NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Hi!

The drawing part must be done on PC, everything is in software, no cutting out of the images etc :) Ideal solution would be drawing tablet Id say... I can draw but not with a mouse.

IF ANYONE CAN RECOMMEND SOME CHEAP DRAWING TABLET WHICH CAN GET THE JOB DONE, ID BE GLAD!

OR IF SOME ARTIST WANT TO TRY HIS TOUCH ON THIS, ID BE GLAD AS WELL, UPSCALED PICTURES ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST TO DOWNLOAD. IF THE LINK EXPIRES, SEND ME A PRESONAL MSG PLEASE!

Here is the step by step description of what I am doing.

1) export the characters using Daggerfall imaging
2) open one of those imgs up in Waifu 2x editor
3) set the editor to correct values (I experimented a lot and found the best values today)
4) let the editor do its magic - result is smoking gfx card and one resized image after cca 1-2 minutes of work
5) this resized image has the original outline in low res looking jagged, but the inside of picture is upscaled

it looks like this:
Bad outline.jpg
Bad outline.jpg (408.69 KiB) Viewed 3824 times


to solve this problem:

6) open in Photoshop
7) basicaly cut out the image using Edge refinement... I use a combination of this and feathering so the edges get a bit of antialiasing. Than I add some manual work, correct some artefacts or hard edges which remained
7b) sometimes the upscaled img - when I use the method with best results - has very tiny artefacts in the outline, where its missing the data. I found out that if I create another upscaled img with different settings and combine those two, those artefacts get eradicated and we get the best of both images :idea:
8)I save the image (KEEP THE *.PNG FORMAT, I DONT USE ANY COMPRESSION UNTIL FINAL VERSION IS DONE)

than it looks like this:
Corrected.jpg
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9) Last step is to name it properly and place in the streaming assets and it appears ingame!
DONE!

Original img in 129x165 resolution for a comparison:
15-0.PNG
15-0.PNG (9.26 KiB) Viewed 3799 times

MORGIA
If you can draw, please try to add detail here! Try to compare with original and define the low res places with light lines, nothing detailed, just simple :) Here its the cat which lacks the deffinition, but the overral picture could use some touch

Resized:
https://files.fm/u/wbrr4455
Original
https://files.fm/u/gees499m

PS: I know this specific flat is not accurate, this is more like a proof of concept...

ORACLE resized + original
(took a while but its nice and I learned new methods to get rid of some artefacts, 9mb of size but we surely can get that size down once all edits are done and we have final picture ready to put in game)
- try adding some details to the face, hands and hair maybe. Fingers on the hand which is NOT holding the staff vanished a lot. Use original img to see how its supposed to look.
https://files.fm/u/aqx99299
Last edited by King of Worms on Sat Dec 02, 2017 8:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Mosin Nagant
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by Mosin Nagant »

Wow! Some of these look really great!

I would love to see Daggerfall Unity get some of GZDoom's upscaling options, particularly HQNx and xBRZ.
King of Worms wrote: IF ANYONE CAN RECOMMEND SOME CHEAP DRAWING TABLET WHICH CAN GET THE JOB DONE, ID BE GLAD!
I can't remember what model it was exactly -I'll have to go looking for it- but I really liked my Wacom tablet when I was into drawing. It had 1024 levels of pressure and other fancy features, so I recommend that brand. Have you used a tablet before?
Previously known as LordMordecai on DXL forums

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VMblast
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by VMblast »

King of Worms wrote:
IF ANYONE CAN RECOMMEND SOME CHEAP DRAWING TABLET WHICH CAN GET THE JOB DONE, ID BE GLAD!
Try one of the Huion tablet models. They are pretty good, Not as wacom, but very close....but with half the price tag. :P

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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Thanks Guys! Ive heard Wacom is the best, aka leader of this segment. But I checked the review of a Huion 1060 as well and it seems capable - and that price tag is ofc tempting. I will think about which one to pick, as Id like to jump in the digital art nevertheless.

I never used any tablet, Im old fashioned guy, bought my 1st touchphone few months ago, when my old Blackberry with a real keyboard was stolen :? So all the drawing I did by pencil/paper etc...

I tryed xBRZ and the results were subpar unfortunatelly. I tryed HQnx and I did not like it as well. I tryed other cca 50 methods btw :D "Waifu" gives the best results to my eye, it also requires quite a horsepower compared to all other methods, and thats oddly satisfying to me as well :twisted:

PS: What I said about xBRZ, HQnx etc upscaling applies ONLY to the NPCs, as thats my main focus now. When we talk about textures, the resuts might be very different. I have not tryed that yet. But in BrutalDoom, some upscaling methods for textures were quite good! Very easy to do that with Daggerfall textures.

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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Please dont tell me "346_13-0 wayrest flat people" is one of those unused NPCs.. Ive spend quite some time on this dude.
13-0.jpg
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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

I think we might be looking at a new main menu screen right here :lol: :shock: :ugeek:
Only slight problem is, that its prefferable that this file has the exact same resolution as your native, because the conversion at runtime causes some quality loss. This is for 1920*1200 res. I can create 1080p, 720p etc... so everyone can pick the one for his monitor.

It looks fabulous when you start Daggerfall and this is the welcome screen. Nerdgasm :D
PICK03I0.IMG.png
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Dead: (photo mode)
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Court: (photo mode)
0-0(Photo)(noise_scale)(Level3)(tta)(x6 (2).jpg
0-0(Photo)(noise_scale)(Level3)(tta)(x6 (2).jpg (472.51 KiB) Viewed 3690 times
I wonder if we can upscale the rendered cinematics using this method? That would be bomb!
We just need to divide those animations to screenshots, upscale them and than put them back together. Is that possible?
Last edited by King of Worms on Mon Dec 04, 2017 1:19 am, edited 3 times in total.

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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Originals:
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0-0.PNG
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0-0.PNG
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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Werewolf:
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0-0.PNG
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Last edited by King of Worms on Mon Dec 04, 2017 1:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Prison death!
A 0-0(Photo)(noise_scale)(Level3)(tta)(x6.000000).png
A 0-0(Photo)(noise_scale)(Level3)(tta)(x6.000000).png (1.42 MiB) Viewed 3683 times
0-0.PNG
0-0.PNG (51.59 KiB) Viewed 3683 times

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Bloodinfested
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by Bloodinfested »

Wow tried the main menu page in game it does look so much better are you working on new game page textures the map could use some love? nice work King :D

Prison is PRIS0010.IMG

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