[MrFlibble]

Phredreeke, on 09 October 2019 - 12:59 PM, said:

Comparison between yours (I only applied the Blood palette and made the transparent color black) and my edit

https://imgsli.com/NzM1MA

I didn't bother cleaning up the edges with Kuwahara-Nagao blur, which of course makes the edges look bad in your comparison.

Here's a quick KN (radius 1 pixel, protect details) applied to the result and converted to the original colours:

I probably should have used a darker background for the upscale to get less bright edges.

Phredreeke, on 09 October 2019 - 12:59 PM, said:

As for cheerleader... 6678, 6860 are some problematic frames

I don't own the full games so I can't tell what these are?

[Phredreeke]

I posted them here as I felt that was a more appropriate topic

[MrFlibble]

MrFlibble, on 09 October 2019 - 12:27 PM, said:

I think it's pretty decent especially considering the tradeoff of not having to do any pre-processing or separate masks.

Like I said in the other thread, it seems that I was too quick to dismiss the xBRZ softening method, as it does a better job on the sprite edges. Here's the same zombie frame made from a softened image (scaled up to 4x w/ xBRZ then back down to original res with GIMP Bicubic interpolation). To the right is the version with HSV noise but honestly I don't think it actually makes things substantially better:

To produce the mask, I scaled the 4x ESRGAN output (it's the same Fatality/Rebout 0.5 interpolation as before) down to 2x with mtPaint's Bicubic, then applied Kuwahara Nagao blur at 2 pixel radius with protect details on. The image was originally processed against a purple background.

[Phredreeke]

Thing is, for Blood I feel the upscale should be a bit gritty.

[Phredreeke]

[Phredreeke]

New version out.
https://www.moddb.co...pscale-pack-207

A lot of new sprites added, but also improved compatibility with addons thanks to extra palswaps.

 blood207comparison1.png (217.26K)
Number of downloads: 42
 blood207comparison2.png (162.62K)
Number of downloads: 38

(from left to right, original sprite, upscale pack 2.06, upscale pack 2.07)

Slide-over comparison of Phantasm

[MrFlibble]

The masks are definitely better and so is the sprite quality, I wonder how much manual editing you still needed to put into this? E.g. the zombie's left eye in the final version was edited manually and not just a result of neural upscale, am I right?

But of course this should be natural, my current opinion of neural upscales is that they're a great aid to the artist but almost never 100% complete assets on their own.

[Phredreeke]

This particular release the zombies, butchers, phantasm and innocents received the most attention.

Cerberus, Tchernobog and the hellhounds were upscaled using additional models + its own downscaling script

Edit: Slide-over gallery time

Different steps of the Cerberus upscale https://imgsli.com/MTEyNTI
Zombie upscale, raw downscale vs. edit https://imgsli.com/MTEyNTQ
Pitchfork https://imgsli.com/MTEyNTc

[Phredreeke]

I thought I had posted this here already. Caleb gets a new face
 spritesheet.png (134.4K)
Number of downloads: 72

[OpenMaw]

Phredreeke, on 08 February 2020 - 07:33 AM, said:

I thought I had posted this here already. Caleb gets a new face
spritesheet.png

He looks so awesome.

[MrFlibble]

Face good, guns and hands need polish still. BTW, is it DeToon producing the halo effect on silver-coloured surfaces (like the guns here)?

[Phredreeke]

I didn't use DeToon for these. I used Manga109 interpolated with DeviantPixel HD

[MrFlibble]

Deviant Pixel is nice except I noticed that it has a tendency to blur out some of the areas of a sprite, not sure why (some parts get sharp and some blurred/kinda out of focus). Why do you still keep a Mange109 element in the interpolations though? It's pretty outdated and noisy.

[Phredreeke]

Because I've already developed a pre-upscale antialiasing process around it. Once interpolated with something else (in this case DeviantPixel) the noise isn't an issue anymore.

