Deus Ex: Invisible War ESRGAN Pack mod

Prerequisites

You NEED to install Deus Ex 2 Visible Upgrade patch for Deus Ex: Invisible War with Unified Texture Pack enabled. And I don't know why would you want to play Deus Ex: Invisible War without this community patch.

Concept for textures

For some reasons a lot of vanilla textures in Deus Ex: Invisible War were already upscaled versions of the XBOX textures so most of the textures were bad quality. My assumption is this was done to reduce DXT BC1 compression artifacts in DDS files. So I took several steps:
-run all textures through BC1 smooth 2.0 ESRGAN model (BC1 compression artifacts removal model)
-created a two copy of de-artifacted textures (one original size one downscaled twice)
-run two copies through 6-7 several upscaling models using ImageEnhancingUtility and its tiling option if necessary (if original texture was seamless)
-chose one good looking final result from 12-14 textures. Most of the time preliminarily downscaled textures looked better after upscaling
-manual edit if necessary by combining parts from several textures of from another upscale options. Sometime one texture had some ornament in good size which I can use in another texture with the same ornament etc

An outmatch number of textures in Deus Ex: Invisible War were missing normal maps and represented flat ingame. For diffuse textures without normal maps I used Awesome Bump program to recreate them. Second program I used was material library editing utility for Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2 by snobel. I inserted all my created normal maps to the corresponding diffuse textures. I created new 597 normal maps and inserted or edited 1008 entries in material library. Also I linked reflections cubemap for most of the metal and marble surfaces that lacked any.

Full Mod vs Light Mod considerations

Since loading times in Deus Ex 2 became irrationally slow in full ESRGAN textures pack (but no so slow as in Thief 3 upscale mod), I created a Light version of the mod with a lot of the the textures being downscaled twice. With this game still gains overall improved quality with restored/fixed textures and especially normals and all the profits of improved MatLib (material library) with restored normal maps and bugfixed textures. And loading times just 3x times longer as in the vanilla game. If you have PC from the future or if anyone would be able to debug extremely long loadings in Unreal Engine 2 or if you want to create good screenshots - use Full pack. If you want to actually play the game with bugfixed textures and improved details - use Light pack. Not all of the textures were downscaled, just the ones with 1024 pixels or more on height or width.

Performance

I tested loading times performance on my computer, and here what I got. This is the duration of loading a save game. Basically light mod takes 3x time, full mod takes 6x time comparing to vanilla game.
I optimized performance in the latest version (v2) of the mod by creating mip-maps for most of the textures (except some HUD elements, loading screens).

Vanilla game: 00:09
Full mod v1: 01:15
Full mod v2: 00:57
Light mod v1: 00:34
Light mod v2: 00:27

Also I tested performance for the latest version with and without materials improvements (deleting DX2Fix.mlb)
Full mod v2: 00:57
Full mod v2 without materials: 00:42
Light mod v2: 00:27
Light mod v2 without materials: 00:19

Improving the materials takes it toll upon perfomance, but I suggest to play with it, at least Light version. Maybe newer computers can load faster, mine is 10 years old.

Installation Procedure

0. Install Deus Ex 2 Visible Upgrade patch for Deus Ex: Invisible War with Unified Texture Pack enabled.

1. Textures and material labs
Unpack archive into this folder replacing all files
c:\ProgramData\

Improved materials

Unfortunately I didn't created a separate versions of the materials editings to distinguish fixing vanilla game bugs (like there is normal map present in game files, but it is not added to the diffuse texture material) from creating/improving other texture's normal maps and other entries. So it's hard to extract only bugfixes to use in some other graphical mod.

• But you can edit materials in Deus Ex 2 any way you want. All you need is:
  My google sheets table with all the Deus Ex 2 materials extracted with changes made by me marked with different colors
• mlb-tool. You need to create a copy of my table, edit anything you want, export csv file with changes and do magic with mlb-tool (read documentaion or ask snobel) to create mlb file. You could also decompile any UE2 game which use material libraries (Thief 3 for example) into csv and edit entries. Or decompile Deus Ex 2 materials yourself without the need of my table.

Special thanks

To user snobel from TTLG forums for providing feedback, technical details and coding material editing utility. And for ewan for troubleshooting/testing.

Credits

ESRGAN models that were used (mostly from ESRGAN wiki):
Manga109Attempt by Kingdomakrillic
mymanga109_250000 by patrikspacek
Skyrim Misc by Deorder
Skyrim Armory by Alsa
Normal Maps by Alsa
Skyrim Alpha by Deoder
JPG (40-60%) A by Alsa
JPG (60-80%) A by Alsa
BC1 smooth 2.0 by BlueAmulet
rocks_100000 by I don't know who (It is not a nickname)
FSBox by Pandalism
Trixie_Star Wars by LyonHrt
DeviantPixelHD by Raulsangonzalo
DigiPaint by TheAtheistGod
ThiefGold by me (based on EP2 textures)
ThiefGoldMod by me (based on EP2 textures)