In fact, its grEEbles, not gribles as I wrote... It's small 3D details, like pipes, etc. Like this or this.

What you did is promising ! I wait to see where you can go with your algorithm. Will there be some batch processing in it ?

Sorry for double post but WOW ! Just WOW !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=548sCh0mMRc&feature=emb_title

I have an idea too. Removing all bevel and shading.

Here is the principle :

Take a 3D model creator.
Create a plane.
Put a random normal map on the plane where some shapes are put, squares, triangles, etc.
Put a camera above the plane.
Add a light source.
Animate the light source to discribe a circle around the plane at different light elevation for exemple light elevation 0° then 10° and so on.
Take an uncompressed video of each light elevation.
After decompose the video(s) in PNG pictures.
Then with the same camera take a video of the same length without the normal map and decompose it in series of PNG pictures.
Put all normal map pics in lowres folder of AI upscale and put the not normal map pics in reference images of AI upscaler.
Finally, train and see the result on real images.

If it works, it would be nice. Because it could be applied to every game textures that has prerendered texture effects.

I have a fun fact about BC1 compression artifact removal.

When you use BC1_smooth2 and use misc the result is not that detailed, but when you use another BC1 removal then misc, it's over detailed.

BC1_smooth2 + Misc

BC1_take2 + Misc

It's rather strange.

Edit : Mixed BC1_smooth opacity 128 + BC1_take2 Background

Edit 2 : Fixed URL of "Edit"

Is it ESRGAN, PPON, or your own model ?

I tried Misc x4 pretrained model for ESRGAN and the result was kinda good. Then I tried PPON and for some details it's better than Misc x4. PPON can't support alpha channel so I need to extract alpha channel with GIMP.

On the one hand edit is better than upscale but on the other hand upscale helps a lot if you want the best accuracy as possible.

Here is a sample of liberty AI upscale I did. I warn you that I had to do 128x128 parts from 256x256 textures cause my computer isn't using CUDA cores and, as always, has outdated components... The window part has been done with PPON. liberty_256 is the original and 1024 is the Misc 4x one.

I just used the color palette of the original texture but now I improved it. In fact the blurry texture come from the anisotropic filtering deactivated or the original model's UV, I think it's more UV related. I can send you the maps via PM. I used a 1024X1024 and I was very close to the model, I think the blur wouldn't be so visible ingame as the camera is more far than in the screenshot. Do you recommend to increase or decrease brightness on my spec map ?

@ Everybody : When I said "What do you think ?", I wanted some feedback of all the community not only Schmackbolzen because it's a good way to improve or confirm things.

Great stuff ! The website have better perfs. What did you use before this upgrade ?

Freelancer will now be subtitled :
"Trent in Wonderland" as it is so marvelous.