WIP animation old scene frame

Started by Kadri, January 03, 2019, 03:26:14 AM

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Kadri

#30

I made some tests with Topaz.
In small details it looks a little better. When i tried to make images a little sharper and closer like Topaz they looked more eh...sharpened.
In that aspect Topaz looks a little better. At least to my eye and with these 5-6 tests.
If you like you can make tests (with other photo editors too for example) with these files (the resized ones are there too) and see it for yourself.
Curious what your opinion will be.

Just a side note. When i tried it with the small render that had low AA and detail, the result was more different then the original render.
That makes sense of course. So close the look of the original small image is to the original, so better and closer is the resized one.
So i tried with a small AA 6 rendered image instead of an AA 3 rendered small image too here.

Render time got higher of course but it was still nearly half the original size render time.
But i might have to use higher AA in the original size images too anyway after i did some tests with the animation.
So still very good if resizing works.

There is a small detail difference in Topaz. If the difference in quality is high enough to buy Topaz i am not sure.
But for that price maybe...

All are in this 44 Mb Onedrive zip file link if you want to see it for yourself.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao9EyFWihNgcilDOZRCJuXHXzx-w

WAS

Great work, Kadri. Love the look of the canyons with the haze.

Oshyan

Interesting results on the resizer. The classic issue with upscaling is that things get softer/blurrier (because there is no "real" detail to introduce). The Topaz system seems to introduce semi-realistic/context-appropriate but still semi-random "detail", which in many cases can look like noise or a lack of antialiasing. This counteracts the traditional blurriness problem of upscaling, but since the detail is not (and actually cannot be) "real", it often fails on specific features such as grasses. It does surprisingly well though! If it were me and you can't adjust the relative sharpness of the end result Topaz image, I might suggest/test actually *over*sizing, i.e. increasing size in Topaz to something larger than you actually want, then *downsample* the end result to your intended target resolution with something like a bilinear filter (e.g. in Photoshop), which will add back in a bit of smoothness. It still won't have the same *real* detail as a properly high resolution TG image, but it could look visually pretty comparable.

The other thing, though, is that this upscaling may not be temporally stable (i.e. it may not work in animation). That's definitely something to test.

- Oshyan

Kadri

#33

*Thanks Jordan.

*That sounds logical Oshyan. I might try that later.

Quote from: Oshyan on January 06, 2019, 05:12:19 PM
...
The other thing, though, is that this upscaling may not be temporally stable (i.e. it may not work in animation). That's definitely something to test.

- Oshyan

Now my main concern was this too. I think in an animation that could be the real problem here. Another thing to test.


Dune

In animation you actually need some blurriness I would say, so maybe it's more something for large stills.
I'll check out your files, Kadri. Thanks for sharing.

Kadri


Yes for stills it could be useful.

I made some more tests.
From very small images to higher ones (from 240 to 1920) Topaz is much better.
The image is bad relative to the original of course. But Topaz is better relative to resizing of Affinity photo is what i mean.

I tried one resizing from half HD to 5760x3240 (x600% looks like the maximum?).
It looked better too.

But i won't post these (if anyone still wants i will of course). I think the image itself is important too.
In my tests there are only noisy and blurry rocks and clouds.
The best is to try it on your own images most probably.

Topaz wants an account and is internet connected i think (i hate this always). That throw me off the first time i wanted to try it actually.

Now another test. I rendered 50 frames high AA half HD images of my animation. Curious about this one.

Dune

Internet connected? That wouldn't work for me.

Kadri


Not sure about that but it asked for name-email and password after the install phase.
Might be maybe only a one time thing i don't know.
In the past i used Comodo firewall and was always aware about such things.
But after having many problems with it i only use the internal Windows firewall  since Windows 8 :( .

jaf

I just disconnected from the Internet and didn't have any problems using the program.  Maybe there's some "fine print" about having to connect every x days or something -- have to see what the website says.
(04Dec20) Ryzen 1800x, 970 EVO 1TB M.2 SSD, Corsair Vengeance 64GB DDR4 3200 Mem,  EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 Graphics 457.51 (04Dec20), Win 10 Pro x64, Terragen Pro 4.5.43 Frontier, BenchMark 0:10:02

Dune

I need to install on an offline machine, so I'll send them a query.
I put some of your testfiles together for direct comparison, Kadri. Actually it's quite stunning, the resized small render looks even better than the big 4K original! After this I won't hijack your thread any longer. Thanks!

Kadri

#40

Render time is important for me. There is no hijacking and thanks for the direct comparison images Ulco :)
The small detail is surprising, isn't it. Even if it is fake, it looks better then sharpened images here.

I tried the animation resizing. It could work too.

Jaf thank you too. I would probably not considered this method before.

By the way. This was around some days ago i think.

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/max-payne-gets-an-amazing-hd-texture-pack-using-esrgan-and-is-available-for-download/

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46221

Not sure but from what i read here and there a little, it looks like Topaz is based on SRGAN.
With ESRGAN it might look maybe even better.

Maybe Matt will incorporate such things 5 years later direct at the rendering stage  :D

Dune

There's a site here https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN about ESRGAN, but there's not a regular installer or something. I'm always a bit reluctant to get these things working on my computer.
Btw. The AI gigapixel software probably needs to be online at least once in a few months, as I read in their forum. So off-limits for me, I'm afraid. But I asked them.....

Kadri

Quote from: Dune on January 09, 2019, 03:39:46 AM
There's a site here https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN about ESRGAN, but there's not a regular installer or something. I'm always a bit reluctant to get these things working on my computer...

I looked too and gave up until an easy Windows version-build.

Quote from: Dune on January 09, 2019, 03:39:46 AM
...
Btw. The AI gigapixel software probably needs to be online at least once in a few months, as I read in their forum. So off-limits for me, I'm afraid. But I asked them.....

Once in a few months is not so bad. But i would prefer without it too.

Dune

Not so bad maybe, but my machine is off, period.