Neural network image upscaling

[john71]

Hi! Neural image upscaling could help us make HD textures from low resolution ones. I found the projects neural-enhance and waifu2x which are developing open source tools. Do you know any other open source or offline neural upscaling projects?

[Goofy]

Hi John.
I searched and found many pages where it is possible to make a neural-enhance test, so I tried the "classic" 2k Phobos Celestia image, obtaining for free a 4k image, in a metter of seconds (a payment isdue for images bigger than 3000x3000 pixel , alas!).
Then I enlarged and cropped both images, and here we can see that, effectively, the image looks less noisy, smal craters are no more "square blobs", and the overall appearance is better, IMHO.
Comments?
Goofy

[Art Blos]

I searched and found many pages where it is possible to make a neural-enhance test, so I tried the "classic" 2k Phobos Celestia image, obtaining for free a 4k image, in a metter of seconds (a payment isdue for images bigger than 3000x3000 pixel , alas!).
Then I enlarged and cropped both images, and here we can see that, effectively, the image looks less noisy, smal craters are no more "square blobs", and the overall appearance is better, IMHO.
Comments?

IMHO, the difference is not significant. Any graphics editor can perform similar processing.

[john71]

Hi Goofy, "real" neural upscaling works very well, but these online versions in my opinion are not very good. Gimp can do the same with noise reduction. But it can be brutally effective, like old movies from the 1890s look very sharp.

[Goofy]

John 71, mine was just a try to understand what we are spelking of, and the result of this free commercial test was looking promising, and faster than Gimp or Photoshop...
So we'll hope for "real" open source network scaling disponibility....

Goofy

[john71]

That's OK, but try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_eZuOTBNc

[Goofy]

Yes, I have already seen some of these restored old time movies.
Results are interesting and nice, even if, for my taste, I prefer them in original, even with all the characteristic defects of those first attempts of filmography.
Anyway, I found somewhere that Neural Enhancing is particularly useful for this kind of movies and for anime.
Will it be useful for images like the ones we use in Celestia, too?
Thank you.
Goofy

[Challenger007]

Art Blos, I agree with you. the difference in picture quality is negligible. Perhaps it was worth taking a better quality source to make the final picture clearer.

[mario.schinder]

That sounds like a nice idea actually, what I would do is something similar to these two ideas together:


* Random texture generation (like this random face generation apps)
* Randomness based on seed (something similar that happens with a world generated in Minecraft


So then, you have each planet/star/etc with a unique texture/map, with as many details as you want due to the IA factor

[john71]

In my opinion procedural textures are good, when there is no data at all, but I have never seen any procedural texture which can compete with real ones. Space Engine is a very good software but to be honest the procedural planets look like very detailed cartoons. Celestia feels REAL somehow.

[mario.schinder]

I totally with you John, but I think procedural texture on Celestia fits perfectly, the point here is apart of the Solar system objects, outside we don't have a way to see how that really looks, and I remember they end up looking very similar...

so it would be amazing from the user experience point of view, having this option, so then you have the real sense of seeing different objects, not the same over and over (but just changing a little bit the color of the surface), but that is just my humble opinion

[john71]

I agree, but we have to remain on the ground of scientific realism. I don't like fairy tale planets with rainbow colored unreal textures, unless it is based on facts...

Added after 1 hour 23 minutes:
Maybe the developers should contact these guys: http://www.texturesforplanets.com/index.shtml

[Gurren Lagann]

I remenber using this generator on the Noral System (or the Noral Era, in my timeline), around 2 years ago... Looks like its outdated in my standards today.

[john71]

Looks like its outdated in my standards today.

I agree. If you have any other texture generator links please share it on this thread: https://celestia.space/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20530

[mario.schinder]

well, actually I don't mean to put rainbow xDD, I was more in the direction of complementing it, meaning:

All the stars look exactly the same, even the same sunspots... but with different colors.... it would be great that respecting the color of the star, and the intensity of that, make some variations on those sunspots, or the surface itself, same for a rock if we cannot see the craters for an asteroid outside of the Pluton orbit, it can be complemented with different craters than others

[Askaniy]

I recently improved the Neptune map using AI and color calculated by my True Color Tools.
Now it has a 4K resolution instead of 1.5K

https://www.deviantart.com/askaniy/art/Neptune-1989-Texture-Map-769376373

[john71]

Very nice!

[john71]

The best free upscaling utility: Cupscale

[john71]

Just to demonstrate why Cupscale is REVOLUTIONARY, I upscaled Askaniy's Neptune texture.

Here is the 16k result:

neptune-1989 sharp.png-4x_BSRGAN-.jpg

[fyr02]

This result is not much better than the 4K one.
all that is being done is edge sharpening and noise reduction on the clouds, which is both unrealistic and not worth the extra file space that comes with the 16K.