Final Fantasy 7 Textures Upscaled With a Neural Network

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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An enterprising modder managed to upscale Morrowind's textures with deep learning algorithms last year, and today, PC Gamer spotted a mod that does the same thing in Final Fantasy 7. Like the Morrowind mod, this particular modder is running ESRGAN to upscale the game's textures and backgrounds 400%, with far better results than you'd get with a conventional filter. The mod is still a work in progress, but you can check out some of the shots in the project's thread.

CaptRobau mentions using Gigapixel to upscale the images, which apparently costs about $100. But the ESRGAN algorithm itself is open source, and a pre-packaged implementation I have installed on my PC right now can run ESGRAN (or any of dozens of other neural net upscalers) on images (or videos) for free. So if you're thinking about upscaling your own images, I'd think twice before paying for Gigapixel's software.

N4CR said:
Oh my fuck, can some autist please do this for FF8 and FF7?
Fuck square and their bullshit, I just want upressed FF sexiness.
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N4CR , your (obscene) prayers have been answered.

As I mentioned, batch upscaling/denoising can be done for free, and it can be done with (IMO) better algorithms than ESRGAN as long as you have sufficiently powerful GPU(s). It's kind of a pain to setup, but if anyone's interested (or just wants to run it as a benchmark/stress test), I can try to make a zip file that'll run this kind of thing with minimal effort.
 
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The detail it manages to extrapolate is legit bonkers.
 
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socK said:
The detail it manages to extrapolate is legit bonkers.
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It is! In my experience, ESRGAN is kinda finicky though, as it tends to produce ringing/halo artifacts if you feed it messy images.
 
That's what I'm talking about!!

(the original background resolution makes FF7 borderline unplayable on a modern display)
 
DF-1 said:
i must be blind. i dont see anything different
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Blind as a bat my friend....
MmxxkAk.jpg
 
DF-1 said:
i must be blind. i dont see anything different
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PeaKr said:
Interesting comments on reddit about ESRGAN.
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It really is night-and-day. As a more concrete example than low-res screenshots or a Reddit comment, I made this quick and dirty test over the weekend:
APCJzz.jpg

APCC65.jpg

APCkhC.jpg
That's actually MSRN, but it's basically the same thing.
 
Prepare for a flood of lazy remasters from game companies to make a quick buck with little to no work. Still impressive tech however
 
Oh sweet baby Jesus! Wutai looks amazing! Square dumping what I'm sure is 11 buckets of cash into the FFVII REMAKE, and this is basically all we wanted in the first place.
 
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AlphaAtlas said:
An enterprising modder managed to upscale Morrowind's textures with deep learning algorithms last year, and today, PC Gamer spotted a mod that does the same thing in Final Fantasy 7. Like the Morrowind mod, this particular modder is running ESRGAN to upscale the game's textures and backgrounds 400%, with far better results than you'd get with a conventional filter. The mod is still a work in progress, but you can check out some of the shots in the project's thread.

CaptRobau mentions using Gigapixel to upscale the images, which apparently costs about $100. But the ESRGAN algorithm itself is open source, and a pre-packaged implementation I have installed on my PC right now can run ESGRAN (or any of dozens of other neural net upscalers) on images (or videos) for free. So if you're thinking about upscaling your own images, I'd think twice before paying for Gigapixel's software.

N4CR , your (obscene) prayers have been answered.

As I mentioned, batch upscaling/denoising can be done for free, and it can be done with (IMO) better algorithms than ESRGAN as long as you have sufficiently powerful GPU(s). It's kind of a pain to setup, but if anyone's interested (or just wants to run it as a benchmark/stress test), I can try to make a zip file that'll run this kind of thing with minimal effort.
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Do it please.
 
Find a way to replace the overworld models with the battle models and we are in business.
 
I am an admin over on the site where this was originally posted. If you are into modding of final fantasy pc games you should check it out. Quite a bit of work has been put into bringing these games into the modern era while still being faithful to the originals.
 
Looks fantastic. Couple this with a model mod and you don't need the remake.
 
I'd be ok with game companies using this tech to help remake some old games. Looks like a fantastic use case for AI. There's some older movies that could benefit as well.
 
The limited ability to derive detail in the background has the added (bonus) side effect of looking out of focus. You get a fake focal depth for free.
 
looked fantastic when i was on my phone, looking at the pics, but on my computer ive noticed lots of small issues with the upscale version..

That first scene posted above, the gate to the left is meant to be straight bars in the upscale some are bent others are straight.. Same with the balcony on the left, and the one right at the back. Railing at the back and the yellow and black strips all have the same wavy-ness.

Tifas bar the fan at the back is in front of the grate in certain areas... etc..

Dont get me wrong its amazing what the AI can do to upscale, and i imagine alot of the issue is noise from the original picture used, i would still love to see this in FF7, however it will not just be a straight AI upscale, someone is going to have to fix the upscales...
 
sl1982 said:
I am an admin over on the site where this was originally posted. If you are into modding of final fantasy pc games you should check it out. Quite a bit of work has been put into bringing these games into the modern era while still being faithful to the originals.
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Cool, I registered earlier today under the same username. I'm not a FF fan (yet), but as I mentioned in the thread, I'm already working a package that should make running AI upscalers easy. Seems like the modders are using a combination of Avisynth and research paper demo tools now, which we can definitely improve on.
 
GlacierNine said:
There have been mods to do this exact thing for years.
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Indeed. But the effect is also quite jarring. The great majority or NPCs do not have a "high detail" models available so the replaced ones do stick out like a sore thumb.
 
MaZa said:
Indeed. But the effect is also quite jarring. The great majority or NPCs do not have a "high detail" models available so the replaced ones do stick out like a sore thumb.
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The vast majority of NPCs also don't have battle models, so I contend that Cactusj's request is still very much satisfied by the mods :p
 
Not into FF but no denying the results. I'd love to see someone do this to Witcher 2. I just replayed again over the holidays with the upgraded rig in 1440p with no mods but fully manually maxed AA/Anistropic and filters in NV CP, NV profile inspector and the cfg file. It looked great but something like this would take it to another level.
71DC6A578165ACFD9041E1883D298D07DD32E2D6.jpg
 
This is really impressive to see. It's far from perfect but certainly a step in the right direction. I spent a bit of time years ago modding FF7 and although you can improve a lot of the textures and models, the engine and mechanics are still rigid and very dated. Very nostalgic to fire up and play but I'm really looking forward to the remake of FF7.
 
 
Flat tack but dropped in to say thanks for the heads up AlphaAtlas, this is a huge chunk of the way to realising a FF7+8 up res. We don't want tomb raider FF, the play, story and feel of the originals are exactly what most of us want but with more resolution.

Edit: I'd love to help with manual fixes, especially for FF8 which I have most time on. Next few months are crazy busy but I'll do my best.

Edit2, I can almost imagine a Japanese version of that Hitler bunker scene playing out at squaresoft right now lel. They should have just listened, this cat ain't going back in the bag.
 
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If you think the neural network stuff is amazing you should see the work people are putting in remaking the backgrounds from scratch. Here is an example
ZSwrkvS.jpg
 
Zam15 said:
Prepare for a flood of lazy remasters from game companies to make a quick buck with little to no work. Still impressive tech however
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Well if they make old games work with modern renderers and upscaledx textured I'll buy them a at a reasonable price.

I prefer a closer to original style of remaster anyways.

When you have companies rebuilding games from scratch there's too much opportunity for editorializing.

If iD remasters Quake one and "fixes" it's physics the way they were fixed for Crash Bandicoot I'll never play it. Changing the physics would ruin that game.

Many things, hell most things, don't need rebuilding. Just some polish and tune-up.
 
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