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AI Neural Networks being used to generate HQ textures for older games (You can do it yourself!)

Is this going to change game dev?

  • Yeah

    Votes: 1,287 71.1%

  • Naw

    Votes: 523 28.9%
  • Total voters
    1,810
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FluffyQuack

FluffyQuack

Member
Nov 27, 2017
1,356
Cian said:
So uh, for everyone saying devs should use this for remasters, well, all evidence points to the team that ported Catherine to PC having used Waifu2x to upscale the 2d assets.



Comparison of new in-game assets vs Waifu2x rescales of the original resolution assets:
https://twitter.com/PastelChum/status/1083432382039031808 (Linked because NSFW)
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This reminds that I've seen remasters market themselves as re-mastered higher-resolution textures when they're in fact just been scaled up using a very simple filter. At least projects like that can now use good "filters" for scaling up textures.

I wish stuff like this would be pointed out by the developer, though. This technology works great on certain textures, but it's still not the same quality as having the assets at their original resolution (assuming they were created at a higher resolution to begin with).
 

Deleted member 25870

User requested account closure
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Oct 29, 2017
2,069
I wonder how time consuming it would be to convert individual frames of heavily artifacted 90s CG sourced video and then recreate the video in HD.
 
Ninjatogo

Ninjatogo

Member
Oct 28, 2017
229
ExitPlanetDust said:
I wonder how time consuming it would be to convert individual frames of heavily artifacted 90s CG sourced video and then recreate the video in HD.
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Waifu2X has a batch process mode, just separate your source video into the individual frames and process the entire folder, then combine the frames back to a video. The actual time it takes depends on your hardware and the amount of frames.
 
Laser Man

Laser Man

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,683
A few examples with some models (except the first which is only a GIMP upscale) using the codec image texture from Metal Gear Solid 1 PSX.

Top left, original size (or at least the size that was uploaded to the texture resource website).
Second largest image is upscaled 1x with the model displayed at the bottom of the large image.
The large image is the result of the first upscaled image, upscaled again with the same model.

There are quite a few differences in detail and color.
There maybe is a combination of models that could provide a better result than in this image (there is too much to try out and experiment)

If somebody finds a good combination, pls post it!

46000285234_9267fd7be9_o.jpg
 
Miniature Kaiju

Miniature Kaiju

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,153
Somewhere South
Laser Man said:
A few examples with some models (except the first which is only a GIMP upscale) using the codec image texture from Metal Gear Solid 1 PSX.

There are quite a few differences in detail and color.
There maybe is a combination of models that could provide a better result than in this image (there is too much to try out and experiment)
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Random Art one, despite the change in colors, seems to do a good job at creating sharp value transitions as brush strokes. Stuff looks a bit more stylized but in a very natural way. Ideally someone would merge that Random Art dataset (preferably with a set some 10x larger) with the Manga109 dataset and train a network on that. That would improve color rendition while making images a bit sharper and more defined.
 
gabdeg

gabdeg

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,014
🐝
Wish there was another tool like TexMod which was a little better maintained since it's a pain in the ass to look for different ways to texture mod games.
 

Deleted member 22713

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
1,219
ExitPlanetDust said:
I wonder how time consuming it would be to convert individual frames of heavily artifacted 90s CG sourced video and then recreate the video in HD.
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Tested this today - denoised with waifu2x-caffe (Photo, Level 3, TTA), upscaled with Manga109 and ESRGAN models (interpolation of 2).




ThatsMyTrunks tried it earlier with a FFVII FMV in the thread (it created way more artifacts for them, unfortunately.)




There's also this.



There are quite a lot of shimmering artifacts in pretty much every example - something like TecoGAN that takes consistency between frames into account would probably be more suitable for FMVs than ESRGAN. Hoping that or something similar has their code shared. 😊
 

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2,069
PenSeph said:
Tested this today - denoised with waifu2x-caffe (Photo, Level 3, TTA), upscaled with Manga109 and ESRGAN models (interpolation of 2).




