[Phredreeke]

Tile 150 before and after touching up the keypanel

[Tea Monster]

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Still WIP, but looks promising.

https://i.imgur.com/js2Gan2.jpg

[darkprince227]

It's all looking cool so far B)

Does anything think we'll be seeing Version 1 or download of this new pack anytime soon? (I forgot what it was called)

Gods know we need something to look forward to this year

Whatever the case, keep up the good work everybody

[Phredreeke]

Sharing a couple of upscales

Spoiler

https://i.imgur.com/HHx5dk9.png
(dedither + detoon/sourcetex2 interpolation upscale, 50% downscale, unresize, custom palettisation script)
https://i.imgur.com/szBXBPA.png
(50% downscale, Nickelback upscale, custom palettisation script)
https://i.imgur.com/z7QvWwE.png
(dedither, fatal photos upscale, 50% downscale, FFT denoise, gamma adjusted noise, palettisation)
https://i.imgur.com/Wbk6vSL.png
(palette swap (pal17->pal13), dedither, fatal photos upscale, color copied back in, 50% downscale, custom palettisation script)

Image 1, 2 and 4 use a new palettisation script which divides both original image and upscale into smaller tiles, and palettises the upscale using the colors in corresponding tile in the original image.

[MrFlibble]

Tea Monster, on 14 January 2021 - 04:09 PM, said:

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Still WIP, but looks promising.

Awesome work on the pistol model, but I can't but point out the stark contrast between the crisp detail on it and the blurry upscale of the trooper himself. I think it would not become much more noticeable if you put that pistol on the original, low-res sprite.

I guess the idea is to sharpen the base sprite and blur the pistol to get them to some kind of common denominator, but at this point I think it becomes obvious that sprites made from high-resolution models would look better than upscales, no matter how much effort is put into refining them.

I know it's a lot to ask, but what do you think of making a full model that would be faithful to the low-res original and then using it to produce high-res sprites? Possibly leaving ESRGAN upscales for textures only? Or at least leaving the upscaled sprites to be gradually replaced?

[Tea Monster]

Cheers. It's still WIP, so we are playing with lighting and how much blur to apply to get it looking right. Not at all finished yet. Lots of farting about to be done.

The modelling idea is great and probably the best way to get ultra-sharp sprites that look like the originals.

I've just finished making a ton of models for the HHR mod and they weren't well received. I don't really feel like spending another two years or so making all the enemies (yet again). I might finish my Cycloid model one of these days. He's done to look like Chuck Jones' model.

[Phredreeke]

Keep in mind the sprite in Tea Monster's screenshot is of the upscale before it is downscaled to the final size. This is how it looks after downscaling/sharpening/palettisation (without the new gun)



(I need to undo the eyes for the "ERP" version)

Also, I really don't want to burn out Tea Monster.

[Phredreeke]

An attempt I made at tiles 0505-0509



anyone know where this one is used in game?

[Jimmy]

It's the animation for glass maskwalls breaking.

[MrFlibble]

Phredreeke, on 18 January 2021 - 08:52 AM, said:

Keep in mind the sprite in Tea Monster's screenshot is of the upscale before it is downscaled to the final size. This is how it looks after downscaling/sharpening/palettisation (without the new gun)

Unfortunately downscaling/palettising does not entirely solve all the issues with AI upscales that we have.

Don't get me wrong, your result is very good. But with what ESRGAN can do at this moment, whatever resolution the upscale ends up at is still low on details compared to a hypothetical image that was created at the target resolution from the start (e.g. from a hi-res model). I think this might partially account for the slightly "blurry" look of the resulting sprites.

ESRGAN sharpens/brings out the details that are present in the source image, but can't add more than that. That was my point. The trick here is that when the source has enough detail the upscale might look "bland" but since the image is complete (e.g. you see the complete shapes of the Trooper's head, torso, limbs etc.), it is not as noticeable. But with the pistol, it was reduced to a handful of pixels in the original sprite so ESRGAN has trouble bringing up a coherent shape, hence it becomes apparent that the upscale is imperfect. But this imperfection is implicitly present in the entire image, not just where it stands out. But that's how I understand the entire problem, currently.

[Phredreeke]

Jimmy, on 20 January 2021 - 11:28 PM, said:

It's the animation for glass maskwalls breaking.