[Phredreeke]

I've started putting together a background/world texture upscale pack for Blood. This includes upscaling various signs

 newbloodupscales.png (95.65K)
Number of downloads: 53

 scr-e3m1blood.ini-0001.png (1.93MB)
Number of downloads: 32

[Phredreeke]

Background upscale pack released

https://www.moddb.co...nd-upscale-pack

With this release most of the game's tiles have been upscaled, of the top of my head what's left are
- the various fonts and HUD
- a few objects that also have voxels
- some gibs that I'm unsure if they're actually used by the game
- sky textures
- publisher/dev logos, title screen, end of level background, credits and help screen backgrounds

[Phredreeke]

I've released an upscaled version of Dzierzan's SmoothBlood pack

https://www.moddb.co...od-upscale-pack

I plan for the next upscale pack release to have this integrated.

[Phredreeke]

A sneak peek of the next version of the upscale pack

https://imgsli.com/NzUxNTU

[Phredreeke]

Posted an announcement on the next version of the upscale pack

TL;DR version, it will use indexed hightiles like the Duke ERP and will include the world textures and SmoothBlood as well.



(video doesn't have Smoothblood on as it causes demos to desync)

[Mark]

nblood vs bloodgdx...
Did you try framerate comparisons in a map that really pushes the engine? I'd like to see the difference when playing a map in double digits where every frame counts.

[Phredreeke]

I dunno what this has to do with the upscale pack but... Do you have any suggestions for Blood levels that push the engine? The end of Deathwish's E2M1 comes to mind. Framerate tanks there in BloodGDX (it drops in NBlood as well, but not as severe, around 480-510 fps)

Attached File(s)

•  scr-e2m1death_wish_1.7.5.zipdeath wish 1.7dw.ini-0000.png (656.29K)
  Number of downloads: 25

[Mark]

I must have posted in the wrong thread. Sorry. Somebody else recently posted a video comparing the 2 ports for speed but it was in a map that was allowing between 300-1000 fps. Once you reach a certain high framerate numbers have little meaning. Comparing them under stress is something I would rather see. I have no idea what map might bring framerate to double digits.

[Phredreeke]

Yes, I did that a while back. It was running at 640x480 in software renderer on E1M1. At higher resolutions FPS will obviously be lower. BTW the test I did for DWE2M1 was using Polymost

Do you know any other good levels for pushing the engine though?

[Phredreeke]

v2.1 is out now https://www.moddb.co...pscale-pack-v21

[warezeater]

Phredreeke, on 28 October 2021 - 01:20 PM, said:

v2.1 is out now https://www.moddb.co...pscale-pack-v21

Really great job with the upscale done here! Unlike tons of other upscales out there... Thank you!

May I propose that you make a step-by-step beginners' guide on how to make proper upscales for old games? Publishing it on Moddb can make the difference, I believe. Thanks again!

[Phredreeke]

Well, first of all I can barely remember how I set up ESRGAN in the first place (but there are instructions for that on the wiki)

I did start an article on the wiki on upscaling Build engine games, it goes less into the actual upscaling process (which is constantly changing) and more on the specifics pertaining to Build.

Unless you also use PSP I don't think my special sauce would be particularly useful. I believe Cupscale does some of the things for you.

Some generic advice though

- Many models do not do well with images with low color depths, often you can help it by running it through a model like Pixelperfect first and then downscaling back to original size, and then use your intended model.
- Don't be afraid of interpolating models. Sometimes artifacts disappear even with a slight interpolation with a second model.
- Recognise that sometimes it's faster to edit out flaws manually rather than brute forcing different models until you get the result you want.

[Phredreeke]

I've uploaded a BloodGDX compatible version of v2.1

Use with Polymost as PolyGDX currently has a bug causing textures to be fullbright.

NBlood users should still use the previous upload
Raze users can use either upload, but the GDX compatible one is significantly larger (248 MB compared to 31 MB) so I recommend the previous one there as well.

[jimbob]

yeall got any more of that blood behind the scenes screenshots?

[Phredreeke]

This may be the thread you're looking for