Rayman Pirate-Community

Apologies for the super long post, but i thought it would be better to disscuss everything in detail, if you just don't care about it and just want to download this skip at then end of the post.

REMINDER THIS IS AN ALPHA RELEASE AND IT'S NOT YET FINISHED.
Also i don't intent into making this post user friendly, since i can't hide the images under a button (and if there is i can't find the tag), so i will be presenting them at the original resolution that they were taken.

Very long FAQ:

- What's this actually?
-- This is a comprehensive 4X texture uspcale using the ESRGAN Artificial intelligence of Rayman 3's assets and visual material bugfix by Droolie of some development oversights.
Please note that some textures have been recreated from scratch by XanderNT and myself rather than being uspcaled, and some upscales have been further modified to fix certain visual inconsistencies.
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-Didn't you already do a 4K texture mod already?
-- Yes, but that one had a huge amount of problems, for example it had seamlessness issues, a lot of transparency defects and most of all, i made the mistake of just upcaling the PC textures without taking into conisderation that they might exist official higher quality texutres already available.
Another factor is that when i made the original mod i was severly memory limited, however i have since bought a much more powerful pc, which allows me to bypass all my previous memory limitations)
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-Why do you Blend Models? Shouldn't the new Fatality Pixels be better than MKII for Rayman 3?
-- Not Really, Fatality Pixels tends to produce oversharpened Results, which often stray way too far from Rayman 3's art direction, i don't want that, i'm not seeking ultra sharp textures, i'm seeking fidelity basically i want this mod to look like it's fooling you into thinking that Rayman 3 has always looked like this.
Here's a pretty extreme case of the difference between both models and how blending them helps:

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-So, how does this mod differentiate itself from TRTJA's HD mod and the old 4K mod?
-- This one will use a brand new model, much, much more loyal to the source material, i will also take a look at each texture individually to make sure it's PERFECT once upscaled. no more seamless problems.
(TRTJA's mod used my old textures as a base and then he further edited them, sometimes reducing the resolution to some textures to work around the 2GB CNT limitation, something which i will actively won't do nor enforce in this mod, in fact i will increase the resolution of some textures up to x16 times to unsure that the textures look good)

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-Is this mod Widescreen friendly?
-- Yes! i've decided that since nowadays we use 16:9 monitors i will be adapting the textures to be widescreen friendly, i will also provide a 4:3 version for the people that prefer to play Rayman 3 in that aspect ratio.

(Razoff's sniper, now at 16:9 friendly resolution)
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-Does this mod work in GC/PS2/XBOX/HD?
-- TLDR No.
You can however, use my textures and port them to any other console version, if you do it for the GC version, please make sure to use the NTSC Version since PAL only supports 50hz.
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- Can i use this for my texture mod?
-- Yes!, with zero restrictions whatsoever, please feel free to study, alter or use any of my work at your pleasure Just credit me, XanderNT, Raycarrot, Droolie, icup321 and everyone that's featured in the credits on the ubisoft logo.
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- Does this mod fix the Bad UV texture mapping of Rayman 3?
-- Sadly, no. As of now we currently don't have the tools to alter the UV mappings, so everything we fix is done at the texture level itself.
Examples of bad UV mapping in Rayman 3:

(first level of clearleaf forest, the roof of the hat building, Raymap view, lights disabled)

(How it should actually look, upscaled version of the wood planks tiled together with the grass texture)

Example of a fixed bad UV mapping fixed at the texture level (cheating a bit since this is more like an artistical oversight but you get the idea)
Original


(Raymap view, lights disabled)
Altered texture


(Raymap view, lights disabled)
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-You mentioned material bugfix, what does that mean?
-- Rayman 3's engine uses 5 types of materials for their assets, and in some cases the dev team made minor oversights and assigned the wrong material. With the help of Droolie's extensive Rayman 3 modding knowledge he was able to change the values of the materials and fix these issues, here are so far the ones he's corrected thus far:
--- The stained glass of the Fairy Council:
--- I noticed that with raymap there where extra geometry behind the glass, so we experimented with the materials and came up with this, texture recreated by XanderNT)
ORIGINAL

(Raymap view)

(Raymap view with the glass windows hidden, as you can see, there is a scrolling texture behind them, simulating the night sky with an aurora, image courtesy of Droolie)
FIXED

(Texture recreated by XanderNT, please note that we might change the look of the stained glass texture in the future, depending on user feedback)

--- Reflux Boss model:
--- For some strange reason, Reflux's head has the additive material assigned, this happens in both the bossfight and it's low-poly model version in the tennis mini-game (note, these image use the AI Upscaled face texture)
ORIGINAL

(Raymap view)
FIXED

(Raymap view)

(In-game view)
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- Why just not use Rayman 3 HD's a base?
-- Short explanation: They just don't look as good as PC when upscaled, although some very minor textures will be used.

