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Created by
Jasperre, last updated on Sept 04, 2021
6 minute read
- 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 |
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| is_harm |
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| BSRGAN is the most similar to the original scaled up - no smiling face. |
| ief_abildecr |
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| BSRGAN. Crisp "human" model and downward arrow, although possibly loses a bit of the red in general. |
| isk_movsilent |
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| BSRGAN or realesrgan-x4plus both look suitable, the former keeping the colour pallet a bit better. |
| dr_03 |
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| 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 |
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| 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) |
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| 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.
Bugs and Fixes
Lots of crashes - because of course NWN is ancient and sometimes hates things. Things noted here:
- Distorted textures cannot exceed 256x256 resolution. This is the TXI option "distort 1". This means primarily water but also other things like lava! Also look out for "arturowidth" and "arturoheight"
- Moved all water files (search word water and find all the tileset ones that look like water) out for now. May upscale +
- 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).
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.
PLT work
To follow - there's a chunk of redoing and actually documenting the process properly this time.