This 1kx1k shows the upsizing I intend to do for the vanilla textures.

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/2623/vhd.png

It is a scientific approach based on the prior decade of research in computer graphics journals; called "Super Resolution from single, library or moving images" (depending on the paper). Here is a website showing one researchers comparison pics using one approach ...http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~vision/SingleImageSR.html ...as you can see this method is intended for fairly detailed photos and not blurry grainy VGA textures...

This implementation is my own that has taken several months of coding to get something that works for textures, there is little art involved as it mostly just science. Having played vanilla MW on my ancient laptop at VGA rez over the holidays without my 4GB retexture collection, I was motivated to get back to vanilla but it looked very blurry on my living room large screen HDTV, thus I intend to finish this before I roll another character!

What I do is start with the .tga texture from the Construction set CD to avoid starting with the already compressed .dds. Then as shown in the vhd.png - the first step is to upsize it twice over with an interpolation filter to get a hirez version that is blurry. The next step is the crucial piece of the algorithm that took a long time to get right, the premise is that if it "learns" what details are lost in downsizing training images, then it can "restore" similar upsizing details in new images. Finally I use Gimp to convert to a new .dds that is possibly 16x larger depending on compression efficiency, but that seems about right comparing 2002-2012 advancement in video cards. In GIMP DDS converter I use Lancsoz mipmaps with 2.2 gamma dithered, and DXT1 unless edge alpha then DXT3

For the moss example I spent a long time sifting google images for closeup pics of spanish hanging moss without camera grain or jpeg compression that are of similar scale to the upsized texture. If the thumbnail view of the texture looks identical to vanilla, the algorithm is functioning as it is constrained to only adding details that do not change the lo-rez versions of the image. BTW I recommend highly windows thumbnail viewers for .DDS/.TGA as it makes it so much easier to decide on making texture swaps.

Just to give you an idea of the run-time order - I do sixteen passes over all million pixels in a 1kx1k texture (upsized from a 256x256) looking thru possibly 1-2 dozen training images each of a million pixels - for an order of 1Mx1Mx16x16...since I don't have the latest greatest CPU with the latest greatest GPU best to start small with the 64x64 flora textures before I tackle cloud and moon textures! My priorities are flora to get my alchemists happy, wood to keep the starting character happy with the shacks and basically work my way around the map, hitting roads and regions as I go. At some point I need to do parallel processing on the physics based GPUs or I will never finish. I may just skip amulet_extravagant in the final library as for the last few months that has been my truth image trying to get a 16x16 downsize/upsize back to the original 64x64 texture!

l have more work to do on the alpha channel - as this was the first one I tried that was more than just an edge alpha. But don't get too excited about a short term release - as it takes hours to google quality training images, hours to classify them into the training database, and hours to search the training database finding lo/hi-rez patch pairs that can be used to enhance the target texture. Just to do kreshweed, black_anther, wickwheat, willow_flower, saltrice, marshmerrow, black_anther, and the bc_moss you see here took two weekends. Running on an older Athlon XP64x2 with 2GB memory, but trying to do two at once locks up my machine. So googling more training images to get ready for the next texture while the prior one is processing. And hopefully I only stay long enough in the game to verify the textures are working and realize the rest of the vanilla textures need finished!

Update Status mixed in the Scenic and Alchemy Flora since they overlap in parts

DONE
ashtree
bc_fern
bc_fungus
bc_moss
bc_mushroom (needs Flora Glow enhancement)
bittergreen
black_anther
emperor_parasol
lichens
hackle-lo
kreshweed
marshmerrow
muckpod/sponge (needs Graphic Herbalism enhancement)
tx_mushroom
saltrice
scathecraw
wickwheat
willow_flower

IN PROGRESS
bc_bark
bark
fire_fern
comberry
stoneflower

TODO
ash_yam
caveplant
chokeweed
cork_bulb
bc_podplant (Needs Flora Glow enhancement)
roobrush
tramaroot
ash_grass
bc_grassblade
bc_leaves
bc_lilypad
branches
grass_blade
ivy
kelp
treering_wg
vine

This sounds like a fantastic undertaking!

The stuff you can do with computers... Very interesting project; I look forward to seeing more results.

You should think about upgrading to a reasonably recent Nvidia card and figuring CUDA out.

Gooo science! :biggrin:

Absolutely wonderful! I've always wanted a texture replacer like this.

Keep up the good work.




KF

Looks like an interesting approach. Maybe you could enlist some helpers to help you find training images?

If you're working on a high quality textures set, then you might want to avoid the gimp DDS plugin, since it gives worse quality than the ones from ATI and nVidia. I tested this a while back.

