#ts4k upscale

[lt-sims]

Thanks everyone for your interest in the TS4k Upscale mod! I'm still looking for a collaborator, so if you know C# please reach out to me ♡

@obscurus-sims had some great questions so I decided to take the HQ Lady out into play mode to demonstrate the differences. Check out the read more for the specifics!

Where this new method of upscaling shines is in face/body details, as well as clothing that have complicated normal maps, such as the pants.

In terms of file size, items that just have the diffuse map seem to be a bit smaller:

CC Items with normal maps are of a larger size -- but that's because the old HQConverter did not upscale normal maps. Normal maps are usually 1024x1024. In the TS4k upscaled version, they're 2048x2048. Hence the larger file size.

One last note is about compression. I don't know a ton about how TS4 compresses things, but something happens somewhere after what I see in photoshop, and what I see in game. The TS4k Upscale won't fix the artifacts you see because of compression. This is best demonstrated on dark clothing.

So to clarify, the TS4k Upscale mod would only work on upscaling textures (.png and .dds images). The limitations of compression in-game would unfortunately still exist.

[lt-sims]

(Please full-size to see the actual difference in quality! Tumblr compression sucks)

Looking for collaborators!!!

Here's a project I've been noodling on for some time now -- using ERSGANs to upscale Sims textures! I'm quite excited about the results so far. It's bittersweet to post about this though. I was hoping to collaborate with CmarNYC's on updating the HQConverter to use new techniques for upscaling. Without CmarNYC's HQ Converter, the current HQ mod would not even have been possible. Her contributions to the Sims community were so helpful and ubiquitous and she will be remembered. So right now the TS4k Upscale mod is a semi-manual process, of exporting textures using Sims 4 Studio, then upscaling those using chaiNNer, and importing those upscaled textures back into the package. So these screenshots are just a proof-of-concept. The program I'm imagining would be a blend of S4pi or S4TK, and using pytorch to upscale extracted images.

I can handle the Python portion, but I unfortunately do not know C# or JS. Admittedly I started this project last year and looked into the HQConverter source and S4pi and and then got overwhelmed. So... if anybody who is a little more savvy with C#/S4pi (or JS/S4TK) want to collaborate on creating the program together, please let me know. I would love to make this project a reality some day!

CC Shown: Llumisims Vanilla Noodles Body Overlay , Twisted-cat Lemonade Skin Overlay

CmarNYC's HQConverter

ERSGAN paper

chaiNNer