NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

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Midknightprince
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by Midknightprince »

King of Worms wrote:Thanks guys!

I also experimented with upscaling the dungeon and city textures, unfortunatelly, my method screws up the seamless textures, that means than you can see where the texture connects to another one :/ But I might be able to solve it. Would be worth a while as those resized textures looked great and so vanilla like...

Back to work, last few days of illness
This sounds tantalizing.
Take your time, and dont get rushed by impatient nuts like myself.
I will wait :D
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Midknightprince
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by Midknightprince »

King of Worms wrote:My favourite part!!

Are those last two even used ingame? I saw some great art in textures which is not used I think... we should use all original art.

Is there any way to determine if the flat really appears ingame?

26-0.png
11-0.png
16-0.png
Yes, I have found all these in DFU.
They are somewhat rare, and only on dungeons.
I'll have to "re-find" them to know exactly where (that actually sounds fun)
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VMblast
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by VMblast »

King of Worms wrote:Now its just a question of time and work put in...
Im not too big fan of smudging out in photoshop, however these all look quite interesting. They look like done in some -new- branch of the post impressionism, which is a great thing, at least in my book. ;)

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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

VMblast wrote:
King of Worms wrote:Now its just a question of time and work put in...
Im not too big fan of smudging out in photoshop, however these all look quite interesting. They look like done in some -new- branch of the post impressionism, which is a great thing, at least in my book. ;)
Exactly! I went thru almost 100 upscaling algorithms and this one is the only one which gives such a results. It looks like a regular art style. Its not just smudged out flat, which I hate as well. This has a character to it. It totally fits in the game as it is. Bonus side of this approach is, that because there is no smudging but more like a sharp colors without too much gradients, its very conservative on a storage/ram/vram size!

Only thing we need to solve now (and that is in progress) is - that there is a limit in a resolution of each set. And that limit is 4096x4096. This means, that if you have lets say 10 textures in a set (for example 10 statues) than each statue must be MAX 409x409 pixels so they all fit in that 4096x4096 atlas. If you go over it, than the resolution of those sprites ingame will decrease. And that is exactly what is happening with my texture pack right now :evil:

Good thing is, we know why it is happening... The Lacus is on it, I can only pray he will solve it. Or I will need to adjust to fit in that 4x4k frame, which would suck in - soon to be - 2018.

Lets hope for the best! Thanks for the feedback!

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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Speaking of which...

What upscale method you prefer in this case?
https://imgur.com/a/Z2nTA

Waifu is cleaner, XBR is more rugged and raw

I welcome any opinions, every method has its pros/cons. What image you think would fit DAGGERFALL better?

Waifu looks more profi, you cant tell its a upscale. But there is something about the XBR which has its charm as well - its more imposing and it fits the grim/dark atmosphere better... waifu is maybe too nice?! Ahh the dilema.

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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

I upscaled all travel map regions with a fitting algorhitm, this one keeps even the smallest "dot like" lakes, while it smoothens out everything else nicely. Problem is, I cant get those in the game. They are named correctly and placed in the "...textures/img" folder.

And yes, 45kb for a 1280x640 resolution PNG image. I know there is not much happening on that screen, but its nice nevertheless :)
FMAP0I17.IMG.png
FMAP0I17.IMG.png (45.09 KiB) Viewed 4107 times
This is just a test of main map upscale... I tryed to add some detail by using oil and canvas...
TRAV0I00.jpg
TRAV0I00.jpg (1.03 MiB) Viewed 4104 times

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TheLacus
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by TheLacus »

4096 is 4x2048, 16x1024 and so on. Note that they don't get resized, what doesn't fit is just "cut".

Using an atlas is part of a performance technique implemented by Interkarma to draw a lot of billboards in the open world, and it's already being pushed to the limits when mods are enabled. Drawing these items individually is not advisable since performance is critique in the exteriors. An alternative is to implement sprites like Nystul did with terrain, this would allow each texture to be as high as 4096 but also requires all of them to have this resolution, for all small bushes as well as big trees in the same set.

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King of Worms
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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

TheLacus wrote:4096 is 4x2048, 16x1024 and so on. Note that they don't get resized, what doesn't fit is just "cut".

