@antrad I'm planning my own approach of using GAN's and CNN's in up-scalling process, not sure when though. This requires an small research in dataset preparation, deconvolution patterns elimination techniques, recent publications and some extra processing powers.

There should be implementations available, which are utilizing OpenCL instead of CUDA, not sure if you encounter a problems with running out of GPU's memory or how long it would take to optimize new model/dataset parameters on a single card (2-12 hours perhaps).

@antrad You are right! I think that that texture does not look like rocks only: rather than a pure surface, I visualized roots, dirt, dead moss, etc. (like the image below).

Something similar like in the game Hunt: Showdown, where there are huge piles of dead organic material, such as the base of a tree long fallen, with all its roots exposed still clenching dry soil and little rocks (can't look for an example right now).

That would be a design choice only if we were to define how a satisfactory output should look like, but your example provides what should become marks on the rocks, and your video shows clear improvements which are almost magical (like putting on my glasses!).

I think that a good way to see how to improve this specific texture would be to take a look at its adjacent ones during gameplay, but to give you a better response, I should learn more about this technology.

The one with the yellow flowers is truly impressive!

Also, making that surface look like more than just rocks could change the game's visual languaje, which is intended to be bit cartoony, so that kind of upgrade could go against how the whole composition should look, which reminds me of games' concept art: the results in the video are so good that it looks as if the game became more "itself", as if it where turned into an even more "original" version, closer to concept art, rather than merely being upgraded.

So it would be interesting to see the result you are looking for and compare the scene where it is being applied, just like you did in the video.

I currently don't have time, but it would also be interesting if I modify with Photoshop this texture to make it look like what I think you want.

I'll see your blog's content in more detail after the exams; it looks very interesting! And I loved this title:

Fixing a GPU by baking it in an oven - It actually works !

@martin I am doing all this upscaling on my CPU, because I don't have a Nvidia GPU, so it is a very slow process. I do run out of memory if I try to upscale anything larger, I am limited to upscaling just 256x256 textures and smaller. Also I can not train my own models, even though I have some interesting ideas I would try to do. If you do end up doing some upscaling yourself, have a look at my topic about removing dithering and color banding, which should be applied BEFORE you do any actual upscaling.

http://wiredforwar.org/topic/172/removing-dithtering-and-color-banding-in-original-textures-and-artwork

@Pisarz The reason I think that part of texture should be just rock is because in The Finger Of God level it covers the mountain and cliffs, and that dark green "line" around is like a border between ground with vegetation and mountain rocks. As for retaining cartoony look, I think the machines and buildings are colorful, but not much cartoony, and terrain looks very realistic. The multiplyer desert map is probably the best looking map and you can see it looks very realistic, probably the most realistic it could look using technology from 1999. I mentioned some new textures are 1024x1024 in size, so I can not use them in the game, because original game has a 256x256 texture limit and Martin's version has a 512x512 limit.

@antrad Now I see. I thought it was for something like a hill only.

@antrad said:

I do run out of memory if I try to upscale anything larger, I am limited to upscaling just 256x256 textures and smaller.

You might want to have a look at Image Enhancing Utility (formerly "crop-unscale-merge").
It can split images into tiles, upscale them with ESRGAN, then merge them together into a single image.
With an appropriate tile size, it should be possible to upscale large images without running out of memory.

@M123 Thanks, but I saw that and in description it says "Split images into tiles before processing them with ESRGAN and merge them afterwards with as little visible seams as possible". That is not good enough, if someone else with a bit more RAM can make it perfect :)

@antrad The tiles are created with a configurable amount of overlap to help prevent artifacts around the edges. The overlapping areas are smoothly blended together - the differences between a single-piece and tiled upscale are unlikely to be noticed during gameplay.

I upscaled sand_b.bmp using the "Misc" model - once as a single piece, and once using 128x128 tiles, 32px overlap:

https://i.imgur.com/e9dYYU9.png

https://i.imgur.com/MRjyFfd.png

Another upscaling model or texture might produce a more visible difference in one-to-one comparisons, but hard seams don't appear to be an issue.

@M123 Well, that example looks perfect. Now if only it wouldn't take me 13-14 minutes to upscale one 512x512 texture :(

Allow me to be off topic once again and show you my finished Dungeon Siege texture project. It took more than 4 months and 3929 textures have been updated. The texture pack is 5.97 GB !