Texturing: True res vs. Resizing
polycounter lvl 12
So I've been curious as to what approaches some of you other artists take when texturing. I remember reading Ben Mathis' tutorial on "true resolution vs. double sizing", and pretty much agreed as I create my textures at the target resolution, instead of scaling down, for a lot of the same reasons he touched on.
He also made the fine point of stating: "Again, if you are already fantastic at texturing, and you resize. By all means, continue doing it. It is, and always will be, the ingame results that count."
So what's the word, is there a general consensus on this? Do you texture at a target resolution, or double size that shit?
He also made the fine point of stating: "Again, if you are already fantastic at texturing, and you resize. By all means, continue doing it. It is, and always will be, the ingame results that count."
So what's the word, is there a general consensus on this? Do you texture at a target resolution, or double size that shit?
Replies
If your working with tech that has a bit more allowance I`d say work bigger. The main reason for this has nothing to do with how the end result looks, but more so to do with thinking ahead. A project or two ago I made a bunch of textures at 1024, and res-ed them down to 512`s for the 360. THEN we ended up doing a high end PC mode that allowed for 2048`s- SO I had to go back and remake and rebake all of my textures at this higher res, that I *should* have started with in the first place.
All game art is heavily inlfulenced by context.
Stay away from thin type and 1px lines that will disappear or become a mess to clean up if you down res. Even if you think you are at "true res" you never really know if someone is going to issue a edict from on high that everything must be cut in half... typically at the end of a dev cycle when you don't have time to redo a bunch of stuff...
Personally I just find it saves me a bit of time (both creating and itirating).
One minor advantage to True Rez is right-angle pixel painted sharpness, but you see in engine is mipped, filtered, and compressed anyways, so any additional 'sharpness' you would've gained is lost or negligible.
A. Its huge already and on most platforms(less than max PC settings and consoles) its going to get sized down/mipped
B. 4096x4096 = massive massive photoshop files when you've got a lot of layers going on.
Also, lets be real here, this isn't "double size" its "quadrupedal size" 2-demensional images yo. Working at 4x the resolution is in most cases simply excessive. When you size an image down to the next lowest mip you're quartering the resolution, not halving.
Justin's point about 3d painting apps is solid though, there may be some technical reasons like that where it makes sense.
I used to work at 2x2x, but after so many odd years you realize you rarely if ever need to come back to that higher resolution source and do anything with it. Hero assets that are likely to need that treatment are usually already at an adequately high resolution. Sizing down is sooo much more common unless you're switching target systems mid-project.
Another interesting tidbit:
For efficiency and time savings, working *too* large can be a huge waste of time.
Think about it as if your a painter- who's been commissioned to paint a painting. They`ll pay you the same if you paint a 4ftx4ft canvas, as they would if you painted a 2ftx2ft canvas. Why then, in this case, would you quadruple your work load?
Exactly, and while it generally isn't a 1:1 increase in time spent, it is extra work and in most cases wasted effort.
If you work at true res you'll work faster, and have a better idea of the overall end product.
Lets say true res is 1024x1024, 2x2x res is 2048x2048, but most players are running the game on medium settings or on a console, where the texture is 512x512 max, and more realistically mipped down to 256x256 at most distances.
So, you're making a 2048 for what will in most cases appear at a 256 mip in game? Hmmmm
Well, more important than the actual resolution is making sure your forms and materials read up close and at a distance though.
With that said, I work at a larger res these days as I never know if an asset will need to be in cenimatics or promotional art. having the larger source material saves a lot of headaches down the road.
- BoBo
Just wondering.
So I'm working at 1024 or 2048.
4096 doesn't' seem to be much of a difference when you drop it down.
8192 is just way too big and I honestly don't know what to do with that much space... I would probably need to redo a bunch of brushes and watch how many layers I create.
Example are boots on a character that had new-age art patterns, like flowers and other curved round design, getting them painted at 2K then downsized butchered the entire design, especially if it's one of those 'everything must be on one sheet'.
From that day on, I pretty much will test out the detail of model for the finale result, if the smallest detail doesn't hold up and become a massive mess of line and pixels, even blurred, then I will simply paint at true rez everything else to help context.
Also, to note as other have said, once you hit 2K, going over it to 4K is kinda overkill, since consoles barely touch that limit, and PS, if your hardware is sub-par, will chug at 4K texture, and many 3D painting apps like Viewport Canvas in Max, Vertex-Painting in ZB and Mudbox will chug if you try the higher up numbers for a final composition (In the case of ZB, you need 8M polies to equate to 2K texture space IIRC).
all too often clients will request that you texture an ingame-res 2048 at 4096 and it drives me nuts. the reason it drives me nuts, however, is not because my pc sucks--it's because clients expect the artist to add lots of little micro details which will blend together and end up lost at the ingame resolution. in addition, you will need to remove noise from high res photo overlays to make them survive at actual res, and it's a waste of time for everyone involved.
as EQ said, it's much more important that your forms and materials read well at the ingame res--but we all know that flies over the head of most!
Is that a common resolution? I always thought it had to be power of two, like 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048 and 4096x4096. Confused here! :poly136:
Seriously though I find painting in true size saves me a lot of time and if I can get something looking good at the actual size I don't need to be afraid of it being scaled down at some point and losing details.
I also just really enjoy utilizing every pixel
Curious what do you all do when you have to scale It up.
I know you would ask a million and 1 questions to be sure before hand but just curious, what then?
No sorry just a typo, 4096x4096.
If you can make it look good at it's proper resolution, there's no need for upscaling
If i have to scale up i run reduce noise and then paint detail back in, I work on diffuse only games