Answered: Why are Megascans only available as JPGs ?
polycounter lvl 4
Why are megascans textures all JPG right now? Curious b/c it's a lossy format. This question was asked elsewhere but seems to have gone unanswered.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Replies
https://megascans.se/faq#Studio
What’s the Studio License?
If you are a published studio residing at a single location looking to create and release a commercial project such as a game, film or other commercial media, this is the license for you. If you wish to use a higher or unlimited number of points, or want to license the service for multiple offices or locations, please contact us with your situation and we will help tailor a subscription to suit your needs.
As a Licensee of the Studio License, here are a few points to keep in mind:
- You may use any assets acquired during your subscription as many times you like, on any number of projects, for all of time.
- The Studio License grants usage rights for a single entity, and does not grant usage rights for affiliate companies, outsourcing partners, subsidiaries and/or entities that share the name but not the location of the parent entity.
- You have full access to 8K texture resolutions where applicable, as well as full access to lossless EXR source files for all texture maps.
- You may continue to use the Megascans Bridge desktop software for all of time to manage and export your downloaded assets.
This may change in the future, but for now, these are the options we have for customers. *.JPG hasn't seemed to affect any art I've seen so far. It is indeed compressed, but I haven't really seen any complaints about the quality of the files yet. If you'd like, I can forward your concerns to the development team!It was more of a technical question, than a customer support request xD I have not noticed any problems with the megascans JPG's, they look amazing.
in retrospect it was kind