The result looks similar to darknut's textures
Anyway interesting approach

that was my first thought too
and my second thought was i need this :drool:
hopefully you can get this done some time. i dont use any model/texture replacer (except darknuts textures) because they never reach the look and even quality of vanilla graphics for my taste (much tiling, missing details like dirt and color transitions), but the png you posted looks just perfect

Yes please.

This looks like a really awesome project. If you can do to all textures as you did to your sample I will make myself your personal slave. Possibly.

Plus: skip stuff Darknut has done, although that's not masses outside characters and actors.

I too love the look of vanilla. I had thought of trying stair interpolation to up the resolution of vanilla textures, mostly to use as a base for other texture replacers. I haven't started messing with textures yet, and I don't know if this technique would work that well anyway, as I only know how it works for high resolution photos. I Imagine it would look terrible, really... This looks like it would be much better. I certainly look forward to this. Go science! I do hope you will do all the textures in this way. I have experience with photography, so if you can't find a suitable image, I could certainly try to get some for you.

I didn't know this was your mod, too, TG. Some people don't use Darknut's stuff. :whistling:

googling for images is the fun part though.....but if I post my list of upcoming to process and people post links I will certainly look them over. Most often I click every image large enough, review it for scale so as not to download that are off, then when I snag patches with GIMP (avoiding edges I don't want if the texture has no edge - etc) I usually see more problems closeup, and then once I see the extracted details is when camera and jpeg noise shows up and I toss some more out. I imagine when I get to some of the more fantasy textures like daedric and glass armor that finding training images is going to be a challenge - the key is it needs only to have similar details, and preferably color so I can detail that too - but most details are B&W.

Is that still true about gimp 2.6.10 3/11/2010 DDS? With the settings I have it is hard for me to tell the difference from the .uncompressed png sometimes, usually just because I use dithering (and I think at higher res that is not as evil as patchy colors due to compression) i but that is why I want the plugin so I can flip back and forth between uncompressed and compressed in the same tool looking for problems as well as upscaling and downscaled. I am keeping the uncompressed .png so can always batch convert before release if I need to switch tools - DDS converter 2 is what I had before but it looks like it had not kept in sync with Nvidias latest. Before I posted I have read the entire mod forum front to back so too much info to process on what is the best toolset! I did notice a painters glitch in the marshmerrow_03.dds but it was there when I switched to the .tga source as well.

The kreshweed leaf looks even better as there was better training images to find and the source texture was amazingly decent compared to it havnig the worst flower texture ever (which I found a single training image that did wonders with that!). But I did not keep the in-between images on that one - so can only post before after unless I rerun it.

My current texture stack is either mixed texture pack or the 3.0 compilation, anything darknut and selected connary (though since deleted respecting his desires)., as well as westly latest head efforts in progress. I lost track of what was what because I downloaded every texture I could find on any texture list - so now it is a bit of a incoherent mess.

Certainly they all have different artistic approaches which does not always blend with everthing else - ultimately I would like to have seperate world texture installs just so I could change it up with new characters as discovering new things is what I like about morrowind. I use CIE linear and perceptual color space - so could for the 2nd and 3rd versions of the library very easily scale colorfulness and lightness as a post process. - it just offends my videophile tendencies to do that.

My understanding of how my approach differs with Darknut is the use of training images for details vs. procedural photoshop methods - sometimes he sticks with the lo-rez mip-maps and sometimes he cannot resist - like any artist! But I don't want him to not pursue his world texture thread - the more choices the better to cover all tastes!

It is on my radar - but more for work where we have the latest Matlab and C compilers. I wrote the bulk of my code in my old student edition of Matlab dropping down to the old Watcom C complier it has support for when needed. After months of coding I need a break and thus working on images until I hit a wall then I will try for more optimization. I am not even sure if my 5yr old motherboard has the right bus to get the bandwidth needed for the physics cards, but I have no doubt I will crack up the case trying to recall what was in there. Nuking and paving windows is no fun - with my last switch I am forced to keep my Windows CD in the drive because for a while there M$ decided not to trust me anymore with all my upgrades....

Interpolation is just the first step -I need a research paper giving the filter equations or I would not even consider. But look closely at they eyeball pic on this comparison page - it has diag. ringing http://www.fredmiranda.com/SI/index.html

Interopolators are a tradeoff of blurriness vs. ringing vs. aliasing, for this algorithm to work I need to trend towards bluriness in my filters - not too much that it gets carried forward into the end result, but I must avoid ringing and aliasing as that often gets confused as real details (by humans as well as algorithms), My playing screen is 6' wide projection - I notice these details. I also use a Viewsonic professional graphics series 23" HD monitor for true fidelity.

