Will scaling a 3K texture to a 2K texture result in loss of quality?

Bletzkarn

I understand there will be less pixels and therefore detail. However because of the scaling algorithm it tends to blur and push pixels around in strange ways sometimes? What would be the best way to scale a 3K texture to 2K?

ActionDawg

Yes to the title, which you confusingly answer yourself.

Try all of the options and pick the best result.

Bletzkarn

fair enough, was more wondering the effect it would have on the normals if any. As long as everything remains the same position it should be okay.

ActionDawg

Yeah it's fine to scale normals. I'm doing it as we speak. Consider that mipmaps must do the same thing.

Though engines do it behind the scenes when unpacking the normals, it'd always be a good idea to renormalize the normal map after downscaling. That way you're starting with the best representation before compression, etc.