AI-Upsampling of textures and other assets

[STiFU]

I have noticed that especially our gui textures (like the mainmenu / inventory grid parchment), but also some video assets like that "The Dark Mod" short-intro, are really low-res for this day and age. I was wondering whether we should explore offline AI texture upsampling? While I am not a fan of purely AI-generated content, upsampling is something that usually works really well and maintains the look and feel of the materials. Does anybody have any experience in this regard? Do you know of any tools for this? RTX Remix comes with AI texture tools, but I don't know in what capacity those can be used outside of the RTX Remix framework.

[Bikerdude]

I don't see an issue having a lot of the now very low res textures being upscaled. But not all of them need it and if this is done, the replacement textures shouldn’t be much larger than the originals. 

And regarding RTX remix, I have had a look at this SDK and its very convoluted and bloatware. I had to install a lot of extra crap and create an nvidia account to use their sh!tty user-unfriendly tool and even then it wasn’t a simple process. So maybe find a better, more slimline tool?

@Wellingtoncrab has a workflow that he uses, I think its a lot better than the above, but it is a paid for service afaik?

[Wellingtoncrab]

1 hour ago, Bikerdude said:

@Wellingtoncrab has a workflow that he uses, I think its a lot better than the above, but it is a paid for service afaik?

I do not. I have some older interpolation based upscaling software on my machine that is intended for deblurring old jpegs. It cannot handle video.

You could put something like a persistent ui element into it and might resolve more “detail”, but it would also be noisy and artifact laden.

I am general probably the wrong guy to ask about this sort of thing as I don’t think I have ever been particularly impressed by a “remastering” done via an upscale frankly, and I am a freak who *likes* things like the mid y2k feel of the low resolution intro video.

[STRUNK]

Use comfyUI I guess. It's offline and you can choose between different upscalers. 

[datiswous]

11 hours ago, STiFU said:

like that "The Dark Mod" short-intro

I made an upscaled version, but people were not enthousiastic about it (I am).

I converted the video to frames (pictures), then batch ai upscaled those. Then converted it back to video.

I used an ai upscaling tool to upscale some textures for mission Requiem.

 

Edited January 11 by datiswous

[STiFU]

On 1/11/2026 at 10:49 PM, datiswous said:

I made an upscaled version, but people were not enthousiastic about it (I am).

I converted the video to frames (pictures), then batch ai upscaled those. Then converted it back to video.

I used an ai upscaling tool to upscale some textures for mission Requiem.

 

Interesting. What tool did you use for image upscaling?

Did you post the tdm-short somewhere? I'd like to have a look as well.

[datiswous]

32 minutes ago, STiFU said:

What tool did you use for image upscaling

https://upscayl.org/download

 

Without the audio:

Best to view this fullscreen. I made it a bit smaller on the screen, looks better I think.

Edited January 12 by datiswous

[STiFU]

Thanks for the link.

That video sadly does have some issues in the form of temporal coherence and other artifacts, so I am not a fan either, but thanks for sharing. An AI-upscaler specifically intended for video will probably produce better results.

[datiswous]

On 1/13/2026 at 8:43 PM, STiFU said:

temporal coherence and other artifacts,

I don't know what you mean, but for me it looks better, that's what matters. If somebody can make it even more perfect, then that would be even better, but I made this a year ago and nobody seemed to care.

Edited January 15 by datiswous

[datiswous]

The procedure I used:

1. Load the video into Avidemux
2. Select the whole video
3. File > Save as Image > Save selection as jpeg
4. In Upscayl choose for "Batch Upscayl" and select the folder with all the images
5. Then use Kdenlive (or maybe Handbrake?) to convert them back into a video.

 

Edited January 16 by datiswous

[New Horizon]

23 hours ago, datiswous said:

I don't know what you mean, but for me it looks better, that's what matters. If somebody can make it even more perfect, then that would be even better, but I made this a year ago and nobody seemed to care.

Yeah, I'm not sure what that meant either.  It does look better I think.  I'm sure improvements in the upscaling software can only make it better.

[STiFU]

Sorry, let me clarify. Temporal coherence means that something is consistent over time. If you scroll to 0:05 in the video, you will notice some artifact "wandering" from center of the logo to the outside. That is an example temporal incoherence (bad temporal coherence). You can also see some other brief pop-ins of artifacts.

If an upscaler is aware, that it is dealing with an image sequence rather than individual images, it can try to avoid such temporal incoherence. The nvidia built-in AI video upscaler for instance will probably produce better results. I don't know how to access it directly, 'though. I know, if I play a video through my browser, the AI upscaler becomes active (if activated in the driver) and will properly upscale the video. However, I would then have to screencapture that video again, which is rather messy.

[datiswous]

4 hours ago, STiFU said:

I know, if I play a video through my browser, the AI upscaler becomes active (if activated in the driver) and will properly upscale the video. However, I would then have to screencapture that video again, which is rather messy.

Can you try this with our default tdm logo video? You can upload it somewhere and then play it back. You can tell us the results.

Or you can even try to screencapture it.

I have an nvidia card but I think my (Linux) driver doesn't have this ability.

[datiswous]

On 1/17/2026 at 7:04 AM, STiFU said:

you will notice some artifact "wandering" from center of the logo to the outside. That is an example temporal incoherence (bad temporal coherence). You can also see some other brief pop-ins of artifacts.

Here is the original video (converted to mp4). You have to do rightmouse button Save video as.. because it doesn't seem to play in the browser. I don't know why..

 

There is an animation (I love that animation) that is part of the original video that wanders from the center of the logo to the outside. I don't see any kind of artifacts.

So maybe you can tell me which artifacts you mean?

Edited January 18 by datiswous

[datiswous]

On 1/11/2026 at 11:50 AM, STiFU said:

have noticed that especially our gui textures (like the mainmenu / inventory grid parchment)

This could be interesting. Often these textures have multiple versions for different resolutions in them. Which makes it more difficult. At least for me.

[STiFU]

21 hours ago, datiswous said:

This could be interesting. Often these textures have multiple versions for different resolutions in them. Which makes it more difficult. At least for me.

Those different resolutions of textures are called mip-stages and you don't have to worry about those. They are either generated by your dds converter or by the engine.

 

On 1/18/2026 at 5:09 PM, datiswous said:

Here is the original video (converted to mp4). You have to do rightmouse button Save video as.. because it doesn't seem to play in the browser. I don't know why..

I played it in the browser, but sadly, Nvidias AI upsampling didn't help much. 

[datiswous]

Maybe an idea to add nicer text briefing arrows to core? 

Maybe just use a resized version of the one from the mission selection screen? Makes most sense to me. The original files are quite big. Since they use an open and a black variant you can add a hover effect. They can also be used for the inventory grid maybe. Those arrows are also quite basic.

 

Some can be found here (CC0 license):

https://www.rawpixel.com/search/weather vane cc0?page=1&path=1522&sort=curated

 

 

 

Edited January 27 by datiswous

[datiswous]

Chainner seems to have a video mode. It goes over all frames inside a video without having to extract them first manually. The tool is open source and multiplatform. I think I'll give it a try.
Models can be downloaded here: https://openmodeldb.info/

Edited February 3 by datiswous