[--Steve-O--]

whats he consensus on the use of a 2048 texture map? is it a good substitute to actually using Polys to do detail, or does the map use more resources than polies? i've never had to use a 2048 before, i was happy with 1024 but this project I'm working on now I'm trying to weigh the pros and cons of the texture/poly trade off.

[Vasudan Admiral]

If it's a capship, it's not so bad - but definitely don't give anything smaller than a cruiser a 2048 res map. Performance wise if you can achieve the same effects you want to put on the texture with geometry then definitely go the latter way, because a 2048 res base, glow, shine, normal map and possibly height map is going to be a far bigger drain than possibly even tens of thousands more polys.

[Nuke]

i think its pretty much the norm theese days, especially when your video card has of ram.

[Flipside]

It depends, a single 2048 texture isn't that big, but once you add the shine, glow, specular, environment, height and normal textures, you can be talking about taking up a big lump of memory, probably around 10 megs. That may not hurt the Ram in the graphics card, but shunting that kind of memory back and forth on older video cards can be a big slowdown creator. There's nothing wrong as such with using 2048 maps, but supply lower-res versions for less powerful systems and only do it if you simply cannot fit the detail onto a 1024 texture, which, to be honest, should be pretty rarely.

[--Steve-O--]

ok, i think i'll go that route. i was going to try and squeez as much UV as i could on 1 2048 but even then i would still need 2 1024 and 1 512 to finish it. so i'll go with a little lower res and go with 4 1024 and a 512. so the load shouldn't be to horrid.

[Water]

ok, i think i'll go that route. i was going to try and squeez as much UV as i could on 1 2048 but even then i would still need 2 1024 and 1 512 to finish it. so i'll go with a little lower res and go with 4 1024 and a 512. so the load shouldn't be to horrid.

4x 1024 is the same texture space as a 2048 map. But for FSO it is lot worse than a 2048 map. You end up with 4x shine, glow etc, and (I think?) 4x as many render passes.

[Wanderer]

You can always use 2048 x 1024 or something such too if needed.

[Flipside]

ok, i think i'll go that route. i was going to try and squeez as much UV as i could on 1 2048 but even then i would still need 2 1024 and 1 512 to finish it. so i'll go with a little lower res and go with 4 1024 and a 512. so the load shouldn't be to horrid.

4x 1024 is the same texture space as a 2048 map. But for FSO it is lot worse than a 2048 map. You end up with 4x shine, glow etc, and (I think?) 4x as many render passes.

This is correct, use as few textures per model if possible. A fighter should only really need a single 1024 x 1024 or 2048 x 2048 texture else you'll end up detailing textures that are never seen close enough to be worth the level of detail, at least, in my opinion, but regardless, the less textures used, the better

[Nuke]

10 megs a ship, 20 shis in nukemod, 640 megs in my video card, do the math (actually nukemod only has about 80 megs of maps and 20 megs of effects)
and i have difficulty getting my framerate below 60.

the  biggest bottleneck is the way turrets are handled. if they were rendered all at once rather than one at a time it would be a hell of faster.

[Scooby_Doo]

Would texture load optimizing help any?  Load a texture only once per render.

[--Steve-O--]

ok, so 1 2048 is less of a load than 4 1024s. makes sense. i got my UV reorganized, so i can rescale and uvmap all the parts onto a single 2048 and a 512, cutting out the extra 2 1024s.

ok now this one is a little off topic. transparent canopy glass....how is this done, i have never tinkered with alpha or transparencies?
I use gimp, it does not have a DDS plug in.
i do have a stand alone DDS converter that supports all DXT formats and supports alpha.

[Nuke]

that will work. dxt5 is the format you want.

glass should be the last thing on your main model that gets rendered, so it should have its own texture and that texture should be one below the rest of the textures for the main hull. then name your interior submodel cockpit_interior. be advised taylor will probibly change this in the future.

[colecampbell666]

640 megs in my video card

GTS?

Is there a DDS plugin for IrfanView?

[Nuke]

yep

you know there are of paint programs that support photoshop plugins, i know psp does. not sure about that one.

[colecampbell666]

DDS is a PhotoShop file? In that case I have PS.

[Jeff Vader]

DDS is a file. Not a PhotoShop file, as far as I know. This is a good opportunity for me to advertise Paint.NET. Try it. It's free and the current version supports DDS without plugins.

[Flipside]

.DDS stands for Direct Draw Surface, it is a format designed specifically for use by 3D acceleration, since the graphics card hardware can decompress it, rather than having to do it in software. The actual rights to .DDS belong, I think, to Microsoft, but I'm not 100% certain about that.

There's a plug-in at NVidia.com that can export .dds format pictures from Photoshop etc, there's also one that will convert greyscale height maps into normal maps, which is worth picking up

[Wanderer]

Just keep in mind that never ever edit - especially compressed, like DXTs - DDS files. Always edit the original image file and only after you are thoroughly happy with it then run it via proper converter - and keep in mind that sometimes it is worth leaving the image to u888 or u8888 formats instead of compressing. Otherwise you will be quickly compressing an image file which has already been compressed - of course if you like artifacts then feel free to do so.

[Nuke]

.DDS stands for Direct Draw Surface, it is a format designed specifically for use by 3D acceleration, since the graphics card hardware can decompress it, rather than having to do it in software. The actual rights to .DDS belong, I think, to Microsoft, but I'm not 100% certain about that.

There's a plug-in at NVidia.com that can export .dds format pictures from Photoshop etc, there's also one that will convert greyscale height maps into normal maps, which is worth picking up

the compression formats belong to s3

Just keep in mind that never ever edit - especially compressed, like DXTs - DDS files. Always edit the original image file and only after you are thoroughly happy with it then run it via proper converter - and keep in mind that sometimes it is worth leaving the image to u888 or u8888 formats instead of compressing. Otherwise you will be quickly compressing an image file which has already been compressed - of course if you like artifacts then feel free to do so.

i 1up on that and keep all my documents in psd format with layers unflattened and paths saved. it makes remixing the texture easy for when i want to create shine, glow, env, and even height maps.

[colecampbell666]

For a second there I was like "How did he get that upside-down exclamation point?" Then I realised that it was an "I".