Huge Textures Question

[Guest Red Ocktober]

is 4096 x 2048 too big a texture map...

 

if so, why... and what alternatives would you use...

 

thx...

 

 

--Mike

[Canardia]

I would make all UV mapped textures with 4096x4096, and only non-UV mapped textures with the 4096x4096 or smaller sizes.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

i was worried that such a large texture might kill some graphics cards...

 

dds format is better than bmp... memory consumption wise, right...

 

thx again...

 

--Mike

[wailingmonkey]

it's going to depend on the object in question's actual scale in the scene

as well as it's importance to the level. (and expected distance from the player/camera)

 

you will be wasting valuable memory by using 4K X 4K textures on 'everything'.

 

bad example, but does the custom coffee cup with the "I love Fridays" in the

breakroom level really need a 4K texture? (realistically, you could probably

have it 256X256 with proper UV space set to the text itself)

[Canardia]

i was worried that such a large texture might kill some graphics cards...

I've never even came close to filling my 640MB GPU. That would need around 500 textures in average

 

dds format is better than bmp... memory consumption wise, right...

Yeah, DDS stays packed on the GPU also, so it provides the highest quality and lowest memory consumption on GPUs.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

i'm looking at using the large textures for a planet lander type sim i have in mind... lower res textures look fine when far away... the problem is when you approach the planet to around orbital height... the textures start to get muddled...

 

attached are two pics of the problem... even at 4096x2048 the resolution gets blurred when you close in...

 

I've never even came close to filling my 640MB GPU. That would need around 500 textures in average

that's good to hear...

 

thx guys...

 

 

--Mike

[omid3098]

I would suggest you to scale up UV and then fix seams. this way you can even use 3-4 tiles of a 1024*1024 texture for your model.

[Josh]

I've never even came close to filling my 640MB GPU. That would need around 500 textures in average

Ten uncompressed RGBA 4096x4096 textures with no mipmaps will consume all of your video memory.

 

In the example above, I would add a detail texture to improve resolution at near range.

[Canardia]

Ten uncompressed RGBA 4096x4096 textures with no mipmaps will consume all of your video memory.

But a 4096x4096 dds file can be around 2mb (uncompressed 64mb) only, and I thought dds files are not uncompressed on the gpu?

[Josh]

A 4096x4096 DXTC5 .dds file with mipmaps is 21.3 mb. That only allows 30 of them, with no vertex buffers or other data.

 

I would work with the assumption that the lowest memory capacity any GPU your game runs on has will be 256.

[Guest Red Ocktober]

thanks guys...

 

--Mike