Doing 3rd phase:
- New Cupscale New Cupscale! 1.3839.0f1 - has a faster network to use and a better set of upscalers included by default
- 4x_BSRGAN upscaler to be used on most textures (works to bring back some detail and retain colours a fair bit)
- 4x_RealSR_DF2K_JPEG to be used on icons (seems to keep a nice lot of detail)
- Redo all files
- Not going to desharpen but have used bc1 stuff on the DDS files
- PLT files need a rework, see if they work better than before (
using PNG middlemen- nope PNG conversion in nwn_crunch is not great apparently TGA it is! but we can use output PNG from CupScale to go back to DDS)
- Notes on some other bits:
- Using PNG files now - seems to work with the modellers a lot better less errors then TGA! Also makes checking the files miles easier and takes less disk space (and may even improve timings a little since they're smaller to read/write).
- The new mode is around 25% - 40% faster or so so well worth using called RealESRGAN (NCNN) but only works at x4. If we run desharpeners etc. don't use this.
...
Lots of crashes - because of course NWN is ancient and sometimes hates things. Things noted here:
Buggy and unneeded textures
Whole list of these! Egad so many that if present can even make other ones buggy (DDS overrides PLT!). To follow, but also removing ones that are not used by the game ("TEMP" icons for instance) or are buggy (GUI boxes above) saves even more time.
Transparency on some textures
trm02 textures and even usual rural is a bit buggy; alpha is probably the issue - try Test Phase 2 options for Alpha modes perhaps.
Doesn't affect all things with transparency oddly!
DDS flippy flip
The DDS → TGA in crunch does not flip the file. This means when doing (intermediary upscaled PNG) → DDS you do the opposite of your other textures. The results need to be "upside down" when the DDS file is viewed. It causes some wild issues otherwise, of course!
...
- po_plc_x0_syt_s and po_plc_x0_tyt_t are the same item, no "m" version, and thus misnamed or the only ones. Neither appear in portraits.2da (syt/tyt). Looks to be a destroyed version of po_plc_x0_myt_m.
- Unused due to odd names not sure why they're even there:
- po_pwc_mage_001_
- po_pwc_post_001_
- po_pwc_rubl_001_
- po_pwc_rubl_002_
- po_pwc_rubl_003_
- po_pwc_sand_001_, po_pwc_sand_002_, po_pwc_sand_003_ and po_pwc_sand_004_
- po_pwc_sieg_001_, po_pwc_sieg_002_, po_pwc_sieg_003
- po_pwc_skull_01__
- po_pwc_tabl_001_, po_pwc_tabl_002_
- po_pwc_torc_001_
PLT work
Okay this is pretty simple now with Symmetrics tooling:
- Flatten PLTs
- Upscale PLT files
- Likely use JPEG one on the icons but we'll see
- Recreate PLTs
Outcomes:
Looks great this bit!
Bit blocky on the colour front here;
Symmetric is a god and may be able to add some basic magic to smooth it out a bitTo follow - there's a chunk of redoing and actually documenting the process properly this time.