# Depixelizing Pixel Art



## cosmiccow (May 25, 2011)

These guys developed a new algorithm to upscale pixel graphics. On most source material it's much better than existing upscalers.

Here is the document with lots of images: http://imgur.com/a/gRXPJ

There is a sample video with a snippet of Super Mario gameplay processed with their upscaler/vectorizer:
Video: http://ifile.it/gj1tlk5/video_ours_4x_h264.mp4
Alternative link: http://www.filesonic.com/file/1061063604/v...urs_4x_h264.mp4


The original source is kinda down...maybe a case of too much traffic.

Edit: Better source with PDF, more pics, videos.


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## Windaga (May 25, 2011)

Wow, that was an awesome read. Thanks! The effect definitely varies, but in a lot of instances, their method certainly looks better in the upscaling. A lot of the time though, it looks kind of like a sloppy paint/blur job. (As in, actual paint, no MS paint.) Still though, it's very interesting. It'd be interesting to see a full game use this algorithm. Maybe as a filter?


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## Midna (May 25, 2011)

Here's hoping this goes into the next build of snes9x or ZSNES.


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## Sausage Head (May 25, 2011)

I'd love to see this as an application for desktop PCs.
habbo hotel would look awesome


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## Vigilante (May 25, 2011)

Cool.
Super Mario World with unpixelated graphics=EPIC!


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## Midna (May 25, 2011)

Sausage Head said:
			
		

> I'd love to see this as an application for desktop PCs.
> habbo hotel would look awesome


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## cosmiccow (May 25, 2011)

It depends a bit on the type of source.. not all pixel graphics are suited. 

The new look it creates has it's own charm and alters the feeling of the original pixel art a lot. It's different, but not necessarily inferior.

Another thing is, an algorithm can never know how a 1-2 pixel detail has to look like exactly, if it was intended to look sharp or rounded, so it will never be accurate on everything. 

But I guess it will work quite nice on a lot of NES & SNES games. I hope it will be implemented in an emulator soon.


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## Quanno (May 25, 2011)

Oh, how would this look with 3d-games like Golden Sun DS? That'd be awesome!


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## Tonitonichopchop (May 25, 2011)

I hope this makes it into some retro emulators. It's a bit crude in some areas, but it would be fun to mess around with.


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## _Chaz_ (May 25, 2011)

I don't get it, what's wrong with pixels?


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## Snailface (May 25, 2011)

This would be a cool option in emulators as long as it can be turned off. (retro purist)


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## R2DJ (May 25, 2011)

_Chaz_ said:
			
		

> I don't get it, what's wrong with pixels?


I got nothing to say about that but the depixeled Yoshi sprite in the link looks really really disturbing. Pixeled Yoshi is better.

Also, I'd love to see a depixelized Doom


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## Berthenk (May 25, 2011)

_Chaz_ said:
			
		

> I don't get it, what's wrong with pixels?


A lot of people seem to have a polygon fetish these days.


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## spinal_cord (May 25, 2011)

You lot should all be ashamed of yourselves. Pixel art is a dying talent and here you all are trying to give it that final kick off the roof. If you need to play old games on a huge TV, then do a pixel perfect resize, those pixels were designed to be seen, blurring and smoothing and stretching is not how these gfx should be viewed. There is no reason at all to ruin nice pixel art like that, if you don't like how it looks then don't play those games, simple.


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## cosmiccow (May 25, 2011)

_Chaz_ said:
			
		

> I don't get it, what's wrong with pixels?



Nothing is wrong with pixels. I love pixel art. 

But this is impressive.


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## _Chaz_ (May 25, 2011)

Let's all take a page from the book of Porygon, or rather 3.


Spoiler: The Book of Porygon









 Epic






 Meh...






 Kill yourself



Sharp edges aren't always a bad thing.


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## RupeeClock (May 25, 2011)

_Chaz_ said:
			
		

> Let's all take a page from the book of Porygon, or rather 3.
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What I'm particularly impressed with is how the algorithm successfully interpreted how the mouth should be displayed. I want to double-check this against other upscalers like SuperEagle now.


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## _Chaz_ (May 25, 2011)

RupeeClock said:
			
		

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I don't understand how that makes Porygon any less epic or the other 2 any less fail.


