Question about texture packing

Popeye9

I have been building a scene and texturing it with Substance Painter. For the metal rough and various textures like emissive I have been texture packing them into the RGB channels and importing as a single texture to UE4. I am wondering since these are Grayscale maps to begin with if I need to be doing this or is it a waste of time. Any clarification of this would be appreciated.

LMP

It might save some storage space, and you'll have less texture files in your project folders. So, could be a good idea in a production environment with strict storage requirements, however, it's not necessary for a portfolio pieces.

Popeye9

LMP thanks for the reply.

ZeroNight

It will help cut down on texture samples too if you're cutting it a bit close to the 16 texture limit on a material. Usually though outside of something like a vertex blending shader, that won't really be an issue.

Popeye9

Is the 16 texture limit also for layered materials or only each material function?

MooseCommander

Popeye9 wrote: »

Is the 16 texture limit also for layered materials or only each material function?

16 texture limit for any material, including material functions included in it. Makes no difference if it is layered, material function, what have you. Hard limit at 16, which is more than you should ever need anyway.

Popeye9

Thanks MooseCommander for the clarification. I have never come close to the limit but its a good thing to know:)

Steppenwolf

It's easy to get close to the limit when working on terrain. Epic really needs a better solution for that. All the workarounds i've seen feel like dirty hacks.