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[BETA] EE AI Denoised Areas


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Introduction

I've created a mod that tries to improve the visuals of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 areas.
For now, I've only done it for the Enhanced Edition versions.

The area images are AI upscaled x4 and then downscaled back to the original resolution.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to increase the in-game assets resolution yet. They way WED, TIS and PVRZ files are made is too complex for me. IE experts would have to create additional custom tools just for this, but I have no idea if it is feasible to do such a thing. I know some people are working on it, but we'll have to be patient.

Original vs Modded
9vfyy5ksrlc4.pngssxwtx0tymob.png

 

Progress of the mod

Some elements of the decor lose too much grain compared from what would be expected.
For example, notice the entrance floor mat on the previous image. I will edit this defect to make it look like a carpet again.
Please feel free to point out these defects as soon as you see them.

I managed, thanks to @argent77, to drastically reduce the problems encountered because of the way the images of the game areas are cut.
However, there are still some issues with visible lines and tiles for all the areas containing for example opening doors or water surfaces. To correct them, I will need some time so if you want to play with this mod 100% finished, you will have to be patient.

Example of the issue I just mentioned that still needs to be fixed:

image.jpeg.0b1bc4217fa2479664b86d6473dd95f4.jpeg

BGEE 279/329 areas 100% done. 50 remaining areas with small "animations" to fix.
BG2EE 159/353 areas 100% done. 194 remaining areas with small "animations" to fix.

 

Compatibility

This mod should be compatible with any other mods except ones that change or replace existing areas.

 

Download latest version

BGEE AI Denoised Areas v220506

BG2EE AI Denoised Areas v220506

 

Installation instructions

Extract files in your BG(2)EE directory and execute the WEIDU setup like any other mod.

 

Special Thanks

@argent77 for his help in understanding how the image to TIS file conversion works in NI

@Bubb for his willingness and passion for these games

@Ghreyfain for his WEIDU tutorial without which I could never have understood that it was enough to simply copy/paste and rename the weidu.exe, tp2 files and some folders to make a mod. :D 

 

Edited by Leilu
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I didn't think I was that close either. :D

Extremely bad in programming and intimidated by its documentation, I really thought that WEIDU was extremely complicated and that I would have to compile, even to make a simple "copy files to folder" mod.

It took me a whole afternoon to roughly understand how Github worked.😅

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6 hours ago, Andrea C. said:

Really cool!

Do you have plans to make this compatible with the classics as well?

With the TIS V1 format, you'd only be keeping about 1 of of every 16 colors, unless the engine can actually use tiles less than 64x64 px (which the file format does support).  If it can't, the results wouldn't be this good.

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I was all ready to look at this and think "who cares about teensy graphical alterations?" But boy howdy, those look fantastic. Reminds me of when I first saw BG1, it looks like some kind of crisp claymation environment. Later, BG2 just looked like blah computer-game sprites, in a sea of games with blah sprites. This is a serious improvement. Great job.

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Thanks everyone. ;) I'm glad you like it.

 

7 hours ago, Andrea C. said:

Really cool!

Do you have plans to make this compatible with the classics as well?

It's not really up to me.
I just export images, do the upscale/downscale work on them and then re-import them but if I can do that it's only because of the great NearInfinity tools at my disposal.

Currently, apart from the work of correcting the lines and tiles of door animations or water, what takes time is to re-import one by one each area in TIS format because NearInfinity doesn't have a mass TIS importer that automatically sets the right number of tiles per image.

To reassure you about the compatibility of this mod with the classics, I had discussions with a person who is working on the possibility to increase the resolution of the game assets with GemRB but this person is already very busy and I can't promise anything for him.

So potentially, the classics could become more beautiful (at least sharper) than the EE versions because it seems to me that GemRB is not compatible with the EE versions (yet?).

What is sure is that as soon as these tools are ready, my work will already be more or less done as I will only have to go from my 4 times upscaled backup images to 1.5 or even 2 times the original resolution, in an automated way in Photoshop with a batch folder script.

The other promising information with these tools (be careful, in the conditional tense), would be the possibility to upscale in the same way all the rest of the assets of the game, not only the areas as here but why not the creatures, objects, characters or UI. Having the ability to scale the interface and zoom in and out of these games and still have a clean and sharp rendering is something that I would really like to see on these games. Ok it's only the visuals, I'd rather be able to work on improving the catastrophic pathfinding of these games but at least improving the visuals is within my reach.

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2 hours ago, Sam. said:

If you wanted to take a crack at the classic chapter and dream screens or the classic movies (I could export the frames for you), I'd be very interested in the results.

I'm lucky with the BG areas, that I work with basic material that is not too degraded by compression. There is a lot of grain, especially in dark shadows areas of BG1 but even if the resolution is quite low, the upscaling algorithm works quite well most of the time.

Some of these linked screens have really too many flaws (very pronounced banding and pixelated blocks) for the AI upscale algorithm to do anything about.

 kGHxMRo.png

I don't have the tools to fix this kind of defect in an automated way. It would require a lot of manual work. And still the moon with a bloom halo is easy to redo from scratch but the Sarevok armor by imagining the original details without references is already a different matter.

As for videos, you have to take into account the interpolation and motion blur added when the video was originally created. It's even more complicated than a simple still image, especially starting, again, from a very low image quality.

I think that it would be faster and prettier to redo these small cinematics in 3D than to make them faithful and detailed in high resolution with a 2D work. Anyway, if I had to improve these videos (to be honest I already thought about it) that's what I would do. That's why Beamdog chose to (badly imo) remake some of these cinematics rather than "simply" remastering them.

Edited by Leilu
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The original cinematics are indeed low res with heavy compression. There are some AI algorithms that tries to remove some of the compression artifacts.

I did some experiments when I worked on the intro/outro videos for BG2EE in french. The result is far from perfect (it could be better with more time) but it gives an idea of what can be done.

BG2:

0122.png.eba7bdf145e4c952894450ce625e028e.png

BG2EE:

0122.thumb.png.f1c854d412fe115b295f377a04b0a4a2.png

Upscale + Denoise:

0122.thumb.png.98b1a54ba810bbfdd9cbb4e14d2b1d22.png

Edited by lefreut
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