ThatsMyTrunks tried it earlier with a FFVII FMV in the thread (it created way more artifacts for them, unfortunately.)




There's also this.



There are quite a lot of shimmering artifacts in pretty much every example - something like TecoGAN that takes consistency between frames into account would probably be more suitable for FMVs than ESRGAN. Hoping that or something similar has their code shared. 😊
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Wow that's amazing. Thanks for giving it a shot. I didn't think about artifacting creating a consistency issue.
 
BSherrod

BSherrod

Member
Oct 27, 2017
675
This stuff is fascinating to me. I wonder how how good people could get some older games look with some AO and shaders from Reshade as well.
 

Deleted member 22713

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
1,219
Tossed another bunch of CG FMVs into the mix - higher resolution ones this time - from Sonic Adventure. Mostly 640*480 from the PC port, though the Dreamcast sourced ones were 320*448 (pixel aspect ratio 2:1); GameCube sourced file was 640*448. Denoised with waifu as before, PSNR/ESRGAN int-08.

 
Petruccis Biceps

Petruccis Biceps

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,543
Laxoon said:
A user on Qhimm that goes by Satsuki is currently playtesting their mod using these techniques combined with a higher poly models mod in FF7 and posted some in-game screenshots:
.
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Wow I'm surprised Qhimm is still around. I was visiting that site in the early 2000s looking for FF8pc music mods. Those guys are dedicated as fuck.
 
Coreda

Coreda

SVG Wizard
Member
Oct 26, 2017
886
PenSeph said:
Tossed another bunch of CG FMVs into the mix - higher resolution ones this time - from Sonic Adventure. Mostly 640*480 from the PC port, though the Dreamcast sourced ones were 320*448 (pixel aspect ratio 2:1); GameCube sourced file was 640*448. Denoised with waifu as before, PSNR/ESRGAN int-08.

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Looks excellent.
 
Trike

Trike

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Nov 6, 2017
2,398
Anyone try this out on that fountain in mario 64 so we can read the inscription?
 
i-Jest

i-Jest

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,015
Umm, I want to see the persona 1 and 2 PSP remakes get this treatment, as well as Beyond The Beyond, and the Golden Sun games if at all possible. I'm super curious to see how they'd turn out. I might try later.
 
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Foffy

Foffy

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
16,400
I'm most curious if someone wants to give this a try.

We've seen OoT get a taste of this, but what about OoT 3D? I'm wondering how this would improve upon improvements, to see if all you ideally need is the original game to touch up instead of touching it up further, as some have a hit-or-miss reception to the latter.
 
Durante

Durante

Dark Souls Man
Member
Oct 24, 2017
5,074
Coreda said:
Would be the most appropriate use for it, though judging by the Twitter comment they didn't include a copy of the original license text? Tsh, tsh.
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I don't think that's necessary, if they upscaled the textures offline. They aren't distributing the scaling algorithm.
 
YannStone

YannStone

Member
Oct 27, 2017
24
Ze_PilOt said:
Damn, your are fast to post :)
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To much free time at work 😶
Cool to see you posting here. I tend to think your mod deserves a topic of his own because a lot of people that could be interested in it probably never read this one.
(I don't have enough privilege to create new topic here but maybe you can contact a moderator?)
 
wwm0nkey

wwm0nkey

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,630
Me and my wife are going to try to do all of Psychonauts this week and then release the pack
 

Ze_PilOt

Member
Jan 16, 2019
16
YannStone said:
To much free time at work 😶
Cool to see you posting here. I tend to think your mod deserves a topic of his own because a lot of people that could be interested in it probably never read this one.
(I don't have enough privilege to create new topic here but maybe you can contact a moderator?)
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Well I'm new here, so I prefer not to bother anyone for the moment, but feel free to ask, I can answer some questions.
 
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