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‘DOOM’ Mod Uses AI to Enhance Original Graphics
Okay, we all know DOOM turned 25 earlier this month, and we know how legendary the modding community is with the game. But, as you know, a 25-year-old game’s graphics are usually not going to compare to today’s games. So, what’s a DOOM fan to do?
Enter Doomworld user Hidfan and his mod, which features upscaled graphics for all of the textures in the game. The cool (and scary) thing about this mod is the fact that it uses Nvidia’s GameWorks SuperResolution in conjunction with Photoshop plugin Topaz AI Gigapixel to upscale the graphics. In other words, an AI was able to take 1993 graphics, scale them up 8x, and then all Hidfan had to do was downscale them to 2x size and do some cleanup.
It’s not a perfect process, mind you. “A lot of textures have been manually cleaned of AI artefacts [sic] and all transparency masks have to be manually enhanced (because AI don’t [sic] know what to do with binary Black & White yet).”
Still, it’s certainly better-looking than what the longtime process entailed of making old-school pixel-based graphics look higher res than they were ever intended. And it doesn’t have that smeared Vaseline look, either.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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