current environment specs
polycounter lvl 18
What are the current average specs for environment textures? For instance, I've worked under a 512x512 max and 256 pixels per meter specs for a while now - are you guys doing 1024 per meter, 2048... *cold sweats* 4096?
Replies
as far as "it depends" - when you have a pixel density rule set for environment art it takes any guess work out of it. It's also a concept a lot of people don't know about or struggle with.
It can also vary on the level/scale of assets.
For the Horse Chase section in Uncharted 3 our rocks were done at 1k since the majority of the scene is made up entirely of rocks. The rock cliffs are also very large and with our standard 512 tiling textures you would see the repetition would become more noticeable.
Though it really does *depend*, what sort of game is it? First person? Third person? How close is the camera to any given object? That has a lot to do with the pixel density you go with. For a 3rd person game 256 or 512 might be all you need.
Really, do you often end up using the source for anything? Cinematic stuff I imagine? 16x larger than target res seems a little much.
That's what I think anyway.
This is for a fps open world game with large view distances. I may have to pack all the props for a single biome into a single texture sheet - ie: all the trees, rocks and smaller foliage for a jungle will use one diffuse, normal & spec.
I've worked on projects before that required 4x, but my experience is they were virtually never used, and more often than not sized down even further before a game ships(but I would imagine this happens less at someplace like Naughty Dog where they have their specs clearly laid out). I've never worked on anything that required 16x(ie 2K for a 512) so I'm really curious to hear if/when these sort of assets get used.
IMO working at 16x can be a bit counter productive, as you're detailing for a resolution so much higher than what is going in game, its easy to lose the sense of scale and what is going to really read well in game. I like to work at target res whenver possible, so I'm not spending time creating detail that will get sampled out when its re-sized(not to mention players may play at lower texture quality settings, at that point you're 32x or 64x off your source textures). Though if your assets are sound, IE: good high, mid and low frequency detail, this will be less of an issue.
well, current gen here I go
Yeah that was for the poster before you, you got in before I finished typing. :poly124:
4K will start to make more sense when 4k TVs are common, at 1080P, yeah its overkill, unless the actual asset is quite large.
Anyway I think that people (and myself included) use x2 or x4 instead of x4 and x16, because most of the time we say a 1024, 2048 or 512 texture. Therefore people only take that number in account and multiply only that. So a 1024(*1024) texture x2 means 2048(*2048) and not 1448.15(*1448.15) or simply 1024*2048. I think most people know that if they "double" their texture size they know it actually quadruples it... They should anyway.
Anyway.. yeah, they multiply the number, not the actual amount of pixels.
edit-
=] just a nitpick.
768x768 isn't actually double the size of 512x512. 768 is about 2.2 time bigger than 512. I don't think it is actually possible to double the size of a texture, without limiting it to only one axis. When you straight up double the amount of pixels and you try to fit it in a square box you seem to always end up with decimals.
Try doing "square root (512 x 512 x 2)" for a true duplication.
I think in the future we will move towards a movie/pre render "rule of thumb", which is to make the textures the "height of the end product" x "height of the end product". But since games aren't static, probably double will be used to compensate different zoom factors and what not.
Kinda what EQ said already with the 1080 vs 4K tv's.
Our computers and consoles are getting stronger and stronger anyway, so the thing that will limit us will not be processing speed or hardware, but production time.