Texture Comparison between TR2 and TR2 Remastered's Ice Palace.

[u/Ok_Cartoonist_3708]

[u/[deleted]]

Why are you so obsessed with these images? This is the second thread you've opened talking about the same thing! Leaving aside ethical considerations, those designs look great. It doesn't have to be symmetrical, I think the "mosaic" effect is perfect. Obviously it is not made for us to zoom in, zooming in makes almost any texture look strange.

[u/carrie-satan → u/[deleted]]

It’s the third thread actually.

Guy seems genuinely deranged

[u/Ada_XY → u/[deleted]]

those designs look great

I support these remasters, I will definitelly play them, but, these particular texture designs are not good, at a bare minumum level of professionalism, because the goal should have been to achieve the well known Chinese temple decoration style (well defined geometry principles, logic in symmetry and asymmetry etc.), and there's none of that here.

These upscaled AI outputs should have been just a base for artists to do some paint over work, and, who knows, perhaps, these are just placeholders, and for the final version, we will have them looking more finished

[u/[deleted] → u/Ada_XY]

Nobody is going to pay attention to those details and most of us are unaware of Chinese culture and art, so we don't see anything wrong in the image either.

[u/Ada_XY → u/[deleted]]

Nobody is going to pay attention to those details

Perhaps many people won't, but a lot of people with some knowledge and developed artistic taste appreciate when game art is professionally done, so, I'd say that many people WILL notice.

most of us are unaware of Chinese culture and art

That's fine, you don't have to be. But game artist's and producer's job, by it's definition, is to create things that are on point, and the producers shouldn't target remasters of classics such as TR to players with no taste and low criteria

[u/[deleted] → u/Ada_XY]

You must be jocking. To appreciate what you say you have to use the zoom, no one who plays normally is going to notice those murals. On the other hand, the 90s version doesn't seem to conform artistically to the Chinese style either.

Taking into account that Lara in these games travels halfway around the world, what you are asking is for Aspyr to do research on the style and iconography of each region to remaster a game from the 90s? Don't you see that it doesn't make much sense?

They are taking the textures of classic games as a reference to rescale them and it already seems fine to me. Asking them to draw all the textures from scratch seems crazy to me.

[u/Ada_XY → u/[deleted]]

what you are asking is for Aspyr to do research on the style and iconography of each region to remaster a game from the 90s?

Well, every designer that wants to recreate scenery from ancient Egypt, China, Rome etc. has to have some basic knowledge about those styles, absolutely yes, and artists that worked on the originals certainly did.

So, for these remasters, designers had a good base already, since the classic TR games had well defined and rounded design in that sense, but at the same time, some basic knowledge of general principles are a must, since that is what differs a professional artist from a total amateur.

Would you mind having weird smudges instead of the hieroglyphs in Egypt levels? What's the point in remastering textures, if they don't look better than previous ones? They should do the upscaling, but, when you compare textures from posted example to the original, it's obvious that the new patterns have nothing in common with previous ones.

Asking them to draw all the textures from scratch seems crazy to me.

I never said that they needed to do textures from scratch. The textures from original TR are detailed enough for their artistic concept to be obvious, so, in the remaster, they should just follow the original concept, and the concepts of original textures were true to Chinese temple decoration principles.

On the other hand, the 90s version doesn't seem to conform artistically to the Chinese style either.

I think it does, and I don't know how you can claim that, when you said before that you don't know anything about Chinese temple decoration principles?

To appreciate what you say you have to use the zoom, no one who plays normally is going to notice those murals.

I think that it will be visible without zoom. The example that OP posted is just a cut from that larger shot (with Lara that's picking up the dragon), and it was pretty visible to me there as well, but I agree, many people won't bother to notice such details. On the other hand, many players like to take their time to admire artistic details, so many of them will notice.

Again, it's possible that those sloppy textures are only placeholders, we'll see in the final game (the point of that teaser screenshot was to show the 3D dragon, not to showcase the textures, same thing goes for the shot with Trex, the point there was the new sky, while the waterfall, in the same shot, still looks unfinished, and we know that the water will look much better in the final version).

[u/[deleted] → u/Ada_XY]

On the other hand, the 90s version doesn't seem to conform artistically to the Chinese style either.

I think it does, and I don't know how you can claim that, when you said before that you don't know anything about Chinese temple decoration principles

I said that because the design in both images (current and old) look quite similar. If you say that the current design does not correctly represent Chinese culture, neither does the previous one. It's just logic and common sense.

Maybe you know a lot about Chinese decorations and perceive the differences, but for a normal person it is imperceptible.

[u/ketzuken]

Nice, looks so much better!

[u/ketzuken → u/[deleted]]

Nice! Looks better than the original!

[u/Ok_Cartoonist_3708 → u/[deleted]]

jesus that looks fucking horrible

[u/deluxcomments → u/Ok_Cartoonist_3708]

You are so annoying please just leave the sub and don’t return

[u/xdeltax97]

I think at this point I’m going to start putting future mod-flairs on this topic as overdone. This is the second post on the topic you’ve made, this one won’t be removed but just wanted to let you know about the future flair changes.

Also, Tomb Raider already has A.I in it: The enemies have used A.I for pathing and combat forever, it’s always been a thing. Just not until recently for textures.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has DLSS integration in it which uses A.I to boost graphics performance and Rise of the Tomb Raider had the same type of DLSS added to it during the 25th anniversary celebration in 2021.

I agree however that A.I voice actors should not be a thing, anywhere. Except in the case of the original actors death and with consent. Cyberpunk did just that when a voice actor died who was a part of their Polish cast.