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## KingAsix (May 25, 2011)

this is really neat....I would love to see how megaman games would look using this.


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## Arm73 (May 25, 2011)

spinal_cord said:
			
		

> You lot should all be ashamed of yourselves. Pixel art is a dying talent and here you all are trying to give it that final kick off the roof. If you need to play old games on a huge TV, then do a pixel perfect resize, those pixels were designed to be seen, blurring and smoothing and stretching is not how these gfx should be viewed. There is no reason at all to ruin nice pixel art like that, if you don't like how it looks then don't play those games, simple.



This.
Plus add some nice looking-non intrusive  fake scanlines ( yes, the pixel artist took TVs scanlines into account when drawing their sprites and backgrounds ) and there you go with a true representation of the art !


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## RupeeClock (May 25, 2011)

Arm73 said:
			
		

> spinal_cord said:
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I prefer seeing raw pixels too, but usually on a native display.
A SNES game usually displays 252x224 image, on my 1920x1080 monitor it helps to put a filter on that because the upscale image is almost five times bigger.
I prefer a TV-scanline filter like ZSNES has that makes the video low-quality, but doesn't actually try to filter the pixels.

Pixel art most certainly still has its place on mobile medium, or in indie PC games.

By the way, I through this up for comparison's sake.


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## Ikki (May 25, 2011)

I prefer the original pixeled ones but this is pretty cool.


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## Rydian (May 25, 2011)

spinal_cord said:
			
		

> You lot should all be ashamed of yourselves. Pixel art is a dying talent and here you all are trying to give it that final kick off the roof. If you need to play old games on a huge TV, then do a pixel perfect resize, those pixels were designed to be seen, blurring and smoothing and stretching is not how these gfx should be viewed. There is no reason at all to ruin nice pixel art like that, if you don't like how it looks then don't play those games, simple.


Not everything was meant to be pixel art.  Nowadays people have a wide range of mediums, but back in the days of the NES and SNES you didn't have the choice of using polygonal graphics and all that jazz.


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## Issac (May 25, 2011)

Wow, this is something for me 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 I've read countless microsoft research papers for several projects so far 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 I'm very interested to see how this would do on photograph upscaling... Not that I'm expecting wonders, but it'd be interesting none the less..


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## JonnyPoots (May 25, 2011)

I wonder if this could be implemented into minecraft to soften the existing pixels as opposed to using texture packs. i personally love pixel art and i love its use in minecraft (pixels art = so not dead). though my roommate recently showed it to a hardcore gamer friend of ours and the jerk (at first) refused to believe the game was even remotely popular (he obviously lives on his consoles, not the internet) and he could not get passed the graphics at all. once we had a more pleasant texture, his "HD-tarded" eyes could finally see the game for what it was.


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## shakirmoledina (May 25, 2011)

this would revolutionize graphics in one of the best ways including emulators of the games of yore. Wonderful programming will lead to this which i wish i can do once.
the hq2x etc filters are great but they seem a little forced in the examples above. This looks much more natural


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## _Chaz_ (May 25, 2011)

Depixelating pixel art would be like depainting paint art.


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## Wizerzak (May 25, 2011)

Nice, can't wait to try this out. Though I find that squinting gives the same effect.


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## Issac (May 25, 2011)

_Chaz_ said:
			
		

> Depixelating pixel art would be like depainting paint art.



Actually, yes, and that's also something that's been something big through the ages..
How many paintings strive towards being photo realistic? 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Pixel art as pixel art is great.
Depixelated pixel art as an alternative to nearest neighbour upscaling is great.
Paintings are great.
photo realistic paintings are great.
My view on this


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## SamAsh07 (May 25, 2011)

I love pixel art and it should remain as it is. However, this does look intriguing.


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## DrOctapu (May 26, 2011)

I kinda wanna see how Earthbound looks through this. I bet the interface looks nice. I'd miss the font, though.


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## Deleted-236924 (May 26, 2011)

chao1212, here you go.



Spoiler













			
				RupeeClock said:
			
		

> Arm73 said:
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I can't believe it took to long for someone to point out SNES emulators already had a feature like this.


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## Rydian (May 26, 2011)

Their features like this aren't nearly as good, that's the point.


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## macgeek417 (May 26, 2011)

spinal_cord said:
			
		

> You lot should all be ashamed of yourselves. Pixel art is a dying talent and here you all are trying to give it that final kick off the roof. If you need to play old games on a huge TV, then do a pixel perfect resize, those pixels were designed to be seen, blurring and smoothing and stretching is not how these gfx should be viewed. There is no reason at all to ruin nice pixel art like that, if you don't like how it looks then don't play those games, simple.



This a thousand times. Super Mario Bros. looks just fine in it's original, pixelized form.


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## Deleted User (May 26, 2011)

Leave pixel art alone. If someone depixelizes megaman, the world shall explode.


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## Jamstruth (May 26, 2011)

Pingouin7 said:
			
		

> I can't believe it took to long for someone to point out SNES emulators already had a feature like this.


THat's because we've all been working on the assumption that they know. None of those are producing results as good as this new algorithm. If that clip is full speed, however, then we still have a bit to go with it.

Also @Everyone dissing this. Its an OPTION! You don't have to use it, its just there to give the option to people who want to use it. I use it a bit but for some games it doesn't look right so I disable it. It just depends on the person and the game.


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## Veho (May 26, 2011)

I prefer pixel art, but it's nice to have this as an option too. And it does look better than those other algorhitms. 

Besides, research in this field will one day give us CSI-style image enhancing, so don't knock it yet  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	






Spoiler



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk[/youtube] 
See that pixel over there? Enhance it.


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## YayMii (May 27, 2011)

BTW, the document mentions that they're not trying to kill pixel art. In fact, they enjoy pixel art, and did this for a challenge. The document says they just wanted the most accurate algorithm in attempt to retain _some_ of the charm of the pixelated original, while making it suitable for vector graphics.


			
				Pingouin7 said:
			
		

> Spoiler
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Nope.avi
If you haven't noticed, the OP had a link to a document with comparisons to other filters on it. Any of the current filters don't match up to this, so your post/EarthBound screenshot is invalid.

Here's a comparison I made, including the new method:


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## Snailface (May 27, 2011)

Is the group that created this algorithm trying to license it or is it free to the public? If they're licensing, I can't imagine why Nintendo or other companies haven't purchased it yet.


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## Rydian (May 27, 2011)

It might not be fast enough for realtime on machines that are generally limited to (emulation of) pixel art...


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## YayMii (May 27, 2011)

FYI, the document also covered that the algorithm doesn't work for everything. They included one example of where it fails.


Spoiler: ugly vectorization of face from Doom











Note that this doesn't mean it fails a lot. They put a note saying this only happens on antialiased images.

@Rydian: What about the video examples?


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## Fishaman P (May 27, 2011)

WOW.

Here's hoping we get a batch converter that we can use to generate tons of N64 hi-res texture packs!


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## Rydian (May 27, 2011)

YayMii said:
			
		

> @Rydian: What about the video examples?


Pretty sure those weren't done on a DS.


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## YayMii (May 27, 2011)

Rydian said:
			
		

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But aren't we talking about emulation in general? Wouldn't it benefit for emulation on home consoles, PCs, homebrew devices (i.e. Dingoo) or the 3DS?


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## notmeanymore (May 27, 2011)

Man, I wanna see Sonic 2 done like this.


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## Rydian (May 27, 2011)

YayMii said:
			
		

> But aren't we talking about emulation in general? Wouldn't it benefit for emulation on home consoles, PCs, homebrew devices (i.e. Dingoo) or the 3DS?


Depends on the system doing the emulating and what it's emulating.  It's gotta' apply a filter ~30 times a second on top of the emulation, remember.


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## whoomph (May 27, 2011)

TehSkull said:
			
		

> Man, I wanna see Sonic 2 done like this.


Sonic 2 HD?


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## notmeanymore (May 27, 2011)

whoomph said:
			
		

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That's a redraw. I want to see what this algorithm would do.


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## cosmiccow (Jun 20, 2011)

It is now hosted at Microsoft, so there shouldn't be a problem with availability/downtime anymore.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/peo...lart/index.html

There a lot of comparison pics with a dozen different upscaling algorithms (and video samples).


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