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New Algorithm to Depixilize Pixel Art is Magical.
- Thread starter Green Biker Dude
- Start date
InfiniteNine
Rolling Girl
Those clean pixels are sexy indeed. Always thought it was the best way to upscale old pixel art.
From The Dust
Banned
Sqorgar said:
some people are sinners by birth
gingerbeardman
Member
I quite like this new vector stuff, but I'd really like to see it render animation to see if it would work in an emulator. I have my doubts (i'm a cynic). Great for producing some nice artwork, though.
If you want to filter pixel art to look better on modern TVs adding some sort of color bleeding to mimic old CRT displays is the only path that really makes sense. Trying to smooth the pixel art and remove the pixels always looks blotchy and strange, you can't turn a collection of square pixels into smooth lines, it just doesn't work.
You have two real options: either display the art as-is, or display it the way it would look on an actual CRT.
The CSI "enhance" comparison is exactly right. You can't add detail that isn't there, and a 20x20 grid of pixels is not enough to even guess at artist intent.
You have two real options: either display the art as-is, or display it the way it would look on an actual CRT.
The CSI "enhance" comparison is exactly right. You can't add detail that isn't there, and a 20x20 grid of pixels is not enough to even guess at artist intent.
What people often tend to forget is that simply outputting to a CRT won't exactly make their games look the way they "should". First of all, for low res games you'll want a 15Khz monitor. Not a 31Khz (pc crt monitor)!!! The best picture you can get is an RGB signal from your console, pc or arcade board. The important bit here is to run your games at their native resolution. I've seen people hook up their pc with s-video to their tv and have it output a 640x480 signal. So basically you're stretching/scaling your (snes example) 256x224 game to a much higher resolution, the same as you would with your LCD screen. You won't get your "240p" picture that way, and won't have your beautiful REAL scanlines.
Anyone that uses emulation on their PCs and wants to get a faithful/crisp picture should get a monitor/tv with an RGB input, and download the software soft15khz to allow your video card to output all those lovely resolutions. It's a wonderful thing
So I spent the last half hour trying to take pictures of my Sony PVM-2530 displaying some arcade games, but found it's insanely difficult to get pictures looking the way it actually looks!
Anyone that uses emulation on their PCs and wants to get a faithful/crisp picture should get a monitor/tv with an RGB input, and download the software soft15khz to allow your video card to output all those lovely resolutions. It's a wonderful thing
So I spent the last half hour trying to take pictures of my Sony PVM-2530 displaying some arcade games, but found it's insanely difficult to get pictures looking the way it actually looks!
Hey guys, I'm pretty newbie at this so.. if I were to use the MaMe emulator or some nes/snes/whatever emulator, is there some way to connect it to a CRT monitor? I still got an old monitor laying around here that could become my "retro gaming booth" Though I would also need some controllers too.. (or just two arcade sticks and leave it for Mame stuff only).
Though I would also need some controllers too.. (or just two arcade sticks and leave it for Mame stuff only).If you can hook up your CRT and the desired controllers to the PC that's running MAME, you can play games on that monitor. It might take some fiddling with display settings, but that's not too difficult.Mik2121 said:Hey guys, I'm pretty newbie at this so.. if I were to use the MaMe emulator or some nes/snes/whatever emulator, is there some way to connect it to a CRT monitor? I still got an old monitor laying around here that could become my "retro gaming booth"
I *love* it looking like that. It's like that moment when I first pumped my consoles into a Sony HiScan CRT or the first time I played my DC via VGA Box. Or remember how amazing the screenshots looked in those old issues of DHGF? They made your actual game purchase look like crap because it didn't look anywhere near as perfect as they did in their magazine. I'm a sucker for solid, clean, vibrant, square pixels.Lord Error said:
To the point of the OP, I think that filter actually does a decent job at figuring out the intent of the original pixel art. I wouldn't use it, but technically it's pretty cool.
I have no problem with that, I'm just saying that trying to mimic a CRT look based on how CRTs actually work is a valid approach to me. As-is is faithful to how the game was made, an approach that mimics CRT is faithful to how the game looked at the time and was meant to be displayed.
