Impressive algorithm. Great work by the developer. Curious to know how what the performance impact would be for real time usage. At 1:25, just like you said about the result being similar to a vectorized art style. I think that is one of the first step in this algorithm. It is generating a vector illustration from the pixel png and then smoothing out individual groups. Because the rounder pill at 1:32 look seriously looks pretty clean and I'm not sure how exactly its doing that otherwise.
Interesting! I don't really like the effect - probably because I work a lot with vector graphics and often see similar rounded shapes as an effect of very bad vectorization of bitmap, so this filter reminds me of it. HOWEVER, even then I see the value of this as a different point of view. For example, checking how my pixel shapes may be interpreted (that maybe I should work on curve shapes or get rid of some pointy corners etc.) I like how your Grim Girl Hanna screen turned out - the land looks very cartoony and reminds me of Worms Armageddon maps :)
Haha that's completely understandable! Yeah I think the most appealing thing is to apply this to one's own work as a novelty for the way it reflects your logic in construction and application of highlights/shading. That alternate point of view is satisfying to review when you're familiar with what the intent was in the original piece
Honestly, i would love to see this the other way around. ive done some work on rendering 3D models into pixelart and its a tough nut to crack without doing your own ai research.
For animation you can upload all frames as individual PNG files and after the conversion you can simply press the "download as zip" button. By the way you can see the same upscalr effect used in real time in the Sokpop's indie game Pocket Watch.
For the animation, they're probably exporting each frame as a separate image, processing them with this tool, then stitching them back together as a GIF in photoshop or something,
There was an old game from the early 90s called 'Operation Inner Space' that had a similar effect for ship sprites. Really cool to see a modern version of this process, especially on your colorful and saturated style of pixel art. Really great tool, thanks for highlighting it!
It's just a simple algorithm that multiply pixels. For exemple, here is the Scale2X algorithm in C language : if (B != H && D != F) { E0 = D == B ? D : E; E1 = B == F ? F : E; E2 = D == H ? D : E; E3 = H == F ? F : E; } else { E0 = E; E1 = E; E2 = E; E3 = E; } The letters from A to I are the base pixels and E1, E2, E3, E4 are the expanded new pixels. So starting from this pattern : ABC DEF GHI The central pixel E will be expanded like this : E0E1 E2E3
Beautifully smoothed over pixel art. Thanks. I hate it! (The implimentation here IS really interesting. But it's hard to shake the feeling that we've just witnessed a crime against pixel art.)
It seems like a really great tool for seeing problems with your pixel art... Just like flipping the work horizontally or looking at it in black and white. It stops me from focusing in on pixel clusters and I can start looking at the whole.
Yeah this really works well for this purpose. I've already noticed some dodgy outlining and lack of contrast on some of my older sprites. It makes it much quicker to see these things.
That's a really good point! Having balanced connections in cluster work is what we're imagining when making the art (often by "proofreading" at different zoom level, etc.), and this kind of highlights those decisions
2:43 I literally gasped upon seeing a pixel-scaled comic. It just filled me with too much inspiration that my brain momentarily stops working. I'm today years old when I realized such style exists, and it's so cool.
Duuude yes!!!!! I was seeing these all over Twitter and was wondering if you were going to try it out! So cool to see your work through this :D Coming from a 2D/cartoon background seeing all these works makes me very happy :'D
Thanks! Yeah it was awesome seeing some of your work through this too, it translates really well and shows off those illustrative fundamentals! Now we have to figure a reliable way to go the opposite direction and turn an illustration into pixel art (like, with accurate pixel logic, not just a downscaled mess) 😅
I'm not normally a fan of the smooth upscaling effect, but for architecture and backgrounds this is actually looking rather interesting, especially 2:33.
Pretty neat, this emulates something closer to the actual intended look of most pixel art on a real CRT in classic games, but with a cleaner appearance for modern displays.
Wow, thanks for sharing! This is really cool. I'm new to pixel art, and I've been struggling to achieve this type of effect for my level backgrounds. Can't wait to see how the program responds to my sprites!
I actually have a Version of the mGBA emulator that has a similar feature built in as a render shader. It is not perfect, but I was really amazed how interested games like the original Advance Wars looked like with it.
IroKaru's PiXel ScAler and this video did indeed fulfill that 6th step for me!! The results are really neat! It does a really good job of keeping the charming qualities of the source material and I really like some of the unique shapes it introduces. I didn't know what to expect for the dithering patterns but those interpretations are some of my favourite liberties this tool takes! 😌 Also, the page design is just lovely! I'm going to have to try feeding it some images ✨
Thanks, and yeah the dithering was one of the more interesting results here! What I think is appealing with a tool like this is the ability to portray the highlight/shading logic used in pixel art, but with the dithering it introduces it's own view on the pattern that doesn't necessarily represent the intended logic, but is still a fun interpretation :D
Hi! I LOVE your content, I always look at your channel for help. I am a pixel art novice and I recently tried the stick figure method but I messed up by having fill on lol. but thank you for all the help your channel has given me.
Yo, that Hana upscale looked AWESOME! I mean, I'm biased since Hana is my favorite character of yours, but it's still REALLY cool. I like what the AI did to the skull (like you mentioned), but also the text.
At the 3:22 mark The animation they showed wasn't animation from the software, they were using a game making tool to show off how it looks in action in a game. It was probably Pixel Game Maker MV.
This definitely reminds me of the google experiment that did a similar thing. They experimented with individual sprites and then whether you could just feed frames from a game in.
You could upload a sequence and then re-assemble GIF by yourself. It would be interesting to look whether pixel and dithering interpretation would stay stable through all the animation.
I think for animated gifs you could split it into its individual frames, use the tool on each and then reassemble it. It's likely what the dev did to produce the animated versions
don't think it'd work for a finished piece, smoothing pixel art always ruins it, but i agree with other comments; this can be a good way to get a fresh perspective on the overall look of a piece!
I managed to do this with an animated scene by using aseprite. I exported the frames of the gif as a sprite sheet and then re imported the result in aseprite.
Could you also show CRT before and after using the tool? CRT seems to do some smoothing, sorta, so the effect may be very subtle, but it would still be an interesting comparison.
I originally watched this video on my phone's small screen and could not see a difference. Now watching on my laptop, I like what it does with the larger scenes but not with the individual character models.
