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Sonic Adventure PC High(er) Resolution Textures project

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by Sonikko, Dec 15, 2017.

  1. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    I recently posted this in the DC Mods conversion thread, since I'm using the DC textures for this project, but I think it deserves its own topic (in case people want to contribute, having this topic would make it much easier to keep track of things).
    I'm currently working in remaking some of the textures in SADX (DC mods), mostly the signs and posters, so I'm not planning on touching up the stage textures since it would be an insane workload.
    My aim is to flesh out the details while remaining as accurate as possible to the original textures, not make an HD remake.

    Here are some of the textures I've worked on so far (some are missing, I'll post more comparison pictures in the future and all of them are still subject to change):

    https://imgur.com/a/Ya833

    As you can see, some textures are not 100% accurate, as I haven't been able to find some of the original artwork, or retrace them myself 'cause I'm not very good at drawing. If anyone wants to help with that, it'd be more than appreciated.
    Every text I've worked on has been carefully interpeted from the original textures, I've fixed some cases of Engrish translations.
    If anyone wants to chime in, give feedback, help out, I would appreciate it a lot.

    Credits to Speeps for the texts on the NiGHTS Texture, the Casino Polis map, and basically the whole Speed Highway background (I did some quick upscaling work on the sky for that).
    Credits to Lange, Tpot and Mr. Potatobadger for helping me find out what the hell was written on the second line of the NiGHTS poster.

    EDIT:
    Link to the repository: https://github.com/Sonikko/SADX_Hi-res_Textures
     
  2. CornflakeRush

    CornflakeRush

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    Wow, this is looking pretty great so far!

    What are you using to import/export the textures? PVMEdit?
     
  3. E-122-Psi

    E-122-Psi

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    Looking good so far. SA's pixelated textures were always an off put.

    I take it the Casinopolis map is missing text because the pixelation makes it hard to translate. May be better to just invent your own labels than leave blanks.

    I've tried for ages to make good sky upscales, they were pretty mediocre, so kudos if you get them done.
     
  4. DarkVDee

    DarkVDee

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    It's nice seeing clean texture stuf. Keep going man.
     
  5. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

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    You should get some sort of repository set up so people can see what needs contributing. I'd certainly pitch in now and then during my downtime at work if there was a place to check out all the textures online and see which ones still need remaking. If enough people got on it maybe we could even get the stage textures done eventually, it'd certainly be worthwhile with all the other great mods coming out these days.
     
  6. CornflakeRush

    CornflakeRush

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    Seconding this, would love to help out tossing in an HD texture here and there!
     
  7. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    PVMEditSharp from SATools!

    The text is missing for that exact reason, but I managed to fill out another line. I'm still trying to understand what was originally written on the texture, if I ultimately fail to do it, then I'll think of something else.
    If somebody wants to take a shot at it...
    [​IMG]

    A repository is a great idea, I'll set one up later.

    And thank you all for your support! Once I create the repository I'll upload every texture I've worked on so far with comparisons and ingame pictures, I've got quite a bit of Casinopolis taken care of!
     
  8. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    Pro tip for anyone doing any kind of custom textures for SADX: DO NOT put your custom textures into PVM files, there will be a quality loss, because the PVR texture format only supports 16 bits per pixel (RGB565, ARGB1555, ARGB4444) while your source images are 24bpp (RGB888) or 32bpp (ARGB8888).

    The first thing you should do when making custom textures is to open PVMEditSharp and export the textures to a texture pack, which should be placed to a "Textures" subfolder of your mod's folder. Then you can edit all the textures as PNG images, with no quality loss. When you're done, you may want to use the pvmx tool to convert the texture packs to PVMX archives, which load faster, and delete the texture pack folders.
     
  9. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    Thanks for the tip, I did have some issues with color compression.

    https://github.com/Sonikko/SADX_Hi-res_Textures/issues
    Here's the repository for anyone interested, as I already said nothing is 100% done and everything is subject to change.
    I'm not sure I organized it well enough.

    EDIT:
    [​IMG]
    Does anybody have any idea where this is in Red Mountain?
    I can't find any place in the stage that looks similar, is it a prototype layout?
     
  10. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    Doing some tests for the skyboxes, how does this look? I'm looking for feedback.
    [​IMG]

    Full album at:
    https://imgur.com/a/XV6iS
     
  11. I'm impressed. It looks amazing!!
     
  12. This looks promising. If you're concerned about fidelity to the original textures, you could try running them through waifu2x, a although it probably wouldn't look as crisp and it'd make the text look like ass.
     
  13. BlazeHedgehog

    BlazeHedgehog

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    Waifu2x uses neural networking to basically redraw the image at a higher resolution using artificial intelligence, but it's specifically tuned to manga/anime/cartoon cel artwork. Giving it anything more detailed than that usually results in mediocre results. It's not magic.

    Edit: Here's a good example. I fed this Windy Valley texture through Waifu2x

    2x Nearest Neighbor Scaling
    [​IMG]

    Waifu2x
    [​IMG]

    You can see that when it comes to the sandstone-like texture, Waifu2x doesn't really know what to do and kind of turns it in to almost a weird sort of cross-hatching? I dunno about that. I mean, for textures like that we're never going to have high-res versions of the source material, but just using a scaling filter rubs me the wrong way.
     
