[WIP] Republic Commando AI Upscaled Texture Pack

[Thor110 502]

Another favourite game of mine alongside the KotORs that I felt deserved some attention and upgrades.

Slowly I have been working on AI Upscaling the textures for the game.

Unfortunately many come out looking like oil paintings, however some appear to look a lot better than the originals.

So it will take some time for me to pick and choose between the best upscales vs the original textures which look better in-game.

Comparison Screenshots

Spoiler

Clones

Computer Console

Geonosian Starship

Unfortunately it will take me quite some time to get through it all and being that I am not a texture artist they may still need some work.

Transparency Issues

Spoiler

As ESRGAN doesn't handle transparency so well ( though there is an option and it has worked for some textures ) many textures will require manually editing in order to correct the transparency.

Though some textures have managed to upscale just fine even with transparency using ESRGAN which I find to be a little odd, nevermind.

I am also hoping to fix up the existing COOP levels for the game.

Currently I have compiled a mod-list / build list of existing mods that heavily improve the game, introduce cooperative levels etc which is available on my Discord : https://discord.gg/S3YyfTjMV8

It still needs a little work before it's ready for people to use.

As for the texture pack I am not entirely sure if I will even release it yet, simply because so many textures come out looking kind of nasty or very much like an oil painting.

Which for some textures isn't noticeable but for others it stands out a mile off.

It has also been brought to my attention that the BSP for many textures needs remaking by hand.

Thor110

[Malkior 476]

Which upscale program are you using? I know some of them come with tweakable features, and while they generally sharpen fine details quite well, the algorithm will sometimes guess a little too much on what gradients look like and you're left with that oil painting look. 

You could also open the before and after in Photoshop and remove the strange patterning by using a mask layer. (Gimp also has similar features, but I'm not as familiar with it)

Always good to see Republic Commando getting a fresh coat of paint, though.

[Thor110 502]

8 minutes ago, Malkior said:

Which upscale program are you using? I know some of them come with tweakable features, and while they generally sharpen fine details quite well, the algorithm will sometimes guess a little too much on what gradients look like and you're left with that oil painting look. 

You could also open the before and after in Photoshop and remove the strange patterning by using a mask layer. (Gimp also has similar features, but I'm not as familiar with it)

Always good to see Republic Commando getting a fresh coat of paint, though.

I have been using Cupscale and ESRGAN.

Currently toying around with it on stream ( twitch.tv/thor110 )

For now I have split the textures into three categories, those that need the alpha channels removed or separated and eventually need recombing

and then the bumpmaps,

as well as those that don't need altering.

For now I have just been upscaling them, applying a mean curvature blur and then the sharpen filter ( unsharp mask ) then exporting and importing them.

Those with transparency or at least some of I have been able to upscale using the transparency option in Cupscale, however it doesn't play nice with all of them.

Thor110

[Malkior 476]

I see. I just looked up both of those upscaling techniques, and it might be easier to vary which is used on which type. For example, ESERGAN was trained to use Manga images (Which probably explains the oil painting results)

Metal is notoriously difficult if the basic texture doesn't have enough detail, since the algorithms tend to soften out contrast and metal requires high contrast to look right.

For that example you showed on the second to last photo, the contrast and detail could be remade in Photoshop with a combination of layer effects and gray overlays for the metal edges. 

However, I understand that this would interfere with how quickly you accomplish these, so hopefully there's just an AI algorithm out there that can handle metal rather than adjusting them by hand. If not, at the very least your work on smaller things like switches and more natural decorations like the Kashyyk greenery will be able to be upscaled.

Otherwise, one technique that I've learned which works pretty well for metal is in Photoshop. Filter - Diffuse (Set to Anisotropic)

This is a result from the Player Armor in Kotor 2.

 

It's quite useful to maintain contrast while getting rid of the visual noise found in lower resolution textures.

[Thor110 502]

To be honest I hardly looked into it, I just wanted to give it a go and then decided to take a prod at Republic Commando because I have already been tinkering with the cooperative levels.

1 hour ago, Malkior said:

I see. I just looked up both of those upscaling techniques, and it might be easier to vary which is used on which type. For example, ESERGAN was trained to use Manga images (Which probably explains the oil painting results)

Good to know I should definitely look into some of the other models available. If you know of any feel free to drop a link.

1 hour ago, Malkior said:

However, I understand that this would interfere with how quickly you accomplish these, so hopefully there's just an AI algorithm out there that can handle metal rather than adjusting them by hand. If not, at the very least your work on smaller things like switches and more natural decorations like the Kashyyk greenery will be able to be upscaled.

This is essentially the plan, though either way picking and choosing what turns out the best is going to be a lengthy process.

I am not so great with GIMP or Photoshop anyway, though once a technique is nailed down for the game's textures hopefully I can work through them all quite quickly.

That looks good.

The lengthy part at the moment is just me figuring out how to do things in GIMP that are probably really easy / simple to do.

Specifically cutting out colour channels and recombining them after upscaling.

Now I think back on reading up when ESRGAN came out, I remember reading that it was trained on Manga also, so thanks for checking that out / mentioning it as I may have just forgotten about what it was trained on and kept going.

Thor110

[Thor110 502]

Having long abandoned this project I am locking this thread.

But I am also going to leave a note and a recommendation.

My recommendation is that you check out the Republic Commando Remaster project : https://www.moddb.com/mods/rc-reskin-remaster

And my note is that I am still dabbling in the Unreal Engine, both UE2 & UE4 for a couple of different projects and that I recently decided to write a tutorial on porting Star Wars Republic Commando's levels to Unreal Engine 4, this tutorial should also work with any other UE2 era game or level.

Though more specifically UT2003/2004/Republic Commando and it also worked for Stargate SG-1 : The Alliance's leaked game files.

Tutorial Link : https://www.moddb.com/games/star-wars-republic-commando/tutorials/converting-swrc-to-ue4

UE5 Project Template : https://github.com/Thor110/ABC-UE5

Automated Script for Extracting, Converting & Preparing Files : https://github.com/Thor110/UE2-UE4

This video shows a variant of the script in action, for Stargate SG-1 : The Alliance.

I initially only started this project as a way to check out AI upscaling techniques anyway.

Have also been getting the textures upscaled by Topaz GigaPixel AI for my UE4 port project. ( I also donated these upscales to the RC Remaster project I recommended )

Original :

Upscaled :

UE4 Previews :

Edited July 2, 2023 by Thor110