Paperdoll upscale shader

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
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King of Worms
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Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by King of Worms »

Creating the upscaled versions of every piece of armor, clothing and weapon with all the color variants for clothing, and material variants for weapons and armors is incredibly taxing task. You end up with 1000s of files with all the variants etc, than you need to create a correct high res mask and make it all work.

OR

You CAN create a custom shader which will upscale the paperdoll.

I asked Interkarma about the possibility of this and this was his reply:

"...it would be possible to switch the shader rendering paper doll textures to something else (e.g. one that does some nice upscaling). The shader itself isn't exposed to replacement by mods but I see no reason why it couldn't be.

There are a few small Daggerfall-specific quirks to consider when writing a new paper doll shader. If someone produces a new upscaling shader that ticks the same boxes, I'd even be happy to include as an option in the base game."


So - if anyone skilled enough can create a shader and implement a upscaling algo to it, using the algo already known like xBRZ or even some AI like ESRGAN or anything else (maybe more basic) - this could do the task quite effectively without the need to manually recreate every last piece of accessories for the paperdoll - which is a extreme job.

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King of Worms
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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by King of Worms »

COME ON, I just played Hexen where it upscales using XBRz 6x the whole screen in 4k 60times a second in 3d, we need to upscale one static screen here.

ANYONE? Anyone? anyone..

*long echo in the empty rooms fades into the crickets sound*


DFU should have this option as well btw, just upscale everything in real time. It looks very good and is very close to vanilla. Look below.
Last edited by King of Worms on Sat Sep 21, 2019 8:54 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by King of Worms »

Screenshot_Heretic_20190913_102630.jpg
Screenshot_Heretic_20190913_102630.jpg (451.5 KiB) Viewed 3360 times
Screenshot_Heretic_20190913_102622.jpg
Screenshot_Heretic_20190913_102622.jpg (487.2 KiB) Viewed 3360 times
Screenshot_Heretic_20190913_102126.jpg
Screenshot_Heretic_20190913_102126.jpg (380.23 KiB) Viewed 3360 times

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JorisVanEijden
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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by JorisVanEijden »

Something like this?

Before:
before.png
before.png (195.38 KiB) Viewed 3323 times
After:
after.png
after.png (716.67 KiB) Viewed 3323 times
Different algo:
after2.png
after2.png (639.21 KiB) Viewed 3323 times
Which is just the whole paperdoll texture upscaled with some online upscaler ;)

Or should each item be done separately?

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JorisVanEijden
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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by JorisVanEijden »

Simply switching the paperdoll texture filter from Point to Bilinear:
bilinear-filter.png
bilinear-filter.png (826.07 KiB) Viewed 3276 times

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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by King of Worms »

Hi Joris :) Thanks for your efforts!

Its getting there, the 2nd image looks the best from the selection.

But the xBRZ https://sourceforge.net/projects/xbrz// is good in up-scaling the outlines as well, meaning, the jagged 320*200 edges of the paperdoll.
Might it be possible to implement that algo?

xBRZ:
1.jpg
1.jpg (102.4 KiB) Viewed 3248 times

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JorisVanEijden
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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by JorisVanEijden »

I haven't written any complex shaders yet.
But I'm sure that if someone buys https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/v ... ors-111446 I will be be able to use that as inspiration to come up with something that works.

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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by King of Worms »

JorisVanEijden wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:57 pm I haven't written any complex shaders yet.
But I'm sure that if someone buys https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/v ... ors-111446 I will be be able to use that as inspiration to come up with something that works.
If I buy it, you can use it legally after that?

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JorisVanEijden
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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by JorisVanEijden »

Yes.
This asset is from someone who took all kinds of open source shaders and implemented them in unity.
I have an MIT license compatible xbrz shader but no idea how to implement it in unity.
So the asset should be able to show me how to combine the two.

Another idea is to not use a shader at all, but to upscale the images on import.
That I can implement fairly easily, but then you don't have a shader that you can use on other aspects of the game.

Or you could export all the images, batch upscale them with an upscale tool and add them in a mod.

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Re: Paperdoll upscale shader

Post by King of Worms »

Thanks for the info and explanation
Or you could export all the images, batch upscale them with an upscale tool and add them in a mod.

- thats what we did. Its 15 000 files. Problem is, there are errors because the images dont match perfectly now, leaving some white places, cut outs etc. Upscalling the whole section of paperdoll could solve these kind of issues.

Also, if you are able to make the whole game use xBRZ 6x or something simillar, it will look really good even with vanilla textures etc.

I think its worth those 15eur, whatever comes out of that.

Only thing holding me back is, that we managed to make the paperdoll actually better than original in some aspects, the helmets which were always golden/silver no matter what material/stats they had have now their own appropriate versions. Things like that.

I will ask around and come back with a decission.

Thank you!

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