[Nuke]

ok heres the thing. i want to make big 4096^2 textures with upwords of 60 layers, and im curious if anyones attempted such an insane endavour? im also curious as to how much space the file will take up, as well as how much of my gig of memory such a texture will eat up. and most importantly if this machine can hack it.

[aldo_14]

A lot.  I have a 2048x2048 texture with about 20(I think) layers; it takes up 103mb disk space, and I had to massively increase my Photoshop memory & scratch disk size to get it to load.  

I have 70% of my free (non windows) RAM assigned to Ps now; 668MB roughly (out of 1GB).  I think I needed about a gig of scratch disk space, though, because there wasn't enough space on my c:\ drive and I had to switch it.

[Roanoke]

If it's for FS why bother ? I reckon Tiles and UVwrapped Details is the way to go.

[Bobboau]

(4096(pixels)^2(dimentions)) * 60(layers) * 4(bytes per pixel) = 4 026 531 840 bytes = 4 gigs of memory absolute theoretical minimum

[aldo_14]

Does photoshop use 4 bytes per pixel, though?  (specifically in terms of transparency, where you'd only need a single binary value for absent/present... I guess RLE would be possible if somewhat pointless).  On the other hand, there's the stuff like stack data and blending settings.........

Anyways, I don't think tiles are very good for any sort of custom mapping, because HTL restrictions on the number of tiles are also an artistic restriction, and also because template mapping is just so much more flexible if time consuming.

[Roanoke]

yeah but 4096^2 ? Seriously.

[Nuke]

yea, the plan was to scale them down and offer the hires version as an option. i was counting on photoshop being really effietient with layer space, because most layers wont take up the whole dimentions of the map. im curious if fhotoshop is smart enough to only store used pixels. i might just section the map into four parts.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Roanoke
yeah but 4096^2 ? Seriously.

My maps for the Damocles IIRc  combine to that resolution (more or less).  It's probably about what you need for a decent level of sharpness on a large ship.