Using an atlas is part of a performance technique implemented by Interkarma to draw a lot of billboards in the open world, and it's already being pushed to the limits when mods are enabled. Drawing these items individually is not advisable since performance is critique in the exteriors. An alternative is to implement sprites like Nystul did with terrain, this would allow each texture to be as high as 4096 but also requires all of them to have this resolution, for all small bushes as well as big trees in the same set.
I see... thanks for clarification.

So for example, the statue archive consists of 22 files. So that would be 512x512 resolution (and there will be place left for 10 more statues).

But if you say that what doesnt fit in the atlas gets cut and is not downsized, than what is causing the downsize of the statue we spoke about here viewtopic.php?f=22&t=820 ? Because thats happening... so maybe the problem is elswhere than?

If I place the whole statue archive in a streaming asstets (and nothing else, so only 22 textures) - its enough to reduce the resolution of that green statue :/ If I place only the green statue, it stays full res... Its as described in a last post in that thread I linked.

EDIT: I found out I can reduce the resolution to 1/2 with another step in photoshop. Its not possible to upscale the original flat to 1/2 resolution, it reduces the quality too much. So I must take original flat, upscale to full quality, than open in photoshop and reduce the resolution to 1/2. That way, the quality loss in not noticeable (I can see it, but is very minor, lets say 5% reduction in quality, nobody will notice ingame).

But further clarification would be appretiated, because its not certain that this is needed. Because "if you say that what doesnt fit in the atlas gets cut and is not downsized, than what is causing the downsize of the statue we spoke about?"

BOTTOM LINE IS:
I will optimize the flats so they fit in the 4k atlas. Because - when u say it must be 4k and cant be more, than thats it. It doesnt matter if the flats get cut out or they get downsized - clearly, something strange starts to happen, and that is all we really need to know. I will manually find the flats which have excessive size and reduce them to 1/2, IF I will see that they can cause atlas overflow.

LAST THING:
What is that XML file Interkarma spoke about? Could that be of any help if I add those to the texture files?

Thanks!

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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by TheLacus »

King of Worms wrote: So for example, the statue archive consists of 22 files. So that would be 512x512 resolution (and there will be place left for 10 more statues).
64 actually. But you can mix different resolutions, what's important is the total surface.
King of Worms wrote: If I place the whole statue archive in a streaming asstets (and nothing else, so only 22 textures) - its enough to reduce the resolution of that green statue :/ If I place only the green statue, it stays full res... Its as described in a last post in that thread I linked.
Textures from Daggerfall files as well as StreamingAssets are placed on the same atlas. If you replace a single texture there is still room for the other original sprites, but if you replace all of them with excessive resolutions they don't fit.
I don't see how the game could change resolution of a texture. What you're seeing is probably just a portion scaled on the original cords, which make pixels looks bigger.
King of Worms wrote: EDIT: I found out I can reduce the resolution to 1/2 with another step in photoshop. Its not possible to upscale the original flat to 1/2 resolution, it reduces the quality too much. So I must take original flat, upscale to full quality, than open in photoshop and reduce the resolution to 1/2. That way, the quality loss in not noticeable (I can see it, but is very minor, lets say 5% reduction in quality, nobody will notice ingame).
Yes, there is a point where you can't tell the difference anymore with a texture filter (like bilinear) enabled.
King of Worms wrote: What is that XML file Interkarma spoke about? Could that be of any help if I add those to the texture files?
It's used to change the size of a billboard (not texture resolution), you can find more informations here.

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Re: NPC Flats - Waifu upscaling

Post by King of Worms »

Got it chief, thanks, everything is clear now. And I agree, that "What you're seeing is probably just a portion scaled on the original cords, which make pixels looks bigger." - that makes sense actually.

Its surprising to me, because I always thought that the size of the file in terms of bytes is what matters the most - and that was the thing I kept my eye on here - doesnt matter as I can fit those flats in the atlas anyway, I will just resize the biggest ones.. one evening of "work"

XML part is interesting, I think some flats are too big and some too small in size - would be nice to be able to play with that, unfortunately, I read everything on the link you posted and could not find any info about it, not even it the subtopics
"Textures and Models and Flats". Not sure where to look for it.

PS: If you can write the 3rd script I wrote about in a PM, Id be happy :) no rush tho

PSS: Any idea why I cant see the resized travel map anyone? Its in the IMG directory with a correct naming... same as a compass retexture which is working along with other img mods I did.

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