I'm a fucking idiot. that's the tile preceding those... I thought for some reason it was some kind of screen static

Edit: Did another attempt at it


Edit 2: Recorded it in game. This is slowed down to 20% speed

[Jimmy]

It's okay. It's something you only see for a split second at any time. Most people probably don't even know there's an animation there.

[Phredreeke]

I had initially only intended to use this model for the glyphs, but Tea Monster liked the result so much he suggested I'd use it for the whole display






(these have transparency, but it may be tough to tell given the forum's background)

[MrFlibble]

Why did the circles come out so jaggy in the second pic?

And the wireframe globe in the third image, I guess it was supposed to have regular shaped sectors/cells but the upscale messed them all up.

All these are very simple shapes though, I think it would make sense to just remake them in high-res manually if the time permits. No need for AI if the result does not really compare favourably even to xBRZ style algorithms.

[Phredreeke]

Because the original tile wasn't antialiased (because I only intended to use them for the alien glyphs)

I upscaled the 3rd tile again with ssantialias9x pre-applied. I prefer this look tbh

[Mark]

I'm assuming the planet grid looks like it was made from spaghetti noodles because the original sprite is poor quality.

[Phredreeke]

Original tile

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/437344778267525130/802654348958105611/tile0533.png

Perhaps the wireframe planet would be better recreated, as long as care is taken to align the grid size and position to match the original.

Here's another one I just made

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/437344778267525130/802651427984900116/tile1148.png

[Mark]

Teamonster could whip up a globe in Blender. Make the lines a little thicker and make the backround transparent in photoshop. It shouldn't take long at all. The 2nd pic is a quick attempt with transparent backround but not in the duke palette.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[Phredreeke]

Potential options (Tea Monster helped render and place the sphere, as my attemps to failed pretty badly)

[Tea Monster]

Nonsense, you've been a trooper on this project.

[Phredreeke]

Added in the yellow dots and here's the result

Edit: Animations

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768066414706819082/802937575873577030/4594-4596.gif https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768066414706819082/802937623743954964/0533-0535.gif

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[darkprince227]

Was it always animated, or am I imagining things?

[Phredreeke]

Upscales of a couple of displays

[MrFlibble]

Nice job on the screens themselves but the lower part of the screen case got blurred and lost detail -- I believe you were considering to use the hi-res version from old HRP files?

[Phredreeke]

Yeah, there are a ton of tiles using the same frame, that's why I asked who made those tiles for the HRP.

Here's a mockup I made using them.

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[Phredreeke]

Thinking about it, I never explained how I made screens in the last few upscales.

1. Upscale the image with NMKD's Typescale model (optionally preprocess it with SSAA9x)
2. Using imagemagick, shift it 2 pixels in both axises then scale to 25%
3. Apply a palette with only the intended hues (I used a copy of palettes 1,2,7,8 with the fullbrights edited out)

For some of them I edited out everything but the intended color (the yellow dots in the tile with the wireframe planet for example) and upscaled separately. Then I edited the results together.

[Phredreeke]

https://i.imgur.com/HwbofX7.png

I decided to make an animation showing the different steps
https://i.imgur.com/l7PZryP.gif

[Phredreeke]

I decided to put the spacehatch through the same process as above. Here's the result

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768066414706819082/804766865724932146/tile0450.png

Is this better or worse (once the keypad is fixed) than the old frankentile using a rotated tile0447?

https://imgsli.com/MzkxMDE

[MrFlibble]

Frankentile is noticeably sharper so it's not easy to judge here I'd say.

I tried comparing the new version with a test upscale of the same tile I made a while ago by blending several layers (ThiefGold after HQ2x "softening" with something else -- it's some pages ago in this thread but I'm attaching another copy for reference), but the trick is that some parts seem to look better in one image and some in the other, and conversely, some areas have more undesirable artifacts or bad looking parts in one image and other areas on the other.

How I understand it, the only way to get a definite improvement so far is to have an artist go over the upscale and fix problematic parts. I'm afraid that invoking more AI models ultimately servers only to multiply the ranges of "relatively good" and "relatively bad" results.

[Phredreeke]

A pair of new upscales

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768066414706819082/805945268130152458/tile0299.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768066414706819082/805957257598599219/tile0298.png

Slide-over comparison for the former https://imgsli.com/Mzk0OTI

These use mostly the previously described Detoon-thiefgold interpolation, with sections cut in from NMKD-Typescale upscale.