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AI enhanced textures for old games

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
WTF. This looks mindblowing. I already saw mindblowing Waifu2X upscaler that could literally upscale small manga/anime pictures to big ADDING definition but here it is something else. In case of Waifu2X it kind of tried to add definition but most of the time it only achieved amazing upscaling but here is literally AI adding details to pixelated images that do not fall out of the artstyle. Yes there is some minimal change in artstyle but we are talking here about going from 360p pictures to full hd ones that barely look like they were based on 360p pictures. That FF9 shot is mindblowing.

how to on dudes blog. You can do it in your own home as longas you have AMD or Nvidia gpu:
https://kingdomakrillic.tumblr.com/post/178254875891/i-figured-out-how-to-get-esrgan-and-sftgan

original:
Sl6ahuD.png


AI enchanced:

gkVCFQm.jpg


Original small patch upscaled via normal

Final Fantasy fucking 9 from ps1:

mPMvqPl.jpg
 

FeelTheRads

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2008
Messages
13,716
It's interesting, but most of the time it makes the images look like they're painted. That FF7 image for example is just shit.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
It's interesting, but most of the time it makes the images look like they're painted. That FF7 image for example is just shit.

Mate most of the stuff you see is done by amateurs who first time used it and done it with single pass.
Secondly you are talking about 360p pixelated mess that barely have any detail going into something that looks like war rendered today.
Third anyone with photoshop can pick and choose problem surfaces that shouldn't have much "relief" like in FF7 shot and smooth them out in few minutes at best. Going from 360p pixelated image to something like this is literally impossible without being god level artist.
Even original source should have really fucking crappy textures like case of FF7 shot if those assets even exist somewhere today.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
This is great comparison between various settings and how they can change "bad looking" into "really great":

first pass without dabbling in settings:
tumblr_pf9uxzaFQR1xvyxl5o1_r1_1280.jpg



after someone changed settings:

WfeAd2H.jpg
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
Call me old fashioned but I like my old games to be pixelated.

Call me normal but most of old games "pixelated" look wasn't pixelated to begin with because it was displayed on CRT which had thick scan-lines that smoothed out completely picture.

For example FF9 on my old CRT never had any "pixelated look" it was muddy smooth.

Do Baldur's Gate!

Isometric games won't benefit much imho because they already can be displayed in greater resolution which automatically means more definition though stuff gets smaller. Still if someone would go sprite by sprite it should give some benefit.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
her3pic1bdiwc.png


a bit oversharpened and a bit weird colors but this could be fixed in second in photoshop.
UI looks fugly because it wasn't supposed to be enchanced in first place as it brakes with image in background.

8oTm2y6.jpg
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
I suspect this will launch a new wave of cheap "HD" remakes.

Update some models a bit i those pre-rendered background games + add artist oversight and i am 100% sure you will get proper HD remaster.

Shitload of "problems" we can see can be easily fixed in photoshop in minutes. Like color grading or removing some relief that shouldn't be there. The hardest part about remastering small pictures is that it is almost impossible to do.

1. Most of prerendered stuff was actually 3D with some artists input over final rendering. Which means unless you actually remake every asset there is no way you can increase quality of those old images
2. Even if background is painted it is still practically impossible to improve resolution by hand without repainting it which also means fucking it up.

So this is by far best shot at remastering old games without destroying original art.
I personally could fix half of those without issue in minutes for each picture.
Those old games didn't have much of those backgrounds so "remastering" shouldn't take much time.

Biggest issue would be actually with 3D games. To high res texture on low poly model simply looks bad.
So for "remaster" those low poly models would need to be upgraded a bit.
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
Do tell when this stuff will work on actual games (non-shit ones, mind you) and not screenshots.

Morrowind is still fugly, upscaled or not.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,810
Do tell when this stuff will work on actual games (non-shit ones, mind you) and not screenshots.

Morrowind is still fugly, upscaled or not.

I am pretty sure someone is already working on something. Switching textures to higher quality is preatty easy for most of emulators. Dolphin (wii/gamecube) comes out of the box with ability to switch textures and texture packs are fairly popular.
 

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