[MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract

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MrFlibble
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by MrFlibble »

King of Worms wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 9:51 pm Its really good, that model should be used on the animated NPCs, all the daedras, dancers, smith, mages, animals, KoW, commoners... There it would be the most beneficial for overall quality increase. Can I send you the specific files so you can try those?
I just ran a few more tests for the flats. Here's a selection of 4x pre-rendered ones from that old official sprite showcase:
Image
Again, I had to re-saturate the colours using GIMP's Auto -> Color Enhance (legacy) option.

I also tried upping these to 8x by running the Faithful 2x model (I understand you're operating with 8x upscales as of now), but it takes a rather long time on CPU, during which the PC is practically unusable for any other processes. Here's that result of much waiting anyway (I had to apply Color Enhance twice on this one):
Image
King of Worms wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 9:51 pm So this would be great expansion to what is currently available. IT would make a great start. But we need smooth outlines for those.
I took some Mages Guild sprites from my earlier tests (sorry, no animations yet) and tried two methods of adding AA:

1. I selected the alpha channel, grew the selection by 1 and used GIMP's anti-aliasing tool on the selection. I think it didn't work.
Image
2. Selected the alpha channel, grew by 1 and applied Gaussian blur at 0.5 pixel radius
Image
Other methods I tried were even less successful. Here's the unaltered upscale of the same w/ background colour if you need it:
Image
(yup, I know the girl's face is creepy)

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King of Worms
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by King of Worms »

Hi, that 8x is really nice! And thats exactly the type of npcs which would benefit the most.

Ad the mages u posted - I have hd version of them, but the lady with a ball. Ive realized most of the mages are already done.

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MrFlibble
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by MrFlibble »

I had an idea about the outlines. What if I upload the upscales and the masks separately, and you get the AA on the edges the right way?

Here's some temple people (I did no colour adjustments this time, but fixed pixel bleeding on the waving lady):
Image
Image

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King of Worms
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by King of Worms »

Hi, very nice results!

Im just not sure on how to combine the alpha and the images, I tried it one time in the past and failed miserably.

I can make the rough edges of the sprite use AA in the imagemagic and automate it using TinyTask. So if I get sprites with alpha background in PNG, I can add the AA.

To be more specific on the types of sprites Id like to see the most:
Archive
175
176
177 (2,3,5)
178
179
180 (but they might not be ingame yet)
181 (4 is done by me in hd)
182_47, 48, 49, 50

Than maybe the commoners. 381 to 398 and 451 to 456

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MrFlibble
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by MrFlibble »

King of Worms wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 2:21 pm I can make the rough edges of the sprite use AA in the imagemagic and automate it using TinyTask. So if I get sprites with alpha background in PNG, I can add the AA.
Alright, let's try this with the above (I added alpha and Color Enhance):
Image
Also here's a test of two standing villagers (also w/ Color Enhance):
Image

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MasonFace
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by MasonFace »

Man, those all look exceptional! These are the best results on these types of sprites I've seen up to this point. Great job!

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King of Worms
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by King of Worms »

Those are some good results, I can work with that and add the AA.
But I will need it all the images in the separated respective files for a final job. Like they come from Daggerfall imaging.

That program needs a update, so it exports the files with proper names, not a "folder 101" and 1-0, 2-0, 3-0 files..

Heres with the AA
ZiX6TFo.png
ZiX6TFo.png (685.35 KiB) Viewed 2742 times

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MrFlibble
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by MrFlibble »

Hey, sorry for not replying sooner, I was busy with RL stuff. Those sprites with antialiased edges look really good, what function in ImageMagick do you use? (or is it a set of routines?)

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King of Worms
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by King of Worms »

MrFlibble wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:36 pm Hey, sorry for not replying sooner, I was busy with RL stuff. Those sprites with antialiased edges look really good, what function in ImageMagick do you use? (or is it a set of routines?)
No worries :)

Its a plugin for paint.net - and its really wonderful for the AI upscalling needs.

Its part of this free effects pack https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/16643 ... 014-05-04/

Only issue is no automatization :) But what I was able to do was to download a external small utility TinyTask.. and it records all mouse movement and keyboard commands, than u just leave it run on loop automatically for a while. Its NOT user friendly :X Some better tool might exist

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MasonFace
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Re: [MOD] Pure Vanilla Extract - Help Wanted!

Post by MasonFace »

Status Update:

I've upscaled all the PVE textures a second time to get 8x vanilla resolution, then sharpened the results with Topaz AI Sharpen. I've been going back and forth on whether or not the added detail at this resolution is worth the 4x increase in file size, but I think I've settled on keeping it at 8x vanilla resolution.

I'm working on batch generating PBR materials for all these textures and I hope to have that done within the next few weeks.

In my opinion, these textures coupled with the PBR materials look great, but like all AI upscaling, it can be a little hit-or-miss. And while the DREAM textures are objectively higher quality, I think these upcoming PVE textures fit the original game world much better.

As far as MOBs and NPC sprites go, I'm abandoning creating a PVE version of them. Best case scenario, we could get the sprites looking nearly as good as DREAM on the higher resolution vanilla sprites, and nowhere near it on the low resolution vanilla sprites. If KoW needs any NPC sprites such as the animated frames upscaled using MrFlibble's techniques, then I can try to knock those out, but I don't intend to do anymore work with upscaling NPCs outside that scope.

Long term, I'm hoping that I can replace the NPCs entirely with 3D models using UMA, then use SpriteWrite to make them look like sprites to better suite the purists among us.

Anyhow, those are my plans moving forward.
Last edited by MasonFace on Tue May 26, 2020 1:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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