New level of autism: Modders are using AI to enhance Morrowind original textures, result is amazing

[Feargus Jewhart]

It looks like better art assets than we saw in much of Skyrim art direction. Don't tell Todd, he's gonna cut some "costs" and just start running skyrim textures through a neural network instead of getting artists to paint anything new.

 

[visions]

Looks like typical airbrush filtered garbage. The human brain and eye are able to mix those colored pixels at a distance with a far greater range of subtlety than a fucking machine can mix and blur them. But yeah please continue to let these machine algorithms "improve" classic visuals.

Classic visuals are distorted anyway unless you use a CRT. On LCD displays old games seem more pixellated because the image is sharper, whereas on old CRT-s the pixels sort of bleed into each other and the resulting image appears less obviously pixellated. Also the scanlines on CRT-s made the image look less harsh.

I'm not a huge computer nerd so I'm probably not describing it very well but this is patently obvious when you check how old games look on CRTs. This is the reason why you can upscale the resolution on old games to their nearest neighbour on a modern display, yet the result still looks worse if you compare it to how the game looks on a CRT. It's really obvious if you have a CRT lying around and can check how old games look on it.

If you want maximum visual authenticity in old games, you need to use a CRT. I currently can't be bothered due to space constraints but ideally I'd want to have a separate PC with a CRT screen for playing old games.

 

[Luka-boy]

They put Doom thru the AI NeuralNetwork blender as well:

Those two Barons look familiar.

 

[DayofBlow]

Someone make Diablo 1 HD now WOA

Surprisingly good in a few places.

Wonder how it would look like if you went through the tile sprites 1 by 1.

 

[Mustawd]

Way too much detail lost. Textures, colour.

You shouldn't use this model for pixel art, it needs to be trained separately.

Even waifu2x can't do "all anime", it seems to work best with certain colour palettes, while others it screw up (even if subtly, but still noticeably).

But give those things a few years of training and improvement... we'll see some things.

A commenter on a Kotaku article made a good point about the effectiveness of DOOM sprites specifically.

Many of them are digitized/ouxelated photographs of real world models, and the rest are a combo of pure pixel art and half pixel/half model.

But the algorithm seeme to work best
on models that have real world basis. As it’s apparebtly easier to train an ai to mimic a photgraph than it is pixel art.

Also, there is still need of further clean up. And scaling past 2X seems to give the sprutrs a weird oil painting/claymation look. The 2X scaling I think gives the best of both world, with a bit of pixelation still present.

 

[Makabb]

TODD ENHANCED IN ESGRAN

 

[deama]

I done it guys! I got waifu2x one instead and it works better for artwork/non-irl stuff, and it doesn't have the vram bottlneck!!!!!! I mean, look at this!! I'm gonna frame it!!!
https://www.easyzoom.com/imageaccess/f25959973804442090f625a2cd85338a
Considering the original was just a 1080p version with some artifacts, pretty good stuff.

Here's the link to a nice .exe version, it also allows you to change magnification scale and other stuff:
https://github.com/lltcggie/waifu2x-caffe/releases/download/1.2.0.1/waifu2x-caffe.zip

For the curious, the software also supports multiple image queuing, so you could rip frames from a video, upscale them using the software, then put it back in and voila! 1080p movie from a 480p one!

 

[†††]

Games with pre-rendered backgrounds have amazing potential:

 

[Bocian]

They put Doom thru the AI NeuralNetwork blender as well:

Those two Barons look familiar.

Slavic Hellboys.

 

[Makabb]

There is a site where they use ESRGAN and you can see the effects yourself


letsenhance.io


You can make only 5 images, but they don't have any checks so you can make infinite accounts if you want to make more than 5 images, you can realy see the power of this stuff when you can just enhance and enhance the same image and have like crazy resolutions of 20000x10000 and it looks fcking awesome.

 

[Makabb]

Blade Runner 'zoom and enhance' is real life now.

 

[Makabb]

 

[Makabb]

The meme potential for this is infinite :D

 

[Rahdulan]

From a Chinese image board, source is Chrono Cross.

It still looks like "someone applied a harder filter" to me, but it is sharper for higher resolutions and can work if your game already looks like a painting, I guess.

 

[Makabb]

 

[Black Angel]

Eww, no.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

ENHANCE

 

[felipepepe]

I still prefere the watercolor textures for Morrowind:

At least there's an artist intent behind it that leads to a cohesive and interesting look, that fits with the "muddy" atmosphere of Morrowind, not a bunch of randomly added noise and sharpness.

 

[DayofBlow]

Eww, no.

That's just playing with the free web enhancer using screenshots. Looks shite nonetheless.

Any real effort would upscale the individual sprites by themselves. I toyed around with D1 sprites, and it looked surprisingly good. Properly configured, it's legit.

 

[Black Angel]

I toyed around with D1 sprites, and it looked surprisingly good. Properly configured, it's legit.

Screenshots, or bust.

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

Now make dis for Gothic II!

 

[Kz3r0]

Now imagine all the time and energy, not to mention the powerful magic of autism, being spent not on better graphics, but better gameplay. One can dream right?

Spoiler

 

[Drax]

The obvious place to start using this is in enhancing ye olde vintage pr0n.

 

[taxalot]

Oh my.

We're in for a new gen of rereleases and "remasters". Someone pages GOG.

 

[Ovg]

I can see huge potential for this in prerendered scenes like those from icewind dale or baldurs gate. Imagine! A Baldurs Gate where zoom function that actually makes sense!