Which AI tool should I use ?

[Ridvan67]

Hello friends im new to this scene and I'm very facinatied about the whole HD texture packs and enjoyed them for some of my favorite games now i wanted to make my own Texture pack.
The first game i wanted to begin is 50 cent Bulletproof I thin with the 60 fps patch this game could look awesome. I never done something liek this i read something about Topaz AI and ChatGPT recommend ESRGAN but i was a litte bit confused by the differetn models. I hope you could give me some tipps wherer to start. And I already dumped the textures from the entire first mission.

 

[SomberShroud]

Wrote a pretty extensive guide here: https://sites.google.com/view/pcsx2-hd-textures-project/tutorial
If you have any questions afterwards feel free to ask in this thread.
Topaz AI is the best overall but requires more effort to get better results, 4xHDcube4 (the older version is free) is the best model for upscaling video games in general (particularly cartoonish games) but a mix of different upscale models is better than just relying on one. If you had to only use one model then I'd use 4xHDcube4.
Generic ESRGAN models tend to not be optimized for very low resolution images and HUD like the ones found in many PS2 titles and also don't add any detail to take advantage of the higher resolution, It only makes it blurry. 4xHDcube does add detail in the pixels since it was optimized for video games.
It all depends on how much time you are willing to spend on upscaling a pack. By the way the version of the emulator matters for dumping.
if you only want to focus on dumping games, I offer my upscale service here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/pcsx2-hd-texture-upscale-service-free.642547/

 

[Ridvan67]

Thank you for the fast replay I will check up your tutorial tonight

 

[KevinMI]

Thank you for the fast replay I will check up your tutorial tonight

My recommendation is chaiNNer with 4xHDCube4 Plus and 4x-AnimeSharp as the best options for most of the textures of ps2 games, i tried different models and these are the ones that gave me the best results, also i recommend you to learn how to use GIMP if you want your textures to look the best they can, because there will be always AI errors in some textures

This is a easy to follow workflow to upscale one image, you can use any model other than 4xHDCube4, since it has its own workflow already made if you purchase the $3 dollar version



The only two things you will maybe want to change are the "Custom Scale", since with a 4x default upscale it may not be enough with some textures, and the "Image Format", if you want to be able to see and edit the images easily always use PNG format, you only want to use DDS format once the texture looks how you wanted to look, for that i will also recommend to create another workflow/chain that only converts png to dds, for that you will need to delete the load model, upscale image, opacity and threshold nodes and that's it.

 

[Ridvan67]

My recommendation is chaiNNer with 4xHDCube4 Plus and 4x-AnimeSharp as the best options for most of the textures of ps2 games, i tried different models and these are the ones that gave me the best results, also i recommend you to learn how to use GIMP if you want your textures to look the best they can, because there will be always AI errors in some textures

This is a easy to follow workflow to upscale one image, you can use any model other than 4xHDCube4, since it has its own workflow already made if you purchase the $3 dollar version

View attachment 534198

The only two things you will maybe want to change are the "Custom Scale", since with a 4x default upscale it may not be enough with some textures, and the "Image Format", if you want to be able to see and edit the images easily always use PNG format, you only want to use DDS format once the texture looks how you wanted to look, for that i will also recommend to create another workflow/chain that only converts png to dds, for that you will need to delete the load model, upscale image, opacity and threshold nodes and that's it.

I appreciate the reply i will chekc your ideas up later on i just realised my dumps are bad dumps 30-100 kb textures i need to figure out what happend wrong and than i can give it a try.

Post automatically merged: Oct 19, 2025

Wrote a pretty extensive guide here: https://sites.google.com/view/pcsx2-hd-textures-project/tutorial
If you have any questions afterwards feel free to ask in this thread.
Topaz AI is the best overall but requires more effort to get better results, 4xHDcube4 (the older version is free) is the best model for upscaling video games in general (particularly cartoonish games) but a mix of different upscale models is better than just relying on one. If you had to only use one model then I'd use 4xHDcube4.
Generic ESRGAN models tend to not be optimized for very low resolution images and HUD like the ones found in many PS2 titles and also don't add any detail to take advantage of the higher resolution, It only makes it blurry. 4xHDcube does add detail in the pixels since it was optimized for video games.
It all depends on how much time you are willing to spend on upscaling a pack. By the way the version of the emulator matters for dumping.
if you only want to focus on dumping games, I offer my upscale service here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/pcsx2-hd-texture-upscale-service-free.642547/

Hey @SomberShroud,
first of all, thanks a lot for the detailed tutorial you posted about proper texture dumping in PCSX2.
I followed your guide step by step — especially the part about how to identify a “bad dump” by checking file counts, sizes, and hyphen patterns — and I think I’ve run into exactly that situation.


Here’s what happened:

• I’ve been trying to dump textures for 50 Cent: Bulletproof.
• I enabled texture dumping per game as you recommended (not globally).
• I then played for about 5 minutes, closed the emulator, and checked the dump folder.
• I repeated this entire process three times (deleting the dump folder each time).
• Every time, I ended up with hundreds of very small PNG files — most below 100 KB, often 32×32 or 64×64 in size — appearing within the first few minutes.
• The folder keeps growing very quickly, exactly like in your “bad dump” description.

