JK2/JA Neural Upscaling

[Lancelot]

First of all, I want to say that anyone who attempts neural upscaling can post their results here as well!

 

Several months ago, I was experimenting with Gigapixel A.I. to see how the cutscenes would look like if they were

upscaled. I was just working with single images of certain cutscenes from both Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast, just to get an impression of the results.

From the original 512x512 resolution, I managed to upscale them to a whopping 3072x3072.

 

Like I said, I did these images months ago, so it is possible that, after some updates, the quality could be a lot better.

 

Original

 

 

 

 

Upscaled

 

 

 

 

Original

 

 

 

 

Upscaled

 

 

 

 

Original

 

 

 

 

Upscaled

 

 

 

 

Original

 

 

 

 

Upscaled

 

 

 

 

Original

 

 

 

 

Upscaled

 

 

 

 

Original

 

 

 

 

Upscaled

 

 

 

 

I also planned to upscale and replace most of the game texures, but Jedi Academy crashed when I tried to test it.

 

EDIT: @@Newmodder and @@Ivanael, if you have anything to contribute to this topic, feel free to do so. The screenshots above is all I have, and it interests me what you have to offer.

[Ramikad]

I also planned to upscale and replace most of the game texures, but Jedi Academy crashed when I tried to test it.

 

As RAILBACK pointed out in your status update, make sure they're multiple of 2 - in this case, 2048x2048 or 4096x4096 instead than the 3072x3072 you scaled them up to. Also make sure that .jpg textures aren't saved as Progressive, and .png textures aren't saved as Interlaced; not sure about .tga files, but from what I remember they also had specific export settings that would make Jedi Academy crash. If everything is set up fine, it should work even with large textures: not sure if the max limit was 4096x4096 or 8192x8192 in base Jedi Academy, but from what I just checked (in theory) the max texture size in OpenJK (GL_MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE) is 16384.

 

Anyway those are interesting results with the cutscenes, I'll admit.

[Lancelot]

@@Ramikad

Unfortunately, I have all enhanced textures deleted. The upscaled images of the cutscenes are the only thing I have backups of.

But at least I know that this is an issue that can be fixed.

[Ivanael]

I think I now know what may have caused the textures to crash in your case, I remember now having had a few issues getting them to work myself. Asides from what Ramikad mentioned and making sure the textures' resolution are a multiple of 2, .pk3 which are too large cause the game to crash, which is why they have to be split into several smaller .pk3 sometimes.

 

I have made a complete pack containing all the JKA textures upscaled by 4, and they look much sharper and cleaner for the most part, but some of them are blacked out for some reason (not many just like 3-4, but they look very jarring), so I didn't intend to upload them until I got that fixed, but I can upload the unfixed pack on Dropbox if you are interested in taking a look. However, I included some of the textures from Mr.Zz's Texture Overhaul as I find them to be better than the original, so I might need his permission to share it, I am not sure, I'm still kind of new here. But around 90% are the original textures which were upscaled by me.

 

I decided not to upscale them any higher than x4 to avoid them dropping the framerate as they could do so on older machines, and they also increase the loading times, sometimes considerably in cases of large maps such as Vjun.

[GPChannel]

Hi Lancelot
You said you want to rescale jk2 textures too?
Possible to join us in JKII: Remastered project? 

[Lancelot]

Hi Lancelot

You said you want to rescale jk2 textures too?

Possible to join us in JKII: Remastered project? 

Oh, I wish I could. The problem here is: As my trial version of Gigapixel AI has expired, I can't use it right now, except if I spend $99 to buy the full version. Furthermore, most textures, if not all, were accidently wiped after I had to clean out my PC.

But if there is anything else you may need for the mod, and if it fits my skills, I would gladly take part in the project in some way.

[Droidy365]

I may or may not have used a few alternate email accounts to renew my free 30 day trials

[Ivanael]

@@GPChannel, I was planning to upscale the JKII textures sometimes soon aswell, I'll notify you when it is done. Shouldn't take very long, a few days tops, since many of them are used in JKA aswell and are already done.

[Newmodder]

Well i did upscale some cutscenes from dark forces 2 but...

 

It's not really that much different from the original. It's a bigger resolution size but still as pixelated :/ 

[Newmodder]

Sorry for the double post but does anybody have a character texture (original and upscaled)?

[Lancelot]

Another attempt at neural upscaling. This time, it's a full video! I used the LucasArts logo from Jedi Outcast.

LucasArts Logo (HD)

Question: Is it possible to modify the game so it can support videos at a higher resolution?

[Circa]

That looks really good, wow. As far as supporting a higher resolution, I'm sure it's possible through the code. I assume you tried it already and it didn't work?