An approach that tries to smooth is attempting to create something out of nothing.
Edit: Personally I never use any filters, don't see then need.
Takamura-San
Member
RomanticHeroX said:
Because not everyone loves pixel art?
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Most people used ~20" CRT monitors for DC with VGA, which were capable of native 640x480 resolution though. Even on LCD, 640x480 is not so bad.ghibli99 said:
Older games however were all at around 320x200, and when you stretch that to 1920x1200 on a larger sized monitor, the pixels become such huge blocks that all the gradient dithering efforts are lost, and at times things look like a random moving mess, where it's hard to even tell what some shapes are supposed to be. Adding some softness and color bleeding like that CRT filter does, actually helps your eyes resolve the shapes.
Also, it's undeniably false to say that pixel artists were not designing with this added CRT bluriness in mind. There's plenty of obvious examples where various dithering techniques were used to create gradients or transparencies, as they knew things would look smooth in the end product where you can't see each individual pixel.
All that said, nearest neighbour blocky upscaling is my 2nd favorite option generally, and even preferred in some cases. I like these shape recognition/vector upscalers too with a few games only (Yoshi's Island for example)
That's still a problem with all these vector filters, they only operate on still images, so you have these smooth looking objects jumping on your screen 6 pixels at a time whenever there's any movement.gingerbeardman said:
One of the many good things about plasma, considering that console games are still mostly not running at 1080p and/or have low levels of AA.TheExodu5 said:
Fad? I've been a pixel artist for nigh on twenty years now and I've found that my work has only gotten more popular and more appreciated as an art form. Why hell, when I started my webcomic, nobody even knew the term "pixel art". They all called it a sprite comic. I had to knock a few heads around, but the distinction was made and now people appreciate the art form for what it is.orioto said:
Not even remotely true. Has nothing to do with the size of the pixels. It's about the composition of pixels and color selection. It takes a lot of skill and talent to be able to produce something like Metal Slug. Great pixel art looks great at any size.
Warm Machine
Member
KittenMaster said:
As someone who used to do pixel art in Deluxe Paint, I painted for the given palette and for the PC monitor I was painting on. The failures of thousands of different flickering CRT tvs were the least of my concerns.
I was well aware though of dithering to blend colours to the eye and that every pixel counted went working at resolutions of 320x200 or lower. This all said, filters that attept to blend are awful. In my opinion pixel art should be seen as the artist who painted it saw it on their computer monitor, or at worst, with regular non colour bleeding or ghosting artifacting scanlines.
ninjaurbano
Member
InfiniteNine said:
I think a good CRT filter can keep their original characteristics.
Nearest neighbor
CRT Shader
Nearest neighbor
CRT Shader
More details about this CRT shader, that can be used with bsnes: http://filthypants.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-emulator-pixel-shaders-crt-updated.html
I don't find that to be a particularly pleasing CRT shader. Scanlines are too pronounced, and the colors don't have the NTSC bias. The gain is a little too low as a result of the scanlines.
edit: I guess I'm just sitting too close...doesn't look too bad from a distance. Gain still feels a little low though (or rather, non existant, resulting in a significantly duller image than the original). Easily fixable, though.
edit: I guess I'm just sitting too close...doesn't look too bad from a distance. Gain still feels a little low though (or rather, non existant, resulting in a significantly duller image than the original). Easily fixable, though.
ninjaurbano
Member
TheExodu5 said:
In bsnes, you can also use this CRT shader with the NTSC filter, at the same time.
HDgaming42
Member
lobdale said:
I need to know this! I've got MAMEUI 0.142u4 and have edited my .ini file with settings found on a MAME-centric forum.
nothing. no visible difference. I've relaunched MAME after the edit etc.
*confused*
Peter.Simpson909 said:
http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthread...mber=255378&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=&vc=1
I used this link.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Even the PC and Amiga monitors of that time had some fuzziness around pixels and non-perfect square pixels, unlike today's LCDs. It was very different looking at a pixel art on them, compared to an LCD.Warm Machine said:
Warm Machine
Member
Lord Error said:
I used to paint on an old IBM CRT monitor in 256 color VGA. The pixels didn't blend color together in 1991. The only thing that was bad was the dot pitch on those screens depending on your monitor. Sure, they were not perfectly accurate but they were not as raw as a tv screen. Between unfiltered raw dot for dot perfection and interlaced, rasterizer, ghosted, bleeding, RF cable output I'll take the modern unfiltered perfection.