To make sure my setup wasn’t the problem, I tried the same procedure with God of War 1.
That dump behaved perfectly — after 3–4 minutes of gameplay, I only had about 165 textures, many of them above 100 KB (character models of Kratos and enemies).


So I think my PCSX2 configuration is fine, and 50 Cent: Bulletproof itself might be one of those dynamic-texture games that constantly stream textures per frame, which would explain the massive amount of small dumps.


My question for you is:
How do you usually deal with dynamic-texture games like this?
Is there any method or workflow to still dump them properly (e.g., limiting dumping to certain scenes, using a tool, or post-filtering duplicates)?
Or are these types of games basically not suitable for HD texture pack creation?


Thanks in advance for your time and expertise — your tutorial really helped me understand the process much better!

 

[KevinMI]

I appreciate the reply i will chekc your ideas up later on i just realised my dumps are bad dumps 30-100 kb textures i need to figure out what happend wrong and than i can give it a try.

Post automatically merged: Oct 19, 2025

Hey @SomberShroud,
first of all, thanks a lot for the detailed tutorial you posted about proper texture dumping in PCSX2.
I followed your guide step by step — especially the part about how to identify a “bad dump” by checking file counts, sizes, and hyphen patterns — and I think I’ve run into exactly that situation.


Here’s what happened:

• I’ve been trying to dump textures for 50 Cent: Bulletproof.
• I enabled texture dumping per game as you recommended (not globally).
• I then played for about 5 minutes, closed the emulator, and checked the dump folder.
• I repeated this entire process three times (deleting the dump folder each time).
• Every time, I ended up with hundreds of very small PNG files — most below 100 KB, often 32×32 or 64×64 in size — appearing within the first few minutes.
• The folder keeps growing very quickly, exactly like in your “bad dump” description.

To make sure my setup wasn’t the problem, I tried the same procedure with God of War 1.
That dump behaved perfectly — after 3–4 minutes of gameplay, I only had about 165 textures, many of them above 100 KB (character models of Kratos and enemies).


So I think my PCSX2 configuration is fine, and 50 Cent: Bulletproof itself might be one of those dynamic-texture games that constantly stream textures per frame, which would explain the massive amount of small dumps.


My question for you is:
How do you usually deal with dynamic-texture games like this?
Is there any method or workflow to still dump them properly (e.g., limiting dumping to certain scenes, using a tool, or post-filtering duplicates)?
Or are these types of games basically not suitable for HD texture pack creation?


Thanks in advance for your time and expertise — your tutorial really helped me understand the process much better!

You can use TEODOR_MAX's Image Cleaner Tool to clean the bad dumps automatically by entering the hashes on the program, Link: Here

I tried dumping the game you were talking about and it seems that is pretty doable to do an HD pack, the only bad dumps i found are the ones with this hash "e4de42f472fc7791", i tried with the NTSC-U version, idk if you were using another version that gave you more problems than mine's

 

[Ridvan67]

So I tried upscaling my first texture.
I decided to stick with God of War to get used to the workflow and learn the entire process correctly first.
However, for some reason my texture doesn’t load correctly, or the upscaling process itself went wrong.
I upscaled an enemy texture, but in-game it only appears as a green hollow shape.


I’ve attached the original dump, the upscaled PNG, and my Chainer settings.
I’m using the $3 version of HDcube.

 

[kupo-on-gbatem]

Your upscale has different colors than the source texture. Looks like the source texture has indexed colors. You could try to convert your texture dump to 32 bit before you upscale it. I don't own this game so I can't test it myself, but it's worth a try.

Also don't resize your texture to 200% before you upscale it. It makes the quality worse. If you aim to upscale your texture by x8 better upscale it to x4 first, then downsize it by 50% and upscale it again by x4. Image quality will be much better this way.

 

[KevinMI]

So I tried upscaling my first texture.
I decided to stick with God of War to get used to the workflow and learn the entire process correctly first.
However, for some reason my texture doesn’t load correctly, or the upscaling process itself went wrong.
I upscaled an enemy texture, but in-game it only appears as a green hollow shape.


I’ve attached the original dump, the upscaled PNG, and my Chainer settings.
I’m using the $3 version of HDcube.

Your workflow its missing a lot of things, try the chain/template already made by 4xHDCube4 wich has this name "4xHDcube Plus Image (PS2).chn", just open that archive on chainner, it should look just like this

 

[Ridvan67]

Your workflow its missing a lot of things, try the chain/template already made by 4xHDCube4 wich has this name "4xHDcube Plus Image (PS2).chn", just open that archive on chainner, it should look just like this

View attachment 534673

I Will try the template out the coming days

 

[MaximoCapcom]

Hola amigos, soy nuevo en esta escena y estoy muy fascinado con todos los paquetes de texturas HD y los disfruté para algunos de mis juegos favoritos. Ahora quería hacer mi propio paquete de texturas.
El primer juego que quería empezar es Bulletproof de 50 centavos. Creo que con el parche de 60 FPS se vería genial. Nunca había hecho algo así. Leí algo sobre la IA de Topaz y ChatGPT recomienda ESRGAN, pero me confundieron un poco los diferentes modelos. Espero que me den algunos consejos sobre por dónde empezar. Ya descarté las texturas de toda la primera misión.

