Death Egg's HD Sprite Project

[Hyllian]

Hi,

I've seen you're using xBR filter for this project. I want to contribute by sharing some other standalone filters I was working. Here's the link:

https://anonfiles.com/file/772754058191 ... 1ee8a46e8b

Some screenshots: http://minus.com/mbnj1S0HHS1kXE/11

[Death Egg]

Looking at this there are a few things I can tell that XBR-Hybrid does better and vice-versa. xBR-Hybrid seems to interpret the Cyberdemons facial features a little better than xBR does, and the metal parts othe Cyberdemon have a bit more of a shine to them. However, I think that I'm going to stick to xBR though, as it seems to emulate the clay model look of the Doom sprites better. (Though I'll probably still use xBR-Hybrid as a guide for better detailing in some parts, such as the face of the Cyberdemon.

(Also I totally didn't think about just taking a whole sprite sheet and putting it through the renderers, that'll save a lot of time)

[Blox]

Well if one does some things better, and the other some other things better - you could paste the other over the one and mask the bits the one does better than the other.

..Or I could just do it because that's how I roll anyways. Tedious, boring work isn't too hard on me. (In the way that I can still do it after my brain short circuits as it always does.)

XBR Hybrid looks like ass if you ask me though. (I love that spritesy/linesy look of vanilla XBR.)

[Death Egg]

Yeah, that best part about xBR-Hybrid is how it seems to note contrast a bit better than vanilla xBR. Otherwise it just seems a bit too blurry for my liking.

[Hyllian]

XBR Hybrid looks like ass if you ask me though. (I love that spritesy/linesy look of vanilla XBR.)

This is the first time someone reveals to like pure xBR better than xBR-Hybrid for gradient/real world color images.

[Hyllian]

Looking at this there are a few things I can tell that XBR-Hybrid does better and vice-versa. xBR-Hybrid seems to interpret the Cyberdemons facial features a little better than xBR does, and the metal parts othe Cyberdemon have a bit more of a shine to them. However, I think that I'm going to stick to xBR though, as it seems to emulate the clay model look of the Doom sprites better. (Though I'll probably still use xBR-Hybrid as a guide for better detailing in some parts, such as the face of the Cyberdemon.

You could try 2xbrh-v2 and ra2x. I think ra2x should be better for facial features, except for the borders (it doesn't touch high contrast jaggies).

If I'm not mistaken, this pic was for v2 filter: http://i5.minus.com/ic7q6WCNlfVp1.png

Look at how the demon chest is more natural than the gradient of pure xBR version.

[Death Egg]

Okay, I've been a bit hesitant about bringing this up since the project is still really early and it would increase the workload threefold, but someone has validly pointed out that a big reason HD sprites never seem to work is because the low amount of frames Doom has don't really look as good when scaled up. So unless the amount of frames was increased by about twice as much, it'd look even more wobbly and wooden then before. However, I don't exactly think I have the art skills myself to try and add extra frames to the sprites. Plus if I were to go this route, I'd definitely need to have quite a bit more help to accommodate the increased amount of work needed. So basically, I'd do it if I could, but I'm really unsure if I could.

EDIT: And then I notice the program that Blox showed in the High Quality Animations Project thread.

EDIT v2.0: Something that's sorta minor but would help save time...



Any time I upscale the sprites with xBR I get little pixels like those little green ones surrounding the edges of the sprite. So far I've been manually erasing them with MSPaint (Which I've been using to modify the sprites... it may be archaic, but I uh, kinda don't know how to properly use anything else) but if there's any way to do this faster I'd like to know. (Otherwise it'll take forever)

[Blox]

Turn the cyan black before upscaling? It'd still smooth it into the sprite, but at least it's not pure cyan that's sneaking in.

As for XBR-Hybrid, it kind of looks to me like a high-tap Lanczos filter that somehow manages to both be a bit more shaped but also looks like someone somehow palette raped it before the smoothing process.
Which is very noticeable at the bottom of the torso area on the second image at the top of this page.

also hi

(Personally I'd say the most interesting thing would be a wide-radius version of vanilla xBR, because of the obvious jaggies every single pixelart upscaler ever produce. I can imagine it being cumbersome though. )

[Sp00kyFox]

using black instead of cyan will give you the problem that after the filter conversion the transparent black is indistinguishable from the color black.
I tested myself a little bit with it, but didn't came up with a fast solution for those little green pixels.

[Enjay]

I often use magenta as the background. When you force the graphic in to the Doom palette, there are only 5 magenta-like colours so most of the stray pixels get converted to one of them (and you're already using one as your background) so it is therefore a fairly quick job to use a colour replacer tool to nuke the magenta pixels.

[Sp00kyFox]

nope, doesn't work since the pixels on the edge of the sprites get mashed together with the background color due to the filter process and guess what you will get?
nice little green pixels again and it's even worse than with cyan.

[Hyllian]

If you use xBR app using 3x scale, it'll preserve the original palette, because it doesn't blend pixels. The drawback is that you to convert back to 2x someway.

Original:


3xBR - no blending:
http://i4.minus.com/iZqRkSTorw1MX.png

[Blox]

using black instead of cyan will give you the problem that after the filter conversion the transparent black is indistinguishable from the color black.

Not if you use the cyan upscale as an alpha base, which to say is that you define your edges there - and then use that cyan mask to delete the black from the on-black upscale.

[Enjay]

nope, doesn't work since the pixels on the edge of the sprites get mashed together with the background color due to the filter process and guess what you will get?
nice little green pixels again even with magenta.

Not if you don't use cyan at all (which, remember, isn't even in the Doom palette). Trust me, I've done it thousands of times. Yes, the pixels get mashed together with the background but the background is magenta so all the mashed pixels are also magenta-ish. Force them into the Doom palette and most of them become one of only 5 possible colours.

Take one Cyberdemon head:



rotate it through 34 degrees (a number picked at random) - eww! lots of mashed magenta pixels



load it into the Doom palette - mashed pixels are now one of only 5 colours



30 seconds later, with the help from the PSP colour replacer, all the mashed pixels are gone and not a green pixel in sight



Of course, it still needs some touch up but it's an easier starting place than the bunch of green pixels that you get when using cyan as a background.

[Sp00kyFox]

Not if you don't use cyan at all (which, remember, isn't even in the Doom palette). Trust me, I've done it thousands of times.

obviously not with the xbr filter. it really doesn't care for palette restrictions, it actually includes the color which is set to transparent into it's calculations.
I tested it myself otherwise I wouldn't stated it, look at this example:



too bad there are many shades of green in the doom palette.
I guess I'll take Hyllians advice and use pure 3xBR for the beginning until someone comes up with a solution.