Surface-modulated magnonic crystals are the natural link between continuous films with sinusoidal spin-wave eigenmodes and one-dimensional magnonic crystals composed of individual nanowires. Nevertheless, the transformation process of the spin-wave modes in this transition remains unclear. Here, spin-wave modes in their entire transition from a flat film to a "full" (one-dimensional) magnonic crystal are studied by ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and micromagnetic simulations. For this purpose, the surface of a prepatterned thin permalloy film was sequentially ion milled resulting in hybrid structures, referred to as surface-modulated magnonic crystals, with increasing modulation depth. After each step, FMR measurements were carried out in backward-volume and Damon-Eshbach geometry. The evolution of each spin-wave resonance is studied together with the corresponding mode profile obtained by micromagnetic simulations. Simple rules describing the transition of the modes from the film to the modes of the full magnonic crystal are provided, unraveling the complexity of spin-wave states in these hybrid systems.