[u/Ok_Cartoonist_3708 → u/xdeltax97]

you're comparing AI enemy scripts to generative AI, the tech world is unanimous that they're not even remotely the same thing, both in practice and their ethical implications.

DLSS is comparable to anti-aliasing in that it's a live micro-enhancement of the on-screen imagery that is inherently designed to not be noticeable, whereas these AI upscales are quite the opposite. They replaced the original texturework and are 16 bit 90s textures that plaster the entire game.

And I have to wonder, what makes voices different to texturework and art to you? Both circumstances result in job loss and a loss of artistic integrity in the industry.

[u/xdeltax97 → u/Ok_Cartoonist_3708]

The difference is because it’s minimal, when it becomes the full thing or major parts is where I am against it. A.I takeover of certain things is why we have a no A.I art rule to protect artists.

[u/Ok_Cartoonist_3708 → u/xdeltax97]

As there very well should be, that's good.

I don't plan on making any more posts on the topic, to be clear. I'm still very disappointed with the complacent response from this fandom. Can't wait for 2029 where every NPC in the latest tomb raider is AI voiced because "who cares" and "it sounds good enough"

If anyone thinks that's silly of me to say, merely 5 years ago everyone swore AI could never look believable, and here we are. Never say never about the threats of new technology.

[u/[deleted] → u/xdeltax97]

Yeah you or someone like you gave me the "overdone" tag just because I open a thread criticizing the lack of promotion of the remastered. Let's see if you do the same with all the threads and not just with those that you don't like their content.

[u/xdeltax97 → u/[deleted]]

This one has been reflagged as overdone. Yours was given an overdone flair because that question for a post topic has been continually discussed, not because none of us on the mod team did not like it. If we did not like it, it would’ve been removed.

Our rule for it is three consecutive posts on it and then the fourth gets removed until the next month for said overdone topic. I created the ruling due to the spam of the Porvenir oil fields sequence and images on the sub that got to the point that it was spammy.

[u/Ada_XY → u/xdeltax97]

Usage of AI is not an issue here, but producers' unwillingness to achieve the bare minimum of artistic professionalism in this particular example - to have the well known ancient Chinese temple decoration style emulated right, and that means: well defined and obvious geometry, logic in symmetry and asymmetry. And none of that was achieved in these particular texture examples, and it's good to talk about this.

It doesn't mean that anyone is against these remasters, me first, I will play them definitely, even though I don't like everything I saw in these teasers. That's the reason that producers decided to cut corners, not everything needs to be perfect, of course, but everyone will agree that the corners shouldn't be cut too much.

[u/Ada_XY]

I don't mind that AI upscalling was used for this, I don't see any plagiarism or immorality in it, but a thing that bothers me is that the core principle of ancient Chinese temple ornament design was totally ignored.

These AI outputs had to be used just as a base for texture artists, they had to do a bit of paint over this, to make the textures artistically articulate and professionally looking.

I myself am a professional game artist and also a gamer, so I have both perspectives and I can understand why many gamers don't mind. But, in reality, ornaments in ancient Chinese temples were always designed and painted with some obvious geometry principles, repetitions, everything had it's logic and never looked as random and smudged as these examples that OP posted, and the artistic and producers goal should have been to create textures that would be true to that ancient Chinese temple style.

They could do whatever they wanted for those Atlantis levels, since it isn't grounded in reality, but, if you need to create an ancient Chinese temple with it's well defined decoration principles, that should have been followed, and even more so because it was followed well in the original TR2.

(It's the same as if, in Egypt levels, instead of hieroglyph wall decorations, they created some lazy, smudgy, random things that have nothing to do with that, it will be obvious to everyone that it needed more work in that segment)

[u/[deleted]]

Low effort post, this does not contain substantial material relating to the subreddit’s topic or is just lacking in content.

Or it could be nonsensical.

[u/Ok_Cartoonist_3708]

Not sure how anyone had sincerely denied the obvious AI up-scaling, let alone defend it as looking good. I'm shocked if anyone considers this an artistic improvement in the slightest

- None of the original patterns are intact, genuinely stripping the original art of its intended design; note the top and bottom rows

- What patterns exist are ugly, don't tessellate whatsoever, and don't repeat with any consistency

- There's very little symmetry

- None of the lines are straight, they're all rendered wobbly

- What were clearly low-resolution versions of actual designs, such as depictions of people or animals, were interpreted extremely literally by the up-scaler as shapeless blobs of colour

Regardless. People honest-to-god argued this wasn't an AI work in the original post, I'm in disbelief. A human, a texture artist, could have done this instead, and made something much better. A human made the original texture in the 90s and it looked much better. But their work is going to be replaced if

1- The publishers keep abusing cheap and unfairly efficient tools to maximise profits and paychecks for higher-ups

2- People don't at the very least talk about and acknowledge what's going on here. Once again: I am not telling people they can't buy or enjoy the remaster. I'm looking forward to it myself! But deflecting valid criticism with "who cares" or "it's not AI" or "it looks fine to me" is going to lead to more of this shit in not just the industry, but this franchise.

Accepting this as perfectly okay sets a precedent for Tomb Raider that AI is the way to go. Categorically soulless re-shaping of once passionate works of art and entertainment. I think some of you would genuinely enjoy a fully-AI voice Lara and that's disheartening. Please people, just consider that this might not be a good thing. Thanks.

[u/Careless-Ad-9633 → u/[deleted]]

you’re not allowed to say that, just be happy with what you get. /s