AI Upscaled Textures

[Narf the Mouse]

There's only one critique my non-artist eyes can see: The models now look a little too smooth.

Anyway, looking forward to when this mod gets released.

Edit:

And KoW, I wasn't actually suggesting anything about overlapping methods for doing this work - I just meant the way people were talking about these terms ("flats", "statics", etc.) across the forum seemed to overlap with each other (i.e. one person called something in classic Daggerfall one thing, another person called it another thing, but they were both talking about the same concept). But I guess everything MasonFace and I mentioned above is considered a "sprite". Thanks folks!

I can answer this!

Flat: Anything in the game world represented by a flat texture. Typically, you have a model that is literally a rectangle, and then splat a texture on it.
Static: Anything in the game world that does not move.
Sprite: Typical meaning is a mobile flat.

[mikeprichard]

I can answer this!

Flat: Anything in the game world represented by a flat texture. Typically, you have a model that is literally a rectangle, and then splat a texture on it.
Static: Anything in the game world that does not move.
Sprite: Typical meaning is a mobile flat.

Narf, thank you! That was exactly what I was trying to understand. Very clear summary.

And about my earlier posts, just clarifying that I totally agree there are and should be many ways to approach enhancing the graphics in general. I personally love DREAM not only because it's one handy mod that covers so much, but also because it does so in a consistent style. But I'd be very interested in MasonFace's "Pure Vanilla Extract", especially if the recent images he's posted are samples of what it might look like in terms of style. Keep me on that newsletter so I know when it comes out!

[MasonFace]

There's only one critique my non-artist eyes can see: The models now look a little too smooth.

Ah dang, I must have used too much pollish!

I believe the upscales are very close to the original DF models that were used generate the sprites from. I don't see any evidence that the skin, for example, was anything more than a smooth shaded color rather than a texture, but I do agree that it would look better with a little roughness added to it. I'll save that for actual artists to touch up later on.

But I'd be very interested in MasonFace's "Pure Vanilla Extract", especially if the recent images he's posted are samples of what it might look like in terms of style.

Not sure if you have already, but you can download my "mini-mod" that I published as a test with AI upscaled textures and manually created height and normal maps. So far, I've only got Privateer's hold textures done, but the link is in the first post of this thread. It is a sample of my vision for the Pure Vanilla Extract mod, although it doesn't currently contain any upscaled MOBs.

Keep me on that newsletter so I know when it comes out!

Coming in 2023! Nah, hopefully much sooner depending on work/life balance and all the rest. There is a TON of assets to convert. The more I look at the massive volume of textures in DF, the more I admire KoW and others' determination for completing as much as they have up to this point.

[mikeprichard]

Thanks, I'll take a look when I can fire up DFU! And exactly because it's such a staggering amount of work, I think it will be very rare for something of the scope of DREAM or AlexanderSig's model mod to come along - i.e. something that enhances an entire category/aspect of graphics in DFU as a whole - which to me is what makes those mods very special. But it will still be great to see more modders' creations as 1.0 hits and DFU continues to evolve.

[jayhova]

The wonderful thing about DFU is that it is many thing to many people and can be changed to suit their tastes. To be clear there is no such thing as pure Classic graphics. Original Daggerfall had a mix of graphics on release. Some were hand drawn some were rendered. The opening sequence was a mixture of hand drawn, CGI and live-action content. The game itself is a mixture of 2D and 3D. The game was highly ambitious and not all those ambitions were realised. That all being said the game did have a particular artistic feel. My opinion is that we should do our best to make Daggerfall look like the game Julian LeFay would make if making Daggerfall was his only job.

If you ask me I like the ideal of 3D objects that look like renderings of the 2D art. As though you upscaled the texture and wrapped around a 3D model. As if the 2D flats were concept drawings for the game.

[charlieg]

How does it know to add the fur details? I'm talking about just above the club. That looks done by a person, to my eye.

[NyanCommissar]

How does it know to add the fur details? I'm talking about just above the club. That looks done by a person, to my eye.

It's done by A.I. Gigapixel. Wish we had all the sprites done by this program.

[MasonFace]

How does it know to add the fur details?

AI is fascinating, isn't it? The AI programs that I'm using are each "trained" on a massive library of high resolution images and the same images downscaled to low resolution. They generalize features/patterns and "learns" the best way to guess the color values of interpolated pixels. In this case, the AIs probably recognized the fur pattern from many photos of animals and filled in the missing pixels accordingly. Neat, huh?

It's done by A.I. Gigapixel.

Errrr- not exactly. I'm using three different AI upscalers: ESRGAN, SFTGAN, and Gigapixel AI. I'm compositing the results to achieve the best possible outcome. I'm doing it this way because each of these AIs have their strengths and weaknesses.

• ESRGAN (depending on the model) tends to smooth out details. For sprites that have a lot of smooth surfaces, I let this layer show through more, otherwise I keep it around 10% to help hide noise generated by the other AIs.

• SFTGAN tends to embellish rough details. For example, it does a great job on the gargoyle sprite by keeping that rough surface look, but it can sometimes add some strange noise and artifacts.

• Gigapixel does a fair job all-in-all, but it also produces noticeable noise in many cases.

None of them alone is a magic bullet, but by layering and merging the results, they help conceal each others' flaws.

I should probably append the first post in this thread to reflect this relatively new methodology so I don't confuse anyone.

[jayhova]

It seems strange that the giant looks so good but the top of his head is flat and the original defiantly isn't.

[MasonFace]

It seems strange that the giant looks so good but the top of his head is flat and the original defiantly isn't.

15-0.PNG (20.59 KiB) Viewed 1804 times

Yeah, I noticed that too. I think the problem there was that the original sprite abruptly ends at the tip of its head with no extra pixels of padding. The AI didn't have enough information about the overall shape to make the right call. This will just have to be fixed in post.