Roto13 said:
Try redrawing a few thousand of them by hand, from scratch, in high-res. On a tight deadline. When you've done that, get back to me. Maybe then you'll see firsthand why 'this world of beautiful hand drawn HD sprites' is so fucking empty nowadays, and why something that can be used to automate part of that process and save artists a crapton of time might be handy.
And whether or not those filtered sprites look 'a lot worse' than the originals is debatable - just the responses in this thread alone prove that. I think they'd provide a decent base to work from, and could look pretty damn good with some manual cleanup and tweaking.
Princess Skittles
Prince's's 'Skittle's
This is why black and white films were colorized back in the day. Complete and utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the source material.
Anybody that wants to mutilate that art probably should stick to man murder games on HD systems with excessive bloom lighting. Because that "looks good" on their modern displays.
I mean.. it's a disgrace, those games are only meant to be enjoyed on 13" TVs from Goodwill through an RF connection.
That is NOT a problem. At all. Never was. Never will be.Lord Error said:
That.. is beautiful art.Lord Error said:
Anybody that wants to mutilate that art probably should stick to man murder games on HD systems with excessive bloom lighting. Because that "looks good" on their modern displays.
Yup. Anybody that had a quality display and properly hooked up equipment "back in the day" will appreciate just how clean and crisp you can get these beautiful art games looking unfiltered today.ghibli99 said:
Fad. Cute. Nice way to insult all of the talented people that worked meticulously drawing out complete worlds and characters on graph paper or dot by dot zoomed in at 16x to get the perfect image.orioto said:
I guess you never had a 32" Sony Trinitron TV during the heyday of the SNES and PS1's delicious 2D masterpieces or seen one of those giant tournament sized arcade machines showing off Street Fighter III?orioto said:
I mean.. it's a disgrace, those games are only meant to be enjoyed on 13" TVs from Goodwill through an RF connection.
bob_arctor
Tough_Smooth
ninjaurbano said:
I would love to use these (I tried them out) but I still can't find a way to get rid of the horrible screen tearing I get in bsnes using Opengl or even Direct3D. I always use the Contra 3 opening cinematic, when the words "Alien Wars" starts scrolling by, to gauge it.
I've actually resorted to using DirectDraw just to eliminate it entirely which is the lesser of two evils because then I have to deal with the built-in bilinear filter that can't be turned off AFAIK cuz I'm running Windows 7.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
It's not nostalgia, and I explained why in the followup post. Your eyes have a much more natural job of making out that something is supposed to be a human character out of that Rastan sprite on screen posted above, than they would if the sprite was built out of 6x6 perfectly square blocks.KevinCow said:
Princess Skittles said:
I'm not a fan of the Mame shots posted...I think they emulate too many CRT flaws in my eyes. However, the FF VI shot I posted rounds the pixels a bit, adding color bleed, and outputs the NTSC gamut. The colors are the most important to me...the FF VI screenshot in raw form looks dull and digital. The NTSC filtered one looks significantly more natural. Color bleed is an important aspect of displaying pixel art naturally. With completely square pixels, a lot of that suggested detail is lost. Circular shapes give the best example of this, as they are significantly aliased on an LCD, but look far less aliased on a CRT, giving the impression of greater detail.
I do own a 27" Sony Trinitron, and have my SNES hooked up through S-Video, and I configured FF VI to look as close to the TV output as I could on the emulator. And no, the pixels are absolutely not squared on the CRT. The color bleed is very minimal, but it is as well in my emulated shot.
I can see the want for an adjusted color pallet though, some game's colors were tailored to be viewed on NTSC TVs. I can't see why people want curvature and scan lines though.KevinCow said:
In the context of mame though, I seen no reason to have adjusted colors, since they used RGB Monitors which didn't have the color issues of NTSC TVs. At best you just need to lower the brightness if you want to simulate some age (My old CRT Monitor does that naturally )