Akven on 5/2/2019 at 09:46
OK. I managed to install ESRGAN on my computer. So I wonder if this is possible to resize Thief Gold original textures.
I tried several times with different settings, and it looks rather good.
Examples in Four sets of images
Original 64x64 texture
Original 64x64 texture resized to 256x256 for visual comparsion
256x256 texture upscaled based on Manga109 model
256x256 texture undithered with Reduced Color model and upscaled with Manga109 model
(
https://imgur.com/a/gi6zJiB)
(
https://imgur.com/a/dVIAwjK)
(
https://imgur.com/a/vB9WVxv)
Sometime it needs some manual editing or choosing between models.
The thing is I lack some knowledge:
1. I don't know very well engines capacities. Sometimes files are in .pcx format, sometimes in .tga, sometimes in .gif. What the difference? Could I just use .png in NewDark?
2. Why there are two folders sometimes - txt and txt16. As I understand txt is for low graphic, txt16 for high (so we don't need to do anything with txt folder)?
3. What is the file pspbrwse.jbf in textures folders? Is it some thumbnail gallery for graphic editors by accident left in production?
4. What for are files full.pcx?
I plan to make this pack to install on top of TFix (and EP1) but before EP2. So I need also to resize TFix fixed textures.
And there are a lot of questions:
1. Why there are sometimes textures that are very close to originals, but altrered in some way without any changes in quality?
Examples:
(
https://imgur.com/a/QfU9Lcf)
Is this because they are from Thief 2? Maybe there is a point in upscaling original Thief Gold textures separately from Thief 2?
2. Why there are several exactly the same textures in different resolution? Example: Cowall, Cowallm, Cowalls. Could I just create one high resolution texture and rename it 3 times?
3. Why there are sometimes files _full.png, that are not present in Thief original files?
4. BLACJAC4 texture in TFix appears 8 times in different folders:
MODS\mesh\Txt16
MODS\mesh\Txt16\back
MODS\obj\Txt16\
MODS\obj\Txt16\back
PACKFIX\mesh\Txt16
PACKFIX\obj\Txt16
What the point??? Ok, I understand that one model is for player hand and one for appearing in the world. But what about other folders, why it is completely the same texture everywhere?
5. (
https://nameless.zanity.net//epterrain/index.php?family=&category=unused)
For which mod is this link? I like textures a lot, but sometimes they differ from original in style.
It's all for now)))
P.S. Also it is possible to resize interface, which is stuck in 640x480 resolution
Purgator on 5/2/2019 at 10:32
Regarding point number 5. That is the ongoing Enhancement Pack (EP1/2), which is an attempt to faithfully recreate original T1/G/TMA textures.
Akven on 5/2/2019 at 11:35
Hmmmm, there is an interesting possibility in training ESRGAN with ready textures from Enhancement Pack 2 so it could upscale textures better. Just need to apply dithering before training.
Gecko on 5/2/2019 at 23:39
This is really fantastic Akven!
The 'Manga109' model works much better in quality!! I can't believe it :eek:
In the last 5 hours i've converted all TG textures (over 1000 files) with ESRGAN (Manga109 model) and created .mtl files too. That was a bunch of (maus clicking) work :cheeky:
Tomorrow i will upload all the stuff as a pack. It will be possible to play with this pack directly after download and it will work like ep2. I still can't believe how good it works for most of the textures...
downwinder on 6/2/2019 at 03:25
i don't like results it makes it look like it has that cartoon effect from photo shop,but i always like the pure pixel look on texture's
Akven on 6/2/2019 at 03:35
Yes, Manga109 is much better model for low quality old games with dithering.
Do you intend to upscale the menu interface? ESRGAN upscales it perfectly (much better even than textures), you just need maybe to edit all the clock's textures to fix some numbers. It goes from 640x480 to 2560x1920. So we can after 4x upscaling reduce size to 1920xSomething or somethinGx1080 (4:3 yes) with little sharpening if neccesary. But I don't know how the game would accept this files with higher resolution.
And second question - what about different Thief Gold/TFix/EP1 textures? Maybe we should stuck with original ones?
In such case I don't need to do the pack myself )))
Also, yesterday I waste about 3 hours in setting up my own training model based on EP2 textures, and it is training now.
So, when it passed about 10000 iterations+, we could try it on Thief textures and compare to Manga109.
I took all the HQ textures from EP2, reduced them in size by 4x and reduced number of colors (16 if I am not mistaken) to imitate dithering. So now it learns to upscale images based on low res dithered images and comparing them with HQ EP2 textures.
I don't know how well would it be and how many mistakes I allowed during setting up))
P.S. Again sorry for my english, not my native language.
Gecko on 6/2/2019 at 16:49
Akven that 'training method' sounds really good! Can't wait for the results.
I will not upload the pack today because i have to fix some texture things.
It works great especially for symbols and patterns. Also very good for mesh skins! But not for all stonewall / cave textures (it has somthing of a comic style look). You have to improve stonewall textures here and there by yourself. Some textures have no chance against the quality EP2 textures. But it's still amazing for me what you can do.
But here is a demo video:
[video=youtube;zpwG2uNWhiQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpwG2uNWhiQ[/video]
No textures in this video were improved by myself. I only unscaled them with ESRGAN! So i did no correction (only a bit more saturation).
Psych0sis on 6/2/2019 at 17:25
Quote Posted by Gecko
Akven that 'training method' sounds really good! Can't wait for the results.
I will not upload the pack today because i have to fix some texture things.
It works great especially for symbols and patterns. Also very good for mesh skins! But not for all stonewall / cave textures (it has somthing of a comic style look). You have to improve stonewall textures here and there by yourself. Some textures have no chance against the quality EP2 textures. But it's still amazing for me what you can do.
But here is a demo video:
[video=youtube;zpwG2uNWhiQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpwG2uNWhiQ[/video]
No textures in this video were improved by myself. I only unscaled them with ESRGAN! So i did no correction (only a bit more saturation).
Now THIS is an texture mod I can get behind. No offense for almost all the others, but they stray too far from the aesthetics of the first game.
Twist on 6/2/2019 at 17:54
I was kind of thinking the same thing. It's really subtle, so subtle some people might not be impressed with it, but that's exactly what I like about what I see in that video.
Do a texture-only pack in that style (no custom objects), and you could drop it in and use it even in missions from the 20th Anniversary contest and many (most?) people wouldn't mind.