the gif, instead, the image changes to ONLY show whatever changed from one slide/layer of the gif to the next.  Case in point, this screen capture of the first and second slides of when the Sea Queen was riding the white-haired guy while looking over her shoulder.

Now, I'm wondering why looking at SOME kinds of gifs using Photo Gallery Does this.  But more importantly, I want to know if I can intentionally make other gifs do the same thing because this seems like a way to make it much easier to decensor/see what's underneath the mosaic for these pictures!

Anybody think I'm on the right track?  With...well...any of this?

[Rai]

Yeah, most of the animations in Viper games are built that way. Most Gif animator software should also have an "optimize" option somewhere that will do that for you automatically. i.e. You'll have a set of fully rendered frames, then just hit the optimize button and everything after the first frame should get transparent pixels wherever the image doesn't change. The software should likewise have an "unoptimize" feature to take all the transparency out for when you're working on it. The optimization feature is mainly for saving on filespace.

GT1's data storage was different. It's been a while and I forget how to even view them in their raw state, but I seem to remember little to no usage of transparency. It would explain why there's less animation overall in that game, at least.

[JG]

Mostly right. GIF files have a data block preceding frames that, along with describing how many hundredths of seconds to delay, also describe whether or not the next frame erases the video buffer or draws over it.  Drawing over previous frame with only the pixels that change is much more efficient from a file size compression standpoint, and the only cost is reducing your max color depth from 256 to 255 colors so one of them can represent transparency.  The ANM files used by Sogna games work the same way though without the data block (it stores the same data in the WIN file rather than the ANM) - blue is usually the color used for transparency in Sogna ANMs, but like GIF, it can be anything.

Photo Gallery isn't great software, and isn't showing you the fully rendered frame, which requires drawing all previous frames first. So the first frame looks fine, but all others are showing you only the changes from the previous. You'll need some better software. I use an old version of JASC Paint Shop Pro's Animation Shop. (And I do mean old, as in PSP 5 from 1998. GIF hasn't changed since well before then though so it can do just about everything I'd want.)

GT1 uses Shockwave Flash which stores images in a similar fashion. Drawing only changes between frames is the way to go, as everyone uses it. MPEG video works the same way, though it introduces key frames every so often to redraw the entire frame from scratch in case the stream is corrupted. If you're watching video online or digital cable TV and the image goes wonky for a second or two and then recovers, its because the renderer consumed some bad data and is drawing the changed frames out of sequence until it processes the next key frame. (This same thing can happen with audio streams too, but the human ear isn't as sensitive to such mistakes as our eyes.)

[janusmaxwell]

Alright, I'm taking all of that advice, still trucking away at some of the gifs.

When I'm not getting distracted by other things...case in point, downloading the english translations of the CTR Visual Novel, taking a look at the gifs for some scenes in the CTR game and deciding to play a little storytime with them.

It STARTED as just a copy-pasta from the VN Translation...except it was a little threadbare to me, so I ended up altering the text a bit and filling it out more...

...then about an hour ago, I got the idea to make the gifs bigger and do it again...situational perfectionism can be a vicious cycle, lol.

Talking on that though, I cannot for the life of me find a Gif of the scene in CTR when Miki is talking to the Captain that comes RIGHT before this one.  There's plenty where it shows her moaning/shouting, but none of the bit where she's talking and then blushes and talks again.  Can anybody help me out?

[HellotoYouSir]

Very interesting. Might try this as well. 

[Rai]

This the blushing/talking part you wanted?

Putting it together from the original files was actually a bit of a pain since the individual layers aren't automatically aligned correctly. I even just noticed that her first set of mouth flaps aren't blended with the right frame in-game. It goes by fast enough that most people wouldn't notice, but if you watch closely you can see the errant line of pixels below her mouth when she speaks. (Not in this version. I aligned the layers correctly.) Anyway, aside from the lack of interesting bits in frame, I could see why other gif compilers tend to skip this one. I didn't mind the exercise though, I hadn't played around with Graphaholic or gif animations for a long time.

As a bonus and since it's also in the same scene, here are a couple different decensors of the previous shot. The one with the angry eyes is a repost of someone else's work. I think it's the better decensor though the facial expression isn't in the original. The other is one I did earlier, though I never liked how it turned out. Then one more of the same pose transplanted to a different scene.

 

[janusmaxwell]

That first gif is what I was talking about, thank you.

As for decensoring, there's a weird thing with that where I try to use the official artbooks to trace a bit, then adjust or make assumptions as needed.  Trick is, GTB is one where the gifs are weirdly easy to see where the lines are, at times, but that's the ONLY art-book that doesn't exist anywhere online.  Which is a fair bit infuriating, lemme tell you.

But, that aside I found these awhile back, which are from some kind of VN by the guy who did the VIPER series, but the pics are uncensored.  So, just something to keep in mind as to what things SHOULD look like under the mosaic, keep it close to this?

[JG]

But, that aside I found these awhile back, which are from some kind of VN by the guy who did the VIPER series, but the pics are uncensored.  So, just something to keep in mind as to what things SHOULD look like under the mosaic, keep it close to this?

Several artists did VIPER games. The one who drew Miki and Asuka's games was Edage Katsura.  The one who drew those uncensored images is Takahiro Kimura (who went by alias Awaji Sugawara for his Sogna work.)  They wouldn't necessarily have the same uncensored styles.

Those uncensored images are from a mini-game beta called Situation Play, by πO2 (pi-O2.)  πO2 made lots of these little games, but since this one had artwork from Takahiro Kimura, who was by this time famous for things like V.G., VIPER-V16/GTB, Dirty Pair Flash, GaoGaiGar, Betterman, etc. its by far the most famous π02 work, and its only a beta, with a single two or three minute scene consisting of nine non-animated images. They were obviously planning a larger game, but I think he had to drop out due to be offering the head character design and artist role for Godanner.

[Moge]

Why has no one mentioned all this before. Kimura's work here looks sooooo good 

[janusmaxwell]

Huh.  I was not aware of all those details, thank you!  Also, now I have a new name when I want to search for Viper Stuff which might be hidden-ish on various archive sites.

[JG]

Also, now I have a new name when I want to search for Viper Stuff which might be hidden-ish on various archive sites.

Well the Japanese versions may be more helpful for that.
Edage Katsura: 桂枝毛
Edage Katsura's real name (Kenichirou Katsura): 桂憲一郎
Takahiro Kimura: 木村貴宏
TK's Awaji Sugawara alias: すがわらあわじ (rarely 菅原淡路, but usually written as kana to identify it as an alias)


As VIPER artists, discussion about their other endeavors is certainly allowed on the forum, but perhaps in threads under the Non-Sogna/VIPER heading.  Let's not derail this thread with too much non-decensoring discussion.

[HellotoYouSir]

Another effort.

Not entirely sure why but the final gif is uploading as a still.

Here's the other gif for whatever reason won't upload - https://giphy.com/gifs/h5i39MBudJ8tlWhRtG

[Rai]

Dude's dick upside-down?

[HellotoYouSir]

Noticed that half way through but (at least for now) couldn't be bothered changing it. Time consuming stuff.

Another wip

[黒い灯影]

Dude's dick upside-down?

You never knew the dude's dick was actually upside down? 

[HellotoYouSir]

Moderately fixed.