AI RESTORATION Final Fantasy IX backgrounds

[Dan Lel]

Do you want true upscaled backgrounds, only way to do that is to either recreate the scenes and render them again or use artificial intelligence. Look at this result:
https://i.imgur.com/do07vyl.jpg

You can try it yourself on this site:
https://letsenhance.io/boost
(Select the photo upscale option)

If anyone wants true HD backgrounds you could take each sprite from every background and enhance them using the artificial intelligence. However you can only restore 4 free images then you've got to subscribe to the service for 6.99 a month. But perhaps that is a small price to pay for a super HD Final Fantasy 9 mod. An interesting find wouldn't you say, backgrounds as detailed and as crisp as the characters in the pc port. This same technology could be used for FF8 too.

[Fraggoso]

One Background contains several Layers Plus animation. You can't just do one layer but instead save the while scene as one image and upscale it and cut it back.

Do this like 10-20 times because some backgrounds have several animations and you're done.

If it batches can't be used, forget about it as you'll end up with like 30.000 images (take or add a few).

[Dan Lel]

You created the background mod using a manga filter, perhaps you could attempt doing the same thing with artificial intelligence. The result in my first post is just from grabbing a low res image of Google. The result might be even better if done to ripped backgrounds. Each background has multiple sprites and animations, which might make things difficult if you have to do each sprite by hand, but not impossible.

At some point someone ought to enhance the backgrounds using artifical intelligence. Here are some more examples if anyone's interested.
https://petapixel.com/2017/10/31/website-uses-ai-enhance-photo-csi-style/

[Euwrecker]

The results look more promising than Waifu2x at least.

[Mikali]

Yeah, those do look good. But if you can't do a batch job then it's pointless.

[chuwy8000]

I'm in contact with LetsEnhance about doing a batch upload/conversion. I have downloaded all the static backgrounds from here: https://imgur.com/a/A09TB#131 Does anybody have a link to all of the other sprites and animations that weren't included that might need to be upscaled also?

[Fraggoso]

The animations are prerendered layers. You're best to rip them using HW like I did.

[Dan Lel]

Chuwy each background has layered sprites, so you wouldn't be able to just upscale those backgrounds. I suppose your would have to combine every sprite in every background, upscale them then use the original sprites as reference for cutting out the upscaled scprites individually. Unlike what Fraggoso did the AI needs the entire image as reference for figuring out how to upscale them properly. So I don't think you could take each sprite and upscale them, every background then cut the backgrounds up afterwards.

[Fraggoso]

@Dan Lel That's what I exactly did with the backgrounds. Otherwise the animations will have different colors and/or artifacts opposed to the background.

[Dan Lel]

Yes but the AI needs the entire image to make sense of the pixels, so he would have to combine the sprites then cut them out again. Which means he'll have to do some extra work before and after scaling them up. I assume you used that program on every sprite Fraggoso. Chuwy if you don't want to do that I could help you do it since my photoshop knowledge is exstensive. As long as you extract the backgrounds and upscale them.

Give me a folder for every background in which the sprite layers are listed. Then I'll do the cutting and pasting unless you want to do it yourself.

[chuwy8000]

I’m afraid this is where I become slightly out of my depth. If you were both able to help me produce image files that I could get uploaded and processed, we could get this new mod sorted together?

[Fraggoso]

I'm out, I did this for more than one year.
@Dan Lel I did the same procedure that you're mentioning btw. aned yes, it needs to be done that way or else you'll receive subpar results.

[chuwy8000]

@Fraggoso, I think I speak for the majority of FF9 players on Steam when I say that we are all super appreciative of the work that you put into your Waifu Background mod. It is used by many and your time and effort making it is a gift to all of us. Since you’ve been through this before, your experience in this area would be invaluable, not least because you’ve overcome programming issues that @Dan Lel and I probably wouldn’t be able to sort ourselves. If Dan Lel did the photoshop work and I facilitated the upscaling of the images, would you be able to guide us in implementing them into a workable mod similar to your Waifu mod?

[Fraggoso]

Luckily you don't have to program one single line of code (besides of course automating things via Photoshop).
I can try to write a little guide in regards of ripping the backgrounds and inserting them back.

You'll need the original isos of FFIX though or else you will not receive a good result as the PSX backgrounds don't suffer from the bad filters of the pc version.

[chuwy8000]

A guide like that would be fantastic. I have the original discs and can make ISOs from it. Thanks so much!

[Dan Lel]

I've got a program which automatically resizes a list of images by a percentage. So if I know by how much you intend to increase the background images for the AI to work on I'll know by how much I would need to resize the original images so I could use them as reference for cutting up the resized images later.

If you create a folder for each background and in every folder list all of the sprites in numerical order for each background then I could do the pasting and cutting work. When I've pasted them together I'll send them to you, you incrase them by a percentage send them back to me and I'll cut out the sprites. Then you put them back into the game and upload it as a mod.

For the examples in the first post I just grabbed a background off the internet, it might have been of low quality so maybe the AI is going to provide us with and even better result. Add me on steam Chuwy if you're interested in doing this.

EDIT: Not sure how you would do background elements that are animated, I suppose you would have to create a version of the background for each frame of whatever is being animated in the scene. That's quite painful but doable I suppose.