Interpolation is just the first step -I need a research paper giving the filter equations or I would not even consider. But look closely at this eyeball pic on this comparison page - SI has diag. ringing http://www.fredmiranda.com/SI/index.html

Interopolators are a tradeoff of blurriness vs. ringing vs. aliasing, for this algorithm to work I need to trend towards bluriness in my filters - not too much that it gets carried forward into the end result, but I must avoid ringing and aliasing as that often gets confused as real details (by humans as well as algorithms) and I want to train real details from very good real life photos, My playing screen is 6' wide projection - I notice these details. I also use a Viewsonic professional graphics series 23" HD monitor for true fidelity.

Ok, this looks interesting. While I dont think this would top some of the current textures, it would certainly become a base to use in place of all the originals. If you need computing power to run through this, I have an extra computer I could set and leave running for as long as needed. Although, this extra computer is rather old and has neither video card no tons of ram; I suppose the fact it could run for days on end kinda makes up for that.

Ah, you used matlab. I took a class on image processing using matlab. Great for doing stuff like this but not as simple as using gimp and the like in my opinion.

Yes some originals are just "fairly" ugly and sticking to principles of not molesting the mip-maps in VHD texture packs means I will probably overwrite whickwheats wheat stalks for myself personally with the photo textures from other libraries. But I will keep training that one until I get something better. I highly recommend people pick and choose individual textures using thumbnail viewers as often the promise of keeping to the spirit of the original is not strictly met thoughout the entire texture pack - but by design it is not possible for me to change the lo-rez mip-maps I only change hi-rez details so it will be perfect for a base replacer. For the longest time I thought the game must be rated M because of the nvde tapestries - then I found out on here that was one of the texture packs using fantasy book covers without the strategically placed book titles...

So give yourself time to appreciate vanilla so you know what you are missing out on once you start swapping other stuff in.

Matlab Compiler is $5K option so not going to happen! I have 2GB mem and 5GB swap - and I have run out! I could make the database disk rather than mem access - but then it would be dreadfully slow - when I hit the swap and it starts paging it will run for 2 weeks instead of 2 hours. Maybe longer - I just killed the job after 2 weeks as I got tired of the swapping.

But if the crowd wants to source themselves I updated the first post with my task list for flora, just like work it will keep me busy if I know someone is watching! Hopefully the mods keep the thread up if it turns into a pic link fest - and hopefully when the thread is closed for length a new thread with a new modules task list will be ready to go. Lore defines flora as alchemists plants rather than scenery plants - so moss is actually better suited for a a bitter coast pack. I plan to be modular packs anyways just to make releases feasible to do - but will keep one PES web page with them all as a set.

Interesting. I was playing Morrowind in an old pc at a freinds house and the vanilla textures are not bad at all, anda hi res version would look really nice. Will keep an eye out for this

I can't notice the ringing on my monitor, honestly. I have seen that page a long time ago, and it might even be why I thought of using stair interpolation on Morrowind's textures in the first place. I know that stair interpolation alone wouldn't have been ideal, but it is the best I could have done to the base textures given the knowledge I have.

The problem with just doing interpolation is that your video card is going to do it anyways to make the texture fit the actual pixels the mesh occupies on screen since that number is unlikely to always be 2^N like the library is. You would have to try different ways to see if it would even make a difference outside of your photo/paint programs and that the algorithm you use is better than the card and the card does not ruin what you did. Interpolation by itself can only add details that are actually just artifacts of ringing or aliasing, as all it really conceptually is doing is connecting the dots. I suppose that is what the darker or colorful texture libraries have done (or could do) , combining interpolation with removing or adding color and losing or stretching contrast.

Works really well on the textures that are clearly downsized photographs. The painted textures are being restored to paintings with a finer brush - so it will preseve the evidence that there were clearly different artistic styles at work when they were making the game..

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/1057/vhdkreshweed.png

There is an unused texture for Stone Flower that is done in the more painted style of gold kanet, and someone else stepped in and did a more textured version, so I plan tio skip Tx_stone_flower_01.tga and use Tx_stoneflower_01.tga instead. Does anyone know how to search for where a texture is used?

While there may be something that does that, I don't think I've heard of it - it certainly would have made "Unique Tombs" easier. The kreshweed looks great though.

Yeah, vanilla looks pretty ok to me, guess people became too spoiled with all the newest gen HD graphics

Awesome work man, I always encourage improvement of Vanilla stuff. :foodndrink: