Akven on 18/11/2019 at 06:07
Goodday everyone.
I'm considering the idea of making ESRGAN pack for Thief 3 with upscaled vanilla textures.
And I had some questions regarding engine specs:
-Where are the textures packs in game folder? I suggest they are packed into maps folder, not textures or UTX.
-Which file formats are supported? I found original textures to be DDS DXT1.
-What is the maximum size of the textures supported by engine? 2048x2048? 4096x4096? 1024x1024?
-What is the maximum size for splash screens/background screens which are shown during loading?
-Do I need to set texture sizes in properties like mtl files in Thief 1/2 for them to be shown properly? As I see community texture pack do not have any properties so they are used maybe from the original textures by just replacing dds files.
-Do I need to create UTX files or recompile anything or I can just copy unpacked new textures to some folder.
-Does game support any another video formats or it can just use BIK files for videos. What is the maximum resolution for this videos if I will upscale them? I can also upscale community made videos from Sneaker.
My suggestion is to use DXT compression artifacts removal model and when some ESRGAN upscale model for textures. Maybe normal map creation model for normal maps (there is such model for ESRGAN available).
For BIKs I will convert them to PNGs, use jpeg artifacts removal model and when ESRGAN upscale. After that recombine them back to BIK with optional MKV creation.
snobel on 18/11/2019 at 08:43
Quote Posted by Akven
I'm considering the idea of making ESRGAN pack for Thief 3 with upscaled vanilla textures.
Good idea. :thumb:
Quote:
-Where are the textures packs in game folder? I suggest they are packed into maps folder, not textures or UTX.
Resource packs, including textures, are the .ibt files in the Content/T3/Maps folder. Resources outside the packs (such as individual textures) are mainly in folders named DynamicallyLoaded throughout the subfolders of Content/T3.
Quote:
-Which file formats are supported? I found original textures to be DDS DXT1.
Don't know if anything other than DDS is supported, but uncompressed and DXT3 at least work too, IIRC.
Quote:
-What is the maximum size of the textures supported by engine?
Don't know - should be fairly easy to work it out through experiments, though.
Quote:
-What is the maximum size for splash screens/background screens which are shown during loading?
The loading screens are just textures, so the same limit would apply.
Quote:
-Do I need to set texture sizes in properties like mtl files in Thief 1/2 for them to be shown properly? As I see community texture pack do not have any properties so they are used maybe from the original textures by just replacing dds files.
-Do I need to create UTX files or recompile anything or I can just copy unpacked new textures to some folder.
With the Sneaky Upgrade installed, you can copy texture files into any of the mod folders, and they'll be picked up by the game. You don't need to specify the dimensions. I'll recommend using the Fonts or Garrett Animations mods for experiments, as they don't contain much. For instance, if you enable the Animations mod, create the folder C:\ProgramData\Thief 3 Sneaky Upgrade\Installed Mods\Garrett Animation Tweaks\Content\T3\PCTextures\DynamicallyLoaded and copy some textures in there, then they should appear in-game. (Edit: Need to use the original texture filenames, obviously...)
Font textures are a special case, because they need an accompanying .cel text file describing the layout of characters on the texture. But if you upscale the original textures, then it's fairly easy to 'upscale' the numbers in the .cel files as well.
Please have a go at the fonts, btw. I've made replacement textures (not upscaled) but it's been a frustrating experience...
Quote:
-Does game support any another video formats or it can just use BIK files for videos. What is the maximum resolution for this videos if I will upscale them? I can also upscale community made videos from Sneaker.
With the Sneaky Upgrade, all non-GPL'ed video formats supported by ffmpeg should work. That said, the focus has been on .mp4 so I don't think Matroska etc. has been tested. The video files must have extension .bik no matter what codecs and container formats are used, IIRC.
In principle, any video resolution that ffmpeg can handle should work with the game (so if you find that it doesn't, let me know).
IMHO, the part of T3 that could use your skills the most are the original videos. The briefings are already available from mensch in full HD at least.
Quote:
My suggestion is to use DXT compression artifacts removal model and when some ESRGAN upscale model for textures. Maybe normal map creation model for normal maps (there is such model for ESRGAN available).
If you want to add normal maps to textures which don't have them, then I think you do need to edit materials, which would involve T3Ed AFAIK. (Somebody already tried copying in appropriately named normal map textures, but they weren't picked up.)
Akven on 18/11/2019 at 10:29
Ok, will go in video first. There is nothing difficult in extracting frames from bik files, had done it already for Blood: Fresh Supply video mod.
Thanks for the answers, don't see any hidden rocks so far. My dream is Clive Barker's Undying ESRGAN pack, but it's old UE1 engine with a lot of limitations (no dds support, paletted bmp, only DirectX 7/Glide wrapper, editor with a need to edit utx packages, unknown specs for resolutions, no backported modern UT patches and so on) and none modders support - so I will test my skills on Thief 3.
snobel on 19/11/2019 at 13:44
Overall it looks quite good but yeah, unfortunate artefacts in some places.
Akven on 26/11/2019 at 03:36
Second try on Thief 3 Trailer
(
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/4vRN/45NH2t9Fo)
It's maybe a little more blurry, but there are less artifacts in motion.
I don't think I can improve image more, cause Thief 3 movies had terrible compression, even Thief 2 movies were better.