[Lancelot]

58 minutes ago, Circa said:

That looks really good, wow. As far as supporting a higher resolution, I'm sure it's possible through the code. I assume you tried it already and it didn't work?

I haven't tried it yet, because of the complicity of converting something properly for the game. I just wanted to try the software's capabilities (Topaz Video Enhance AI). But if there's a way to actually get higher resolution videos working, maybe I could get more serious about this project.

Here's another attempt. It was supposed to be in 4K, but it was reduced to HD. Still, compared to the original resolution, it turned out impressive.

Jedi Academy - Cutscene #1 (HD, 60fps)

[Circa]

4K would be overkill anyway. Looks pretty good, though there's definitely a lot of artifacting going on. I also find it odd that the Yavin red planet is squished, but the rest of the video seems normal. Was it always like that?

[Lancelot]

@Circa

It has always looked that way in the original video. Apart from the enhancement, nothing was changed there. Yes, 4K would be way too much, but it's just for testing purposes.

Also, here's something interesting: In both games, the cutscenes have a rather bad quality. They not only have artifacts, but also black bars. However, the cutscenes of the Gamecube version of Jedi Outcast is actually superior to the PC version! They have no black bars at all and the picture is much clearer. I was able to extract those files with the file explorer of the Dolphin Emulator (for that, I made a backup of my own legal copy of that version), and I used some of them for the upscaling process. Which leads us to the next video:

Jedi Outcast - Cutscene #2 (HD, 60fps)

[Circa]

Wow. That's tons better looking. I'm shocked it looks better, since I assume they probably compressed all the other assets more to fit on a disc.

[Odeyseis]

I've been experimenting too with the Gigapixel programs by upscaling them to 2x and I was able to implement some textures of skins and models ingame. To be honest, there IS difference and looks better.

I also found in another website that someone upscaled most of JKA textures x4 (up to 4k of resolution). For me it is an overkill if you are not playing on a 4k TV to notice the difference and the loading times (which it was pointed out by the creator of the mod) is too much if you are not going to be able to play it in 4k.

So, I have my personal project to upscale all the playermodels files from base JKA and from other singlepayers mods and play through them when I finish upscaling all of them.

[Circa]

Depends on the textures that are being upscaled. Most textures in JK2 and JKA are tiny, but simply just doubling them would be enough even when playing at 4K resolution. It's the ones that show on large surface areas like the ground and walls and skyboxes that would probably need to go up to 4x. And any menu background as well.

[minilogoguy18]

I just stumbled upon this thread

@Lancelot Release these cutscenes lol.

If you're up to it take a crack at the ones from Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. @Bucky upscaled some but you may be using software that's different, your result is a bit cleaner.

[Lancelot]

4 hours ago, minilogoguy18 said:

I just stumbled upon this thread

@Lancelot Release these cutscenes lol.

If you're up to it take a crack at the ones from Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. @Bucky upscaled some but you may be using software that's different, your result is a bit cleaner.

I actually did enhance some Dark Forces 2 cutscenes, but I wasn't satisfied with them. Even after enhancement, they were too pixelated. Another problem was that, depending on the length of the cutscene and the quality settings, the process would take many hours. The cutscenes from Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast were more convenient, as the source material had a decent quality (which needed little adjustments) and the results were better.

The software I used was Topaz Video Enhance AI.

[minilogoguy18]

Well then maybe I'll try it myself, maybe my 16 core system will crunch through it a little faster.

[Lancelot]

1 hour ago, minilogoguy18 said:

Well then maybe I'll try it myself, maybe my 16 core system will crunch through it a little faster.

I hope so. You can post your results here if you like.

[Gunslap]

I was just trying to do this myself (for Jedi Outcast specifically). I used Topaz AI Gigapixel to increase the resolution of all the textures on the first single player map, Kejim Outpost.
2x original resolution worked perfect. However, 4x resolution causes the game to crash. HOWEVER it works fine if I compile the OpenJK version of JK2 and run that.

The biggest textures x4'ed ended up being 4096x4096 so I tried halving those ones again just in case that was too big - but it didn't help. I also made sure they were saved in the baseline jpg format.

The 4x textures look really nice! I just wish I could figure out why they seem to crash the game...

(I have the ultimate weapons mod on in the 2x shot, but removing all other mods didn't seem to make a difference either)

[Maulclaw]

A part of me is hopeful that becomes a full-blown thing. Being able to watch the pre-rendered cutscenes in a much higher quality would be awesome!

[Lancelot]

Not related to either Jedi Academy or Jedi Outcast, but I wanted to post it here:

Took me significantly longer than the previous videos, but I'm still happy with the result.