Hi, I remastered Maximo vs Army of Zin simply by using ChatGPT, but obviously paying for the Plus version and then editing the textures, since sometimes the AI gives you extra details that you don't want. I think ChatGPT is the one that best respects the original texture design, but of course you have to give it the right prompts.

 

[Ridvan67]

Hi, I remastered Maximo vs Army of Zin simply by using ChatGPT, but obviously paying for the Plus version and then editing the textures, since sometimes the AI gives you extra details that you don't want. I think ChatGPT is the one that best respects the original texture design, but of course you have to give it the right prompts.

Hi Maximo I also have the plus version on ChatGPT what prompt did you use for upscaling the textures ?

 

[MaximoCapcom]

Hi Maximo I also have the plus version on ChatGPT what prompt did you use for upscaling the textures ?

With environment textures, I usually ask ChatGPT to remaster the texture in a realistic style. Without changing the image format. With item or character textures, I usually ask it to simply increase the texture quality without changing the design. This makes ChatGPT respect the original texture without changing it too much. I also ask it to make the same texture in a realistic style. That way, when I edit it, I can combine the two images I asked for. I usually do this to make a character's clothing look much better, and I use the other texture that I asked to have its quality increased to capture parts of the character's body, such as faces and hands. One important thing: when you ask for a texture to be in a realistic style, tell ChatGPT not to add wear and tear details to the texture. Because sometimes ChatGPT adds those details for no reason. I hope I have explained myself well.

 

[Ridvan67]

With environment textures, I usually ask ChatGPT to remaster the texture in a realistic style. Without changing the image format. With item or character textures, I usually ask it to simply increase the texture quality without changing the design. This makes ChatGPT respect the original texture without changing it too much. I also ask it to make the same texture in a realistic style. That way, when I edit it, I can combine the two images I asked for. I usually do this to make a character's clothing look much better, and I use the other texture that I asked to have its quality increased to capture parts of the character's body, such as faces and hands. One important thing: when you ask for a texture to be in a realistic style, tell ChatGPT not to add wear and tear details to the texture. Because sometimes ChatGPT adds those details for no reason. I hope I have explained myself well.

I Appreciate the detailed answer i will also check this up at the weekend

 

[MaximoCapcom]

I Appreciate the detailed answer i will also check this up at the weekend

Oh btw. ChatGPT does not support images in 16:9 or similar formats. So if you are going to use a texture in that format, I recommend editing it to 4:3 format before remaster it. This is because ChatGPT sometimes crops the texture.

 

[Ridvan67]

Oh btw. ChatGPT does not support images in 16:9 or similar formats. So if you are going to use a texture in that format, I recommend editing it to 4:3 format before remaster it. This is because ChatGPT sometimes crops the texture.

I will keep that in mind thx

 

[The Real Jdbye]

My recommendation is chaiNNer with 4xHDCube4 Plus and 4x-AnimeSharp as the best options for most of the textures of ps2 games, i tried different models and these are the ones that gave me the best results, also i recommend you to learn how to use GIMP if you want your textures to look the best they can, because there will be always AI errors in some textures

This is a easy to follow workflow to upscale one image, you can use any model other than 4xHDCube4, since it has its own workflow already made if you purchase the $3 dollar version

View attachment 534198

The only two things you will maybe want to change are the "Custom Scale", since with a 4x default upscale it may not be enough with some textures, and the "Image Format", if you want to be able to see and edit the images easily always use PNG format, you only want to use DDS format once the texture looks how you wanted to look, for that i will also recommend to create another workflow/chain that only converts png to dds, for that you will need to delete the load model, upscale image, opacity and threshold nodes and that's it.

Why gimp though? Why not Photoshop? Or Krita?

 

[KevinMI]

Why gimp though? Why not Photoshop? Or Krita?

Since is free unlike Photoshop, Krita is a good option too, aswell as Photopea, i recommended GIMP because is the one i use too, i know Photoshop is the best one but idk if the guy who did the thread is willing to pay $23 USD monthly just to edit some textures

 

[MaximoCapcom]

Since is free unlike Photoshop, Krita is a good option too, aswell as Photopea, i recommended GIMP because is the one i use too, i know Photoshop is the best one but idk if the guy who did the thread is willing to pay $23 USD monthly just to edit some textures

I use PicsArt to edit the textures

 

[Ridvan67]

Your workflow its missing a lot of things, try the chain/template already made by 4xHDCube4 wich has this name "4xHDcube Plus Image (PS2).chn", just open that archive on chainner, it should look just like this

View attachment 534673

Hi Kevin i have a little problem after opening the template you mentioned i get this errors any idea what could be the reason for that ?

EDIT: Nevermind I solved the problem