Author Topic: are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do (Read 3700 times)

Nuke · **on:** February 24, 2004, 10:13:55 pm

im reading

of posts that are encoraging use of textures 1024*1024 and 2048*2048. i made a skybox that used six 2048*2048. uncompressed, those textures use up well over 75mb of space. my video card has only 64mb of video memory. even compressed they use a good 22mb. i can imagine what is going to happen when you have a skybox, several new ships with huge textures, and all those weapons effects. dont you think memory constraints could cause some real issues down the line.

Omniscaper · **Reply #1 on:** February 24, 2004, 10:34:15 pm

I think that would be a good reason to break out the DDS. Its done wonders for my highres ships and planet.

KARMA · **Reply #2 on:** February 25, 2004, 04:09:14 am

even the minimum compression ratio of JPGs will cut the size of your images by many times, w/o noticeble quality losses
Also 6 1024x1024 for a skybox sounds good to me, but since I donì't play at very high monitor resolutions it may be harder for me to notice differences

SadisticSid · **Reply #3 on:** February 25, 2004, 04:35:00 am

Is there a compressed form of DDS? The huge filesizes might be very compressible for distribution purposes but even single objects like Omni's Earth model need like 12MB of disk space for their DDS textures.

Lightspeed · **Reply #4 on:** February 25, 2004, 07:56:54 am

JPGs are stored uncompressed on the video card = they use EXACTLY the same memory as TGA, they only look worse.

The only texture that can be stored in compressed format on modern vid cards is DDS.

Lightspeed · **Reply #5 on:** February 25, 2004, 07:57:31 am

Quote

Originally posted by SadisticSid
Is there a compressed form of DDS? The huge filesizes might be very compressible for distribution purposes but even single objects like Omni's Earth model need like 12MB of disk space for their DDS textures.

DDS *is* a compressed format

KARMA · **Reply #6 on:** February 25, 2004, 08:30:34 am

well, I don't know how they are handled by videocards, but a 1024 jpg is around 200k, a 1024 tga is IIRC more than 1mb. I think it was Random Tiger suggesting JPGs for some kind of images, just because their small size.
If when loaded in the video card the have the same size(which mayu happen if they are, for example, converted to bmp) I really don't know

Bobboau · **Reply #7 on:** February 25, 2004, 08:50:49 am

if you want to know how much space a texture is going to take up in memory, simply multiply it's hight by it's width by it's color depth (if you don't know it's 16 bit, that would be the old PCX textures, TGA aand JPG are both 32 bit) the only exeption would be the dds compressed textures.
so a 1024X1024 32bit picture would be 33,554,432 bits
divide that by 8 any that's how many bytes you have, 4,194,304, so about 4.2 megabytes

diamondgeezer · **Reply #8 on:** February 25, 2004, 09:00:17 am

What do I need to know about converting stuff to DDS? Simple as just saving in the format?

aldo_14 · **Reply #9 on:** February 25, 2004, 09:05:47 am

Quote

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
What do I need to know about converting stuff to DDS? Simple as just saving in the format?

Mip-map & the encoding settings, IIRC.

Lightspeed · **Reply #10 on:** February 25, 2004, 09:13:40 am

Caution with DDS though, the compression might have bad results, you'll have to do a visual checkup after conversion.

Flipside · **Reply #11 on:** February 25, 2004, 12:04:33 pm

6 x 2048 x 2048 textures sounds severely like overkill for a skybox anyway, this is a game, not a professional rendering package.

Bobboau · **Reply #12 on:** February 25, 2004, 12:10:06 pm

you'd be suprised

Flipside · **Reply #13 on:** February 25, 2004, 01:05:48 pm

Oh, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying it's implausable. Even with DDS, 6 textures of that size are certainly going to take up half the memory on a 32Mb card, just for the background?

Nuke · **Reply #14 on:** February 25, 2004, 07:06:30 pm

so i take it dds is the preferable format to use then. i just downloadind a dds plugin for photoshop.

*runs off to start converting all his tga textures*

KARMA · **Reply #15 on:** February 25, 2004, 07:10:13 pm

what happen btw if dds is not suuported by vidcard?

Nuke · **Reply #16 on:** February 25, 2004, 07:14:54 pm

ok, im officially confused. i got the nividia plugin and upon hitting the save button i was greeted with an entire page full of check boxes and option buttons. which ones should i select and which ones should i be afraid of?

Lightspeed · **Reply #17 on:** February 25, 2004, 07:49:19 pm

Be afraid of DDS.

Use TGA whenever possible.

Omniscaper · **Reply #18 on:** February 25, 2004, 08:19:46 pm

6x DDS textures bad? My earth model used 8x 2048x2048 textures. I attempted using TGA's for it, and I got a severe performance hit. 60fps less than the DDS for some reason. I suspect its the compression that gives me the performance.

Do NOT be afraid of DDS is you're using high resolution textures. TGA is great for 1024x1024 and below. DDS for 2048x2048 and above.

Lightspeed · **Reply #19 on:** February 25, 2004, 08:59:26 pm

DDS is for 2048x2048+ textures with lots of stuff inside (rocks, meteor textures, etc) and no colour fades.

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Author Topic: are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do (Read 3700 times)

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

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are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do

are insanely large textures really a wise thing to do