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Depixelizing Pixel Art

research.microsoft.com

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Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#61

Post by bri3d »

DougBTX wrote: post #38
bri3d wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has had support for resolution independence where DPI is configurable across a continuum (rather than only available as 1x or 2x scale like on the Mac) for quite some time - the issue is that with a huge legacy application base, a giant morass of drawing technologies, and no shipped "HiDPI" or "Retina" Windows hardware until recently, there's been no real incentive for app developers to support it. In Windows…

> (rather than only available as 1x or 2x scale like on the Mac) It isn't continuous, but there are more than two scaling levels on OS X: https://blog.qt.digia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/qtRetin... More details: https://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2013/04/25/retina-display-sup...

Right, but as noted in the blog you link the application is still only exposed to 1x or 2x scale (where 1pt = 2px), and then everything is scaled back down.

On Windows the app is exposed to the scale factor (for better or worse): https://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2009/06/26/improving-support-...

Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#62

Post by panzi »

panzi wrote: post #57
lloeki wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you look at the first ones. All of Boo, Dolphin, all of SoM, Invaders, Golden Axe, Windows assets and Lost Vikings look great and have vastly reduced artifacts compared to hqx. Also, according to the paper abstract[0], it outputs vector, not scaled up bitmap. [0]: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/

As you say: It depends. E.g. the sword looks better with hq4x, because the result isn't rounded.

The Super Mario and Secret of Mana stuff works quite good, except it changes the facial expression on "Peach 2". I'd like to see Donkey Kong Country 1/2/3, Megaman (NES and SNES) and Chrono Trigger processed by this. And not just the sprites cut out of the background but embedded in a scene.

Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#63

Post by panzi »

joosters wrote: post #23
computerslol wrote: post #6

Looks great :) Makes me a bit less tense about the appearance of older programs in the 4k+ display future.

This would be awesome if it was available as a scaler for high-DPI screens and old apps. Or even bundled into televisions for upscaling. The paper does note that it is designed for hand-edited pixel art, where every different coloured pixel is treated as significant. So I wonder how it behaves when scaling photos? (Edit: the paper does note that it doesn't do well on anti-aliased graphics...)

Televisions have upscale algorithms. But nothing like this. But they don't need anything like this because they don't scale pixle art with sharp borders and very low resolution. They scale video footage (which one could say is "anti-aliased") with about 640x480 resolution.

Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#65

Post by ahassan »

bluedino wrote: post #34
rkuykendall-com wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if MS is working on Mac-Style resolution independence for W9? I'm currently running a Retina MBP, at 2x res I think, and it works _perfectly_. The first few months some apps didn't work well, but the community adapted very quickly.

It works perfect on the Mac but I wonder if that would be the case if you could still run old 'classic' apps. You'd think Microsoft of all companies would work in compatibilty fixes for at least the major apps. Like how they worked in so many fixes to make them compatible from 98-XP and such.

"Classic" apps will be scaled (using the normal bicubic filter) to twice their resolution on Mac. If they were implemented using Apple APIs, there's a good chance that text will be at a higher resolution and will appear clear.

Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#66

Post by chongli »

josh-wrale wrote: post #53
glhaynes wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A problem with this algorithm is that it's pretty slow. It would be hard to use it for real time scaling. Even if it's too slow for realtime on today's hardware, I'd love to see some prerendered sample videos.

Here's a video: https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart...

Am I crazy for preferring the one on the left (nearest-neighbour)? The other two really mess up certain details such as the point numbers, the stem of the fruits and pokey's eyes.

They also tend to cause a very subtle distortion of the outlines of foreground sprites as they move over the background.

Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#67

Post by scott_karana »

lloeki wrote: post #36
frik wrote: post #17

hq4x looks better (IMHO), sadly the website is offline (default blank wordpress site): http://hiend3d.com/hq4x.html backup on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20120630044334/http://www.hiend3... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hqx Source: https://code.google.com/p/hqx/source/browse/trunk/src/hq4x.c

Only if you look at the first ones. All of Boo, Dolphin, all of SoM, Invaders, Golden Axe, Windows assets and Lost Vikings look great and have vastly reduced artifacts compared to hqx. Also, according to the paper abstract[0], it outputs vector, not scaled up bitmap. [0]: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/

I agreed with you, but then I realized they're representing hqx deceptively.

There was a video posted here, with them rendered at the same resolution side by side.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7307975

It's really a matter of taste in this video.

Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#68

Post by vacri »

panzi wrote: post #57
lloeki wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you look at the first ones. All of Boo, Dolphin, all of SoM, Invaders, Golden Axe, Windows assets and Lost Vikings look great and have vastly reduced artifacts compared to hqx. Also, according to the paper abstract[0], it outputs vector, not scaled up bitmap. [0]: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/

As you say: It depends. E.g. the sword looks better with hq4x, because the result isn't rounded.

Look at Axe Battler 2 - if the sword isn't vertical, then the result is not superior. Unless, of course, you think the guy is wielding a sawtooth blade.

Not to mention that muscles have a smoothly-graded tone under the 'ours' algorithm, whereas hq4x has an unlifelike blocky effect.

Re: Depixelizing Pixel Art

#70

Post by cmelbye »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #24
jrockway wrote: post #14

I wish they would use this in Windows 8. As far as I can tell, their scaling algorithm for 4k displays is: scale up 2x using nearest neighbor, then randomly drop pixels to get back to 125% or 150%. The result is horrifyingly bad. Not just kind of bad, but unusably bad. (Adding insult to injury, they ClearType the text before scaling.)

Do you know if MS is working on Mac-Style resolution independence for W9? I'm currently running a Retina MBP, at 2x res I think, and it works _perfectly_. The first few months some apps didn't work well, but the community adapted very quickly.

Even when there were a few apps that didn't work well, in my experience at least, it was no one near as bad as W8's HiDPI features continue to be today. Apple did a really good job with that.
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