  14. waifu2x has an upscaling option that works better for photos and more detailed artwork. Here's what that same texture looks like under those settings (Denoise and Magnify, denoise level 0 using the downloadable Caffe version):

    [​IMG]

    Still not optimal, obviously, but it's a bit better-looking than the anime-style upscaler. I'm not suggesting you should rely on this for every texture, of course (it still doesn't look as sharp and it can't unblur text very well), but even if it doesn't put out something usable, it could still give you an idea as to where the graphic artists were going.
     
  15. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    I know about Waifu2x and I'm not using that upscaling technique.
    I am using an Nvidia tool (Superres), which works similarly, but it's tailored towards textures and detailed pictures (mind you, just for the skyboxes, I am recreating the rest from scratch).
    It has two upscaling mode, normal and photorealistic hallucination.
    Results with the normal mode are very similar to the upscale thatguywiththeface posted above, what the photorealistic hallucination mode does is adding some smart noise to the picture to fake detail.
    It works very well in some cases, it's an unfixable mess in others. The Mystic Ruins skyboxes I posted earlier are upscaled with the latter method and the results were great, imo.
    Normal 2x upscale:
    [​IMG]
    Photorealistic hallucination 2x upscale:
    [​IMG]
    With a little bit of editing this texture would be ok.
    As you can see the Normal upscale looks similar to waifu2x, it's a little bit less blurry and it keeps more detail, but it's not a huge breakthrough from that kind of upscale.
    That said, I don't think I'm gonna upscale or remake every texture in the game, as I already said, results are mixed, and at the very best we'd have an inconsistent looking "remaster" which, honestly, would be worse than it being slightly blurry.
    Posters, roadsigns, texts, stuff like that is worth replacing, some of the blurriest textures too, but Windy Valley looks ok as it is already.
    I guess we'll see, it depends on you guys. If you think it's worth upscaling all the textures, I can do that.
    I can upscale one stage, upload the mod and let you see for yourself if it's worth it.

    On this note, I've been experimenting with the skyboxes in the last few days, and the Station Square's one is desperately in need of an upscale.
    This brought be to a big issue, the SS skybox is crippled by colour compression, which makes every kind of upscale look either very bad, if you decide to keep the details, or very blurry if you decide to blend in the colours.
    This brought me to recreate it from scratch, but it would be impossible for me to make it accurate.

    Original texture:
    [​IMG]
    2x Normal upscale (with some smart blur to blend in the colours):
    [​IMG]
    2x photorealistic hallucination upscale:
    [​IMG]
    2x Normal upscale (with perfect colour blending) with photorealistic upsacale as a highpass+hard light layer to give more definition:
    https://i.imgur.com/7GHBaIk.png
    Recreated from scratch (still highly unfinished, I could probably make it more similar to the original texture, gotta look for more clouds pictures on Google):
    [​IMG]

    I am considering making these completely new skyboxes optional, so if people are after accuracy they can still have it.
    What do you think? What would you want?
     
  16. E-122-Psi

    E-122-Psi

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    I tried making a skybox edit earlier this year (so far the only SADX mod I made) if it's any help:

    [​IMG]

    It's just a handful of levels and they aren't great quality but if they could help as resources in any way I can reupload (since the link is now broken).

    Truthfully I think being stretched onto a basic jagged polygon 'sky' shape doesn't help (no matter how many times I tried editing Emerald Coast's it still looked like you were trapped inside a painted box). If anyone's got the resources to 3D model and test new smoother shapes to refine that it could make a world of difference.
     
  17. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    That's exactly how the 2x normal mode upscale looks ingame, it's too blurry and, as you said, it looks like an oil painting which is far from what it was originally intended to look like.
    PS: I remember your skyboxes edits, Emerald Coast looked as nice as it possibly could.
    The issue is that with all that colour banding, it's impossible to upscale them and keep them not blurry without rerendering them. And the skyboxes geometry itself as you said is not ideal.

    I think Casinopolis is ready for an early release, it's not finished yet, but it's just to show you guys what it looks like when all the tiny details are brought to life.
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=11IR2CMXO7DLLv3xgRIfd7_0Cs1nB4x8_
    Use with the DC Mods (obviously) and load it AFTER them (or else it won't work).
    Explore the Knuckles stage, get to the top too to see the monitors!
    Can't wait for feedback!

    EDIT:
    So I made a new texture from scratch for the SS skybox that looks pretty close to the original one:
    [​IMG]
    Original 2x upscale:
    [​IMG]
    Ingame screenshot
    [​IMG]

    Maybe I can tweak it to look a bit better, but would you guys like stuff like that? Would it be ok if I remade some from scratch? Even if it's not 100% accurate?
    I could make these ones optional if you want accuracy.
     
  18. Mr. Fox

    Mr. Fox

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    Definitely from scratch. I'd even encourage you to do as many textures as possible from ground up. Otherwise your work will be technically an upscale and it will be Sonic 2 HD phase 1 all over again.
     
  19. From scratch. It's not as though people will really notice or care if a 16x16 pixel chunk of cloud is in a slightly different position from vanilla. So long as the graphic artists' intent makes it through, there shouldn't be an issue.
     
  20. Sonikko

    Sonikko

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    That's how I feel too. I think that as long as the recreations are still faithful to the original concept, rather than being 100% pixel accurate to the original art, it should be ok.
    Still asking for feedback, though, as I want to know how people feel about it!

    EDIT: By the way, did anybody try the Casinopolis release? How does it look?