AuthorTopic: Resizing Practice Thread  (Read 6944 times)

Offline AlexHW

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Re: Resizing Practice Thread

Reply #10 on: February 14, 2016, 06:45:22 pm
Yeah, my first post, I had thought Helm was disappointed with upscaling since he mentioned he was disappointed, so I was focusing on typical problems you face when upscaling art and need to make it more readable. The results he showed in his upscaled image displayed typical qualities you get when you don't spend the extra effort to cleanup and clarify the underlying forms that you are intending to visualize in the low-res image. Or when you have multiple values/spaces competing for your attention, it gets confusing how to build off of it, so I was showing that you can remove that layer of abstraction and rebuild it.

After I realized my mistake, my second post basically was to point out that this activity is similar to using different sized brushes. I'll try to go into more detail as to why, but realize that I am not trying to discredit the activity- I'm just trying to observe/interpret the process in a unified artistic way (one that is not reliant on a style/medium). I appreciate the pixel-art nature of it though.
This activity here is to maintain the sense that there is a 2x2 pixel grid in the upscaled image. This means the grid should still be traceable after further modification of the pixels within the spaces that make up the 2x2 pixel grid.
So an effect of such activity will be a softening/blurring of the grid/space without removing sense of it completely.

This is not much different from when an artist uses a larger brush size and then goes back in and uses a smaller brush size. This is the main point I'm adding to the discussion. You are essentially giving attention to the space the color constructs and modifying the properties within it. Whenever you go from a broader brush to a finer brush, typically you are exploring the details within the broader spaces that were created.

So if framed in that way I think it is easy to see that this kind of process is used in all sorts of art, perhaps every art. The thing here is that it is being influenced by a grid, so the process naturally promotes the characteristics of an underlying grid rather than a more fluid space where the spaces within it have no unified shape.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2016, 06:48:27 pm by AlexHW »

Offline Helm

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Re: Resizing Practice Thread

Reply #11 on: February 14, 2016, 07:58:24 pm
Quote
This is not much different from when an artist uses a larger brush size and then goes back in and uses a smaller brush size. This is the main point I'm adding to the discussion. You are essentially giving attention to the space the color constructs and modifying the properties within it. Whenever you go from a broader brush to a finer brush, typically you are exploring the details within the broader spaces that were created.

Yeah, this is a good point, whereas in digital media we tend to zoom in and zoom out a lot and finetune willy nilly, in natural media a trained artist would go from gestural broad to specific by going with a smaller brush. This idea in this thread is using a tool which is more austere (straight up resizing upwards x2 at a specific point where you have to call you piece done) and that makes you think about the meta-grid more, and if it's of any use. Then even capturing pockets of implied single pixels (like a corner for example) can be seen as sub-grid in themselves, and I think this would make the artist be more considerate of their shapes.

Offline Arne

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Re: Resizing Practice Thread

Reply #12 on: February 15, 2016, 04:10:39 pm
I think Helm's 2x texture would work great in a raycasting or scale down+rotation engine, as the lack of single pixel detail would reduce noise (unlucky samples). I experimented some with down sampling (here from 5x) and rotation (and certain edge cases) back in 2004, as I was annoyed by how noisy (or blurry) rotated 1x graphics would look in most engines.

Offline Gil

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Re: Resizing Practice Thread

Reply #13 on: February 15, 2016, 04:59:28 pm
We were talking on Slack about rotation, but I hadn't connected it to this thread yet Arne, that's a great point.

Pixel art rotation usually relies on first upscaling something with a filter, like super eagle, then rotating it and downscaling again. So how is this connected to what Helm is doing? Does his technique of preserving the grid more or less lend itself well to downscaling again after rotation?

Here is a quote how the "perfect" algorithm for this kind of stuff would work, can we compare to what Helm is doing?
Quote
The general idea behind the super resolution method that Alexey Lukin et al. explained in their paper is to treat upscaling as inverse downscaling. So the aim is to find a high resolution image which, after downscaling, is equal to the low resolution image.

I think Helm's example would fare rather well when subjected to this test, while Alex's edit wouldn't. Is this somehow what Helm is going for (though he reached it by thinking about it differently)?

the lack of single pixel detail would reduce noise (unlucky samples)
This is probably essential to this line of thinking?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2016, 06:10:53 pm by Gil »

Offline Arne

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Re: Resizing Practice Thread

Reply #14 on: February 15, 2016, 06:10:33 pm
http://audio.rightmark.org/lukin/graphics/resampling.htm
http://audio.rightmark.org/lukin/graphics/lhouse_more.htm

Usually when I upscale (or want to remove noise/artifacts) I apply some median noise to blobbify the image.