texup

One-command AI texture remaster for old games. Point it at a game folder — it finds every texture, figures out what each one is, upscales it with the right neural model, and packs everything back exactly the way the game expects. Locally, on your machine, with full backup and rollback.

The goal is a respectful remaster: sharper, more detailed textures that keep the original art style — not a generative repaint of the game.

How it works

game folder ──► scan ──► classify ──► route ──► upscale ──► re-encode ──► output folder
                 │          │           │          │            │
              codecs     diffuse?    per-class   tiled fp16   same format,
             (DDS, TEX,  normal?     AI model    inference    same mips,
              ARC, PNG)  UI? font?   selection   on GPU       same layout

1. Scan — walks the game folder, decodes every texture it recognizes, including textures packed inside game archives.
2. Classify — filename patterns, color statistics and compression format decide whether each texture is diffuse, a normal map, a material mask, UI, or a font atlas.
3. Route — each class gets its own treatment: a detail-restoring GAN for diffuse, a normal-map-specific model (with the game's channel swizzle handled), classic filtering for font atlases — neural nets make text worse, not better.
4. Upscale — tiled inference with fp16 on Apple Silicon (MPS) or CUDA, automatic OOM fallback, alpha handled separately.
5. Re-encode — same compression family, regenerated mip chains, byte-faithful container layout. If the game had a DXT5 texture in a zlib archive, it gets a DXT5 texture in a zlib archive back.
6. Apply / rollback — results go to an output folder first. apply copies them into the game with originals backed up; rollback restores everything.

Quick start

git clone git@github.com:veryCoolTimo/texture-auto-upscaler.git
cd texture-auto-upscaler
python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install -e .

.venv/bin/texup remaster "/path/to/GameFolder"

That's the whole workflow: texup scans the game, shows what it found (engine, texture classes, duplicates), asks two questions — quality mode with a time estimate for your hardware, and whether to write into the game (with automatic backup) or an output folder — then runs silently with a progress bar and ETA. Interrupt any time; it resumes where it left off. Models download automatically on first use (~130 MB).

Command	What it does
texup remaster <game>	the one command: scan → 2 questions → run → report
texup bench	~1-min hardware calibration that powers the time estimates
texup scan / upscale / apply / rollback / status / preview	the individual steps, for scripting

Changed your mind after applying? texup rollback "/path/to/GameFolder" restores everything.

Supported games

texup is format-driven, not game-driven: any game whose textures it can decode, it can remaster.

Games	Formats	Status
Any game with loose textures — hundreds of older PC titles, most indie games, anything already unpacked by modding tools	PNG, JPG, TGA, BMP, DDS (BC1–BC7)	✅ works today
Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 0 HD, Resident Evil 6	MT Framework v1/v2 .tex + .arc	✅ verified on full installs
Dragon's Dogma, DMC4, Lost Planet	same MT Framework formats	✅ expected to work
Quake III, Doom 3, RTCW and other id-Tech era games	ZIP-based paks (PK3/PK4)	✅
Half-Life 2, Portal, CS:S, L4D, TF2 and Source mods	VTF textures, VPK read → loose mod output	✅ cross-validated vs srctools
Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Bethesda mods	BSA / BA2 read → loose mod output	✅ cross-validated vs bethesda-structs

Verification standard: every codec is validated against a full real installation before it's called supported — RE5: 645/645 loose textures byte-exact, 1231/1232 archives repack byte-identical; RE0 HD: 10,454 textures parse with exact size match. Codecs are plugins — a new engine is one file implementing detect / decode / encode_file.

Use with Claude Code

Don't want to touch a terminal? The texup-claude-skill plugin lets you just say "remaster the textures in my game" — Claude runs texup for you, shows you the before/after sheets, and applies (with backup) once you approve:

/plugin marketplace add veryCoolTimo/texup-claude-skill
/plugin install texup-skill@texup

Under the hood

Layer	Support
Texture classes	diffuse / albedo, normal maps (incl. DXT5nm AG-swizzle), material masks, UI, font atlases
Hardware	Apple Silicon (MPS, fp16), NVIDIA (CUDA), CPU fallback
Models	anything spandrel loads — the registry ships Remacri, Real-ESRGAN x4plus and a BC-aware normal-map model

Built for real scale

A real 2009 game is ~36,000 textures. Naively that's a day and a half of GPU time. texup gets it down to a few hours:

Optimization	Effect
Content dedupe cache	59% of the test game's textures were exact copies packed into multiple archives — each unique texture is upscaled once
fp16 inference on MPS	~2x, with automatic fp32 fallback if the model misbehaves
CPU ‖ GPU pipeline	archive re-encoding overlaps with inference of the next texture
Small-texture batching	icons and masks ride through the GPU in packs, not one by one
Resume	the manifest journals every texture; interrupt and continue any time

Choosing the look

Two quality modes, each shown with a time estimate calibrated to your machine:

• Faithful — Real-ESRGAN: clean and conservative, closest to the original.
• Detailed (default) — Remacri, the community favourite for texture packs: it restores surface detail (fabric weave, rust grain) instead of just sharpening.

Every run writes side-by-side comparison sheets to _compare/ so you judge with your eyes, not metrics. Anything from OpenModelDB can be wired in via texup/models.py + texup/presets.py.

Roadmap

• Claude Code skill — drive texup conversationally, no terminal knowledge needed
• Diffusion "hero mode" — one-step diffusion SR for handpicked environment textures
• Cubemap support for MT Framework

Fair use

texup is a modding tool. Use it on game copies you own; don't redistribute processed game assets — share the tool, not the textures.

License

MIT