Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
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Fr_z_n
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon May 16, 2016 2:08 am

Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by Fr_z_n »

Hi there, I'm Fr_z_n (Frozen)
Brief Introduction since it's my first post.
I've recently started playing Daggerfall and stumbled upon this excellent project. I'm hoping to run a texture idea past the community.

As a hobby I create pixel sprites/art/etc and I wanted to enhance or manipulate the textures of Daggerfall. Wishing to stay true to the art-style I've run a large number of tests on the textures to see if I could create a 'pseudo' pixel soften without effecting image quality.

While testing I stumbled upon this series of processes to create what I believe to be an appealing texture, I'm looking for some feedback from the community. It's subtle but effective in my mind and before I ran through the enormous library of Daggerfall textures I would like to see if anybody actually finds the result appealing.

Here's are some before and afters, compression may effect the full result:

Before
Image

After
Image

Before
Image

After
Image

For anybody interested in details of the process I'm using GIMP and the steps are as follows:

Image Scale - 400% - No Interpolation

HSV Noise - Holdness 1, Hue 3, Saturation 10, Value 12

Despeckle - Adaptive, Radius 1, Black -1, White 256

Selective Gaussian - Radius 1, Max Delta 40%

Unsharp Mask - Radius 1.3, Amount 0.60

Darken Blend Mode

Duplicate

Unsharp Mask - Radius 1.3, Amount 0.60

Lighten Blend Mode

30% Opacity


---- Thanks for reading.

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Jay_H
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Re: Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by Jay_H »

This is very welcome. I'm one who intends to keep Daggerfall in 2D sprites, so what you've set out here is quite valuable. I'll also have to try this on people sprites to see what effect it has. Thanks for the contribution, and welcome.

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Nystul
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Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:31 am

Re: Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by Nystul »

subtle but a slight improvement ;)
one question: so the new image resolution is 4 times the resolution in x, and 4 times the resolution in y?

Fr_z_n
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon May 16, 2016 2:08 am

Re: Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by Fr_z_n »

It is indeed. There's also some subtle noise generated on the texture and the pixel edging obviously needs more pixels surrounding to create this effect. I found 4x to be a reasonable tradeoff. Especially considering the minute size of the original textures.

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LypyL
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 3:48 am

Re: Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by LypyL »

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. We really need to find a good way for allowing texture swapping :)

Reath
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 9:48 am

Re: Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by Reath »

It's a subtle difference, but the filtered ones do look a bit better. The door looks a bit sharper and more like wood. It's really nice that you managed to keep the art style intact while filtering them, since low res images usually become blurry when filtered. I'd likely use these if it was released as a texture pack.

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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by Interkarma »

This is an intriguing line of research. I love the concept of improving textures while keeping the style. I know a lot of people want to scale up and smooth out, but I actually enjoy the crunchy pixel look. I wonder if it would be possible to push this even further?

The other reason I love this concept is it's possible to automate the processes and batch convert textures. It could be a great starting point to subtly lift the graphics and preserve the style with almost zero artist involvement. Very cool!

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Biboran
Posts: 277
Joined: Thu Jun 25, 2015 8:26 pm

Re: Pseudo Pixel Soften Texture Pack

Post by Biboran »

...but will be nice to have some 2d and 3d artists like it was on XL forums :)

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