Recommended texture size

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Spudder
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Recommended texture size

Post by Spudder »

I'd like to hear people opinions on recommended texture sizes for use within OGRE. The general opinion of the people I'm involved with who are making the maps for the project is to use 1024x1024 for the texture sizes but I'm a little concerned on the possible performance impacts this might have - especially as the finished maps themselves will be quite large in size.

From what I've been reading on the 'Net it seems 512x512 seems to be the current "standard" texture size so is there any real advantage to using larger textures?

Thanks in advance.
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Devine
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Post by Devine »

It depends on how many textures you are going to be using at once. If you have a large scene with lots of different textures than 1024*1024 will kill your available memory. I would recommend 512*512 and maybe even smaller on some of your objects if you can.
However if you are using only a few texture maps than 1024*1024 is fine.
Spudder
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Post by Spudder »

Well the maps themselves will be large outdoor levels with a large number of buildings so there stands a good chance of a fair few textures being used at any one time.
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dennis
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Post by dennis »

Actually stitching 4 512*512 maps into 1 1024*1024 map is a generally accepted optimizing technique. You will reduce managment overhead and renderstates. So if your design allows it, use 1 big map instead of many small maps.
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Mr.Bloodworth
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Post by Mr.Bloodworth »

allways use the texturing of the "avatar" to deturmine the resolution and scale of your "world" textures.

It also depends on the approach and intended use of each texture.

Are you refering to textures you are going to use on a terrain in a splatering techique?

Are you refeing to avatar textures?

are you refering to static geomertry?

are you refering to small items like guns and swords?

It depends on "What" they are for..is my point it seems.
Spudder
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Post by Spudder »

The textures I'm referring to are the static geometry textures.
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celic
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Post by celic »

This also depends on your videocard memory amount.
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sinbad
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Post by sinbad »

Consider using .dds files with DXT compression to save GPU space for large textures.
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dennis
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Post by dennis »

sinbad wrote:Consider using .dds files with DXT compression to save GPU space for large textures.
GPU space ?!?! You mean vidmem ofcourse. How costly is DXT compression on GPU cycles?
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:wumpus:
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Post by :wumpus: »

Obviously he means video memory.

It doesn't cost anything in GPU cycles, it's even faster, as the GPU is memory bound and this results in less memory bandwidth.

If you can live with the slight quality loss it's always better to use DXTx. (just remember to not use alpha with DXT1 as some nv cards have trouble with this. Use DXT3 or 5 if you need alpha)
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