(an example of a usable HD texture for upscaling after AI decompression and starcasing artifact removal)
(detailed and techincal explanation)
Okey, so HD uses compressed image files instead of uncompressed files like in PC, although they use higher resolution versions of the textures, they're considerably compressed and have staircasing artifacts

(a pretty extreme case of a really bad HD texture, this one is severely compressed and has a lot of staircasing artifacts, the final result is pretty smooth, but it's completely unusable for upscaling)
However with the magic of AI we can remove the compression and fix the staircasing artifacts, the problem is that in doing so we end up smoothing the image to some extent, although it's not that noticable on it's own, this negitavly results in a worse upscale than PC, thus making a pretty bad upscaled texture. It's important to note that it's preferable to not touch an image that much before you upscale it since even the smallest edit can impact the final upscale, sometimes you can ruin that part of the image, so i tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to edits and i only do them when they're strictly necessary.
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- What's your criteria on which texture you use as a base?

(note 1: usually PC and XBOX have the same texture resoltuion, however in a few select cases XBOX exceeds PC's texture resolution)
(note 2: the DEV engine leak of Rayman 2 does contain several Rayman 3 textures, however they're either very low res or compressed versions of the PC ones)
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- What about the FMV's?
-- Short explanation: They're a complete and utter MESS. they won't be done any time soon, since i'm still actively researching them.
(detailed and technical explanation)
Okey so first things first, i will be talking a lot about technical video details and early 2000's video compression methods, i will write it expecting you that you understand what i'm saying, although i will be offering images to explain what i'm saying.
Rayman 3 FMV's master files (unavailable to us) were rendered at 768x432 at 25FPS, (Proof: ubisoft included uncompressed .png images of Otto and Romeo FMV in the Rayman 3 PressKit CD, upon inspecting the Rayman 3 HD 720p FMV's the actual internal resolution returned this exact resolution.
-Okey so why don't you just grab the HD version, downsize it to 768x432 and upscale it?
--Here's why:

(Master frame from Rayman 3's Press Kit)

(Same frame, upscaled with Fatality MKII and FatalPixels)

(Same frame, HD as base, resized from 1280x720 to 768x432 and later upscaled, unusable since it has blended frames)

(Same frame, PAL PS2 as base, better bitrate but lower resolution than HD, resized from 512x512 to 768x432, also cropping the black borders and upscaled x4 times with the exact same method used the last two)

Having said that, early 2000's video codecs were vastly diferent than the ones we have today, unlike today where most game devs just use H264 or H265 or .bik video, every version of Rayman 3 uses a different codec with it's own resolutions and encoding settings, even worse, the PAL videos are encoded at 25FPS while the NTSC and HD are at 30FPS with either frame blending, or frame duplication.

(HD version which blends the frames from 25 to 30 which renders them completely unusable, however this only happens for some videos, the other ones see a duplicate frame every 5 frames)
in short:
- GC: Propietary Codec, must be decoded using a leaked GC DEV Disc, unusable do to their lower resolution and bitrate (384x288), also pretty awful audio quality.
- PC: Bik video, terrible quality and resolution (seriously 320x400???)
- PS2: .PSS files, pretty high bitrate, the entire folder needs 1.4GB of space, they would've been the best versions if PAL wasn't 512x512 and NTSC didn't blend the goddamm frames from 25 to 30 of some videos.
- XBOX: .xmv files, 640x480 overall good, bitrate is lower than PS2 and somewhat compressed)
- MAC: didn't yet look at them personally but icup321 told me that they're .mov files at 240p.
- HD: amazing at first glance due to being in 720p, however bitrate is so bad that they look worse than XBOX and PS2, although not worse than pc.
Overall they're a complete mess, they will probably require a lot of work and it's possible that we'll have to mix various sources to create a decent looking one for modern displays.

-Okey so that's video, but what about audio?
--Thankfully the XBOX video files use uncompressed .wav files for their audios, for all Multi5 dubs, sadly the Hebrew, Slovak, Czech, Polish and Russian dubs are only available in compressed format, they sound pretty good and only a pretty trained ear will be able to spot the difference.
Thanks to a script made by Fabrebatalla18, a dear friend of mine from the Catalan dubbing presevation community, we were able to extract the exact audio files of the XBOX version. For the non-multi5 dubs i took the audios for the .bik video files and converted them to .wav files with BeHappy.
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- Why an alpha release?
-- right now i'm doing this mostly on my own with the help of many users from the Rayman Modding community, sadly i'm pretty much the only playtester, and obviously i catered the MOD to my liking and display preferences, which mainly mean a 3840x2160 display or a 2560x1440 at 144hz.
I'm mostly providing this for you to playtest and enjoy, although i don't know how will it work on your end.
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-So, what's the upscale process?
Reconstruct the Source Textures, basically, acquire the highest possible quality of each texture of the game by looking at every original release, like for example DEMO discs, console ports, and if necesary the PS2 E3 DEMO. [THE HD PORT IS OUT OF THE QUESTION SINCE THE TEXTURES LOOK LIKE SHIT EVEN THOUGH THEY USE A HIGHER SOURCE TEXTURES AS BASE]
Xbox only step: if the texture is from Xbox, a decompression must be applied first.
Next: tile or mirror the textures to not leave any seamless problem on the table, if necessary.
Finally, Upscale using a mix of 4x_Fatality_MKII_90000_G + 4x_FatalPixels_340000_G, then undo the tiling and save. and we have our 4K Textures Master Ready.
Full process of an upscale texture:
First off we'll compare every version of the texture across all official releases, we'll use XBOX in this case:
Next, we'll decompress the texture using AI: (ONLY IF BASE TEXTURE IS FROM XBOX OR HD)

Afterwards if needed, we modify the texture to prepare it for the AI uspcaling process:

once modified, it's time to upscale it:

Finally, we revert back the changes, and touch a few minor upscaling artifacts and this gives us the final texture that you will see in-game:

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Progress tracker:

Characters:
Allies: 0%
Hoodlums: 30%
Fauna: 0%
Others: 50%

Levels:
The Fairy Council: 80%
Clearleaf Forest: 100%
The Bog of Murk: 50%
The Land of the Livid Dead: 40%
The Desert of Knaaren: 20%
The Longest Shortcut: 0%
The Summit Beyond the Clouds: 0%
Hoodlum Headquarters: 0%
The Tower of the Leptys: 25%

Misc:
Bonus Levels: 10%
Menus: 0%
HUD: 15%
SFX: 10%

Videos:
Cutscenes: 5%
Wanna Kick Rayman: 10%


Note i'm not giving the Source Code of this yet due to being unfinished and because the entire project is over 24GB in size as of the writing of this line.
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HOW TO INSTALL THIS:
Before installing:
Make a backup of the entire Gamedatabin folder.
So far i've only tested it with the GOG release, although it should work with every Rayman 3 version out there.
It will cause text issues with any non-multi5 version, to remedy this extract the typoray.gf file from the cnt_32_1 and cnt_32_2 from your Gamedata folder and with Rayman Control Panel. Then overwrite the typoray.gf's files in the 4K uspcaled CNT's. (i will make a guide for this later, although we'll look into an easier way to install this for the Final release).
- Extract everything from the .7z file.
- Copy and paste everything in the Rayman 3 Gamedatabin folder [Rayman 3\Gamedatabin], overwrite files if asked.
- open up Rayman control panel, go to Rayman 3 and click options or the gears icon from the dropdown menu, go to utilites and click on the synchronize button below Synchronize texture info.
- Better Rayman 3 is not required for this mod ALTHOUGH I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU USE IT.


Changelog:
v0.2
- finished Clearleaf forest (/Wood)
- started bog of murk (around 54 out of 120 or so textures are done)
- started land of livid dead (more than half of it is done)
- refined the HUD and some SFX.
- refined the upscaling algorithim


DOWNLOAD:
(Alpha v0.2 - 1.03GB) After decompression requires 2.13GB of space
https://mega.nz/folder/8iZzCACJ#Qyx8CZiflr0GC4mEOGW2xg

[OLD Versions](Alpha v0.1 - 719MB) - After decompression requires 1.4GB of space
https://mega.nz/folder/Ul4UxD7A#Vkyp_YeOJSDCr-XLulwFNA

Hi Hakyra! This project looks amazing! Not only will gonna improve all the texture of Rayman 3 in a decent way, but it also fix some of the graphical errors of the game as well. I can't wait for this texture pack to be complete, so keep doing this amazing job!

Meanwhile, I wanted to tell you that, in the waiting for this project to be complete (and, I know it's gonna take a while, even if it will worth it), I fixed your HD texture pack made by you, TRTJA and other members of the community.

The texture pack is called "Better Rayman 3 HD", I worked on it an entire month to get the best resoult I could. What I did was basicaly use your HD pack as a base and gradually fixing every texture and change the one I considered "not an part with the others" with other textures taken by the official HD port of Rayman 3 (the one that suck), your original 4K texture pack and some of original PC texture (in this case I used only 2 of theme for a very specific reason). Since it was impossibile to get the best resoult using the best textures I could find without loosing continuity with other textures, and since other textures were pretty ugly in whatever pack I searched for theme, it was a nightmare of a work, but after spendig a whole month on it, I can say the resoult is not bad, resoulting in the best texture pack avaible at the moment.
I even slightly modified some of the textures correcting some smole errors or imperfections here and there, so i did my best even to improve the already existing textures.

Now, since i'm still new to the community and I want to do something helpful for the community, but this texture pack that I made is not tecnically "mine", because all I did was change some texture here and there on your HD texture pack.
So I wanted to ask you your permission to upload it on the web site. Of course I will credit you and all the people that worked on the HD texture pack in the post I will made, specifing that I don't have any credit, since all I did was change some texture on a pack made by someone else.
If you are ok with this, I will credit you and all the people credited in Ubisoft logo of the 4K pack made by you (although the Ubisoft logo that I put in my texture pack is the one of the HD pack, without the credits), but still, the credits will go on the post where the pack will be downloadable, that is if your are ok with this and you can give me your permission, of course.

I'm waiting for your aswer, and I hope that this ultimate 4K texture pack will be so good to become the definitive way to play Rayman 3, so good luck to you and all the amazing people that are working on this project!

Madder wrote: Fri Sep 30, 2022 11:32 am Hi Hakyra! This project looks amazing! Not only will gonna improve all the texture of Rayman 3 in a decent way, but it also fix some of the graphical errors of the game as well. I can't wait for this texture pack to be complete, so keep doing this amazing job!

Meanwhile, I wanted to tell you that, in the waiting for this project to be complete (and, I know it's gonna take a while, even if it will worth it), I fixed your HD texture pack made by you, TRTJA and other members of the community.

[...]

I'm waiting for your aswer, and I hope that this ultimate 4K texture pack will be so good to become the definitive way to play Rayman 3, so good luck to you and all the amazing people that are working on this project!

Hey!! I want to apologize, lately i've been sumerged into other unreleated Rayman projects that are quite time consuming and i couldn't work on this one as much as i would like to.

- Personally i actually don't mind at all if you use my textures as base for improving them, actually i'm honored that some people use them for doing better projects than mine!!
My official stance is that all of my work is free to use, modify, study, improve, re-upload or re-use, to put it simply, it belongs to the community. (that's why i release the "source code" with my projects

- Yes, release it!! Tbh you don't need my permission XD, it's also fine if it doesn't have the credits on the ubisoft logo, i perfectly understand the reasons for their removal, i only put them there because it's the only place that guaranted for players to see the credits, in a non-intrusive way.

And of course, I can't wait to see your project!!

Thank you so much, Hakyra! Honestly it is me that should be honored about your permission. I wish I can do more to help the community, but I can't do very much. I'm just an expert of Rayman 3, just like you (even though I'm probably nearly as good as you), so I do everything I can to help the community with the game that I know best, hoping to do something really helpful. Hope this texture pack that I redifined (and NOT made) will give the people an even better way to play Rayman 3 on modern displays, in the wait of the full UHD 4K texture pack.

So that's why I asked your permission to publish your texture pack that I redifined. Now that I have your approve, I'm going to do a post in the "modding and utilities" section in the next days, where I will put the whole description of what this texture pack is about in the deteils, as well as the link for the download, and of course, the disclaimar where I will specifically say that this texture pack is not made by me, I only changed and redifined some things here and there, nothing else, and I will put the credits of all the people listed in the Ubisoft logo as well, of course.

Hope to you and all the community to achive their goals.

Thanks again to you for have given me your permission and your attention, and I hope you will succseed in everyone of your projects!

Alpha 0.2 should be out next week or so, it should cover the clearleaf forest, swamp and part of the land of the livid dead.
Also adjusted the AI algorithim to better upscale certain textures, like the ones that have wood, here's an example:


(original AI algorithim, Fatality Blend)


(new algorithim, blend between BSRGAN, DF2K and Fatality Blend, color corrected)

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Another Example, this one is much more clearer:


(Fatality Blend, way too sharp, also adds many details that are not present in the original)


(BSRGAN + DF2K JPEG, Ratio: 15%-85%, much more loyal, but blurry and doesn't carry as many details)


(Final: Blend between the 2 above uspcales, at a ratio of 50-50, notice how it now combines the best of both worlds, this is to me the ideal upscale in this case)

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PD: FMV upscaling is halted until further notice.

The textures look amazing, btw I wonder if ESRGAN could work with only 1GB of VRAM and a portable Python.

Elite Piranha wrote: Thu Oct 20, 2022 7:31 pm The textures look amazing, btw I wonder if ESRGAN could work with only 1GB of VRAM and a portable Python.

Oof... I Had nightmares when using just 2GB of VRam, although i wasn't using Cupscale at that time.
as for portable python i don't know

Delayed the alpha 0.2 because i forgot i didn't upscale the full clearleaf forest LOL, it's halfway done.

No problem, let us know when it's ready.

I'm sorry, i keep delaying this because the more i research, the more i understand how to better upscale stuff, i recently discovered that i can fix many HD textures, yielding much better results than previously possible:

here's one i recently discovered:
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old 4K uspcale: (PC as base)


Testing with the HD version, Decompression and fixing: (PS3 as base)


-

Uspcale of the fixed HD version using the same algorithim:

(Not final, it still needs a few touches) [8x times the size as the original PC version]
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Also discovered why some textures look terrible (On all releases):
For some reason some are color compressed, like if they saved them in a .gif, and since many textures are made recycling other textures, we have cases like this one:


I'm sorry, i'm also revisiting the old Concile upscale, i'm looking to fix some of the most unpolished textures (like the one you can see above), i'm not sure when i'll release 0.2, although if many people want it, i can do a 0.15, i'll provide everything i've done thus far.

Thanks again for everyone's patience!

Totally understandable, the examples of improvement speak for themselves!

The clearleaf forest is 100% complete (textures found in the wood folder)

I'll update it once i wake up

Edit: UPDATE IS LIVE!!!

I won't rest today, i intend on finishing bog of murk and land of livid dead by Alpha 0.3 [hopefully i can have it for next week or in 2 weeks]

So you have unpolished textures in all levels? Good luck with that!

hoodlumsworld wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 11:59 am So you have unpolished textures in all levels? Good luck with that!

Every texture is unpolished to some degree, some more than others.

I see, good luck with the rest.

How did you edit the lvl files? And what were the changes you made?

This thread is probably dead now and the creator just abandoned the project, but is this mod still alive? It's been 3 years since alpha 0.2 and still nothing. If this is a cancelled project, that saddens me a lot, because this mod seemed very good and I always wanted to play Rayman 3 with ultra HD textures and AI upscaling cutscenes. But if this mod is still alive, is there at least a set release date? Or at least a glimpse of alpha 0.3 or 0.4? Anyway, I hope this mod actually gets released someday, and if the creator is reading this, I want to make two requests: first, don't give up on this, it's really amazing, second, is it possible to add other languages, just in the form of subtitles? It would be cool to have Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese subtitles.

rengotti wrote: Tue Dec 16, 2025 6:23 am This thread is probably dead now and the creator just abandoned the project, but is this mod still alive? It's been 3 years since alpha 0.2 and still nothing. If this is a cancelled project, that saddens me a lot, because this mod seemed very good and I always wanted to play Rayman 3 with ultra HD textures and AI upscaling cutscenes. But if this mod is still alive, is there at least a set release date? Or at least a glimpse of alpha 0.3 or 0.4? Anyway, I hope this mod actually gets released someday, and if the creator is reading this, I want to make two requests: first, don't give up on this, it's really amazing, second, is it possible to add other languages, just in the form of subtitles? It would be cool to have Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese subtitles.

Yeah the project is pretty much dead, as the dev moved on to other stuff, however, if you want more Rayman 3 texture packs, check out mines; mainly HDDX and VZ.