About
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Gigapixel Texture-Upscaling Tutorial
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Tutorial Info
Type Name Difficulty advanced Requirements - Gigapixel
- Python
- Pillow (PIL fork)
- PNGtoDDSTextureScripts
- A bulk file renaming utility (recommended)
- XnConvert
- NormalmapGenerator (optional)
- NVIDIA Texture Tools 3Tutorial Files Any vanilla Morrowind textures will do
This step-by-step tutorial describes a workflow for upscaling textures with AI, through the use of Gigapixel AI. Other AI upscaling tools such as ESRGAN can be used instead of Gigapixel, but the instructions here will assume usage of the latter.
Goals
By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to:
- Convert textures in bulk from TGA/DDS format to PNG, ready to be upscaled.
- Upscale textures using Gigapixel 7
- Optionally generate normal maps and specular maps using NormalmapGenerator.
- Convert the upscaled textures back to the appropriate DDS format using NVIDIA Texture Tools 3 via Python batch scripts
Prerequisites
The tools outlined here are required in order to follow this tutorial. Several of these have equivalent tools which could be used instead by experienced users. However, this tutorial will assume the user is using the tools described below.
Gigapixel 7
Gigapixel 7 (personal) is required. Theoretically the trial version will suffice, but any output textures processed by it will have a watermark applied to them. Gigapixel Pro will also work, but it is more than is necessary.
XnConvert
XnConvert will be used to convert the original textures from DDS or TGA into DDS format in bulk. Equivalent batch image converters can be used instead. If only working on a handful of textures, even Gimp or Photoshop will suffice, but these are not suitable for batch processing large amounts of images.
NVIDIA Texture Tools 3
NTT3 is used for converting the Gigapixel-upscaled textures to the appropriate DDS format. NTT3 must be used, as opposed to NVIDIA Texture Tools, because PNGtoDDSTextureScripts utilizes NTT3’s API.
Python + PIL
Python is required in order to run the PNGtoDDSTextureScripts used for processing the textures through NTT3.
In addition, the scripts utilize PIL, which can be installed via pip.