New Cupscale! 1.38.0f1 - 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)
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.

We'll run the Cupscale on the entire image set twice using the first two models, and pick the best images from each. The DDS images already have gone through a pass of 1x_artifacts_bc1_free_alsa (thanks Loinne!)

Comparisons

The models compared below:

4x_ESRGAN - Original but not the best now, makes things rather blurry - see below for examples. It is worth keeping as a comparison since it what I was using in Test Phase 1 and 2.
4x_BSRGAN - Seems to be the best all-rounder and keeps the colours the most similar, but can wash out some finer lined details (see shield icons) but given the scale of the original icons it's not that bad. Time to convert: 23459 seconds or 390.98 minutes or 6.51 hours. About 1 second/image on average.
4x_RealSR_DF2K_JPEG - Seems to work to keep the detail on icons, like shields, since obviously its treating things as JPEG/photos by the name - thus in some cases it keeps too much of the original and is just a mess. Some things like faces can look a bit better with this.
realesrgan-x4plus - Is a bit like 4x_BSRGAN, but does further smoothing. Looks a bit too different for my tastes and a bit too dark (see door below) but if you want smooth you can get it with this.

Comparisons (note of course there may be transparency lost):

Filename	Original (scaled up here if needed)	4x_ESRGAN	4x_BSRGAN	4x_RealSR_DF2K_JPEG	realesrgan-x4plus	Jasperre's Winner
is_harm						BSRGAN is the most similar to the original scaled up - no smiling face.
ief_abildecr						BSRGAN. Crisp "human" model and downward arrow, although possibly loses a bit of the red in general.
isk_movsilent						BSRGAN or realesrgan-x4plus both look suitable, the former keeping the colour pallet a bit better.
dr_03						Click to zoom in - large files! BSRGAN by a chunk, the JPEG one keeps a lot of the artefacts. The colours are best retained in BSRGAN too. Note the original file was TGA so no DDS artefacts to cope with.
iashlw_011						The 4x_RealSR_DF2K_JPEG approach works well - it really brings the details of scratches and the crispness to the image and will look good in game.
cloak_001 (layer 4)						BSRGAN keeps it simple and effective. There are some odd subtle but noticeable changes in colours from greyscale in them too which we might need to account for (less so on BSRGAN).

Ignored Files

I went through and removed 518 files totalling 918MB of PNGs (pre-DDS) since they're pretty much:

Broken - eg: fnt_ files (will break the game, TXI references pixel locations)
Silly to include - eg: black.tga or any of the numerous single colour files which simply have no scaling to be done on them
Very much unused - portraits and icons with TEMP on them, blank icons, etc.
Pallet files used for PLT - should mess up things but didn't seem to. Removed just in case they're very much pixel perfect grids.
Credits - yeah the game stores tons of (highish) res files for credits. Majority of the space saved here.

Removed Files Due to Taste / Looks Odd and needs fixing

Some files removed due to taste, some GUI things scale weirdly.

Also some bugs in my process! Such as icons not doing transparency properly so this is odd and needs to be fixed. Weirdly the PNGs look fine.

The blank Inventory icons (except the shield?) looks odd. The inventory is also now black instead of transparent and the lines are thicker. This seems to be from converting TGA's to PNGs not an issue with the upscaler as such, but need to test after redoing from source TGA files.

Texture Name	Original	Upscaled	Notes
gui_rgbc			"Reg Green Blue Clear" presumably. Used in model gui_walk.mdl and other GUI things and scaling makes the colours overlap so it messes up the base "select/attack" models.
gui_rad_ring			This is the white bit around the tiny icons above. It might be fixable to give a smoother appearance by increasing the size manually. Not sure though might be a 1:1 pixel mapping.
gui_radialmenu			This is the now black squares! Weird. It might be fixable again by manually increasing the size of this file to make the circle elements more rounded and making sure the alpha is done properly. Not sure though might be a 1:1 pixel mapping or something odd!
inventory stuff to follow

Bugs and Fixes

Lots of crashes - because of course NWN is ancient and sometimes hates things. Things noted here:

Distort TXI option

Distorted textures cannot exceed 256x256 resolution apparently - needs fully testing since one "shinywater" below is bigger than 256 already This is the TXI option "distort 1". This means primarily water but also other things like lava! Also look out for "arturowidth" and "arturoheight"

List of files:

TXI file name / Texture Name	Original Size	Resized Size	Action
c_air_skin	64x64	256x256	Should be fine
c_water_skin	128x128	512x512	Remove, or need to downsize it
fxpa_globe	64x64	256x256	Should be fine
fxpa_globe2	64x64	256x256	Should be fine
fxpa_spellturn
pdag_prt2	128x128	512x512	Remove, or need to downsize it
pdag_prtl	256x256	1024x1024	Remove from pack
shinywater	512x512	2048x2048	Not even sure how this works in the original game!
tbw01_water01	256x256	1024x1024	Remove from pack
tcm02_water01			Remove from pack
tcn01_water01			Remove from pack
tde01_lava01			Remove from pack
tdm01_water01
tdr01_e_wat01
tds01_water01
tdt01_water01
tic01_water01
tin01_water02
tm_tcnwater01
tm_tnowtsea01
tm_trmwater01
tm_ttzwater01
tni01_water02
tni02_water02
tno01_water01
trm02_water01
trs02_water01
tsw01_fog01
tsw01_molten01
tsw01_water01
ttd01_water01
ttf01_water01
ttr01_water01
tts01_water01
tts02_water01
ttu01_water
ttz01_water01
twc03_wtsea01
vdu_tex_shade

Mipmaps

Don't use DDS without mipmaps will crash - all mine have mipmaps mind you, even ones that don't really need it (icons for instance don't need mipmaps, the game has them at a set distance always on the GUI for maximum quality, but hey why not).

Radial

PLT work

To follow - there's a chunk of redoing and actually documenting the process properly this time.