Methods for Upscaling

[asc53087]

I was just curious as to what everyone's preferred methods for upscaling textures were. Personally, I like to use ESRGAN and try to use different models depending on the art style of the game involved. I'm not really good with hand painting or redrawing textures, so batch upscaling is really the only way for me to do anything with it, though I do try my best to find a model that works the best for the particular game I'm working on.

 

[JuanchoTexHD]

I was just curious as to what everyone's preferred methods for upscaling textures were. Personally, I like to use ESRGAN and try to use different models depending on the art style of the game involved. I'm not really good with hand painting or redrawing textures, so batch upscaling is really the only way for me to do anything with it, though I do try my best to find a model that works the best for the particular game I'm working on.

I reccomend RealESRGAN with the better fit model depending the game (convert with various models and look in paint.net at same time to see best result) for the big textures 1024 gives pixelated borders, 2048 is the optimal size. After that you can take 2 ways: leave as is or improve it, from the color things to the definition/detail thing, that part is experimentation, but beware of purists and softer lovers, they hate the detail in ancient games and you need to explain the difference between detail and brute sharpness...

 

[FAST6191]

I tend not to get involved in upscaling but if I do then I go manual as I often enough have to convert old images to vector and this is a minor variation on that. Not to mention for all my lack of skill as an general artist (I draw like an engineer) I can do textures surprisingly well it seems and replicate things. AI stuff is a fascinating field to look at but its practical application is rather limited and prefer it to lose data (see seam carving) than generate new, unless some of the outright abstract stuff that generation methods are doing these days.

If you can figure out the base source then artistic interpretation works well (sometimes blurry is itself a feature)
Choice two links at this point



Models. Press subsurf a few times and tweak corners if too silly rounding happened and go from there, or indeed look at later games from the same franchise or artist (or better yet if high res examples exist from promo art, alt console, PC release or something similar). If it is a real world item (legend has it a lot of metal gear solid guns were picked because they are block rather than what makes sense, though as most people you face are super sneaky types and mercenaries or deniable ops then you tend to have free reign so eh http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid ) then see about doing something there. You also have the option to go for something more realistic for the scenario where the original might not have happened because lawyers, and if it is a licensed game then you can also do things that lawyers, those without a time machine (maybe a film or TV show becomes the definitive version years later) or clueless programmers (for all of modern Hollywood's lack of appreciation for art and cluelessness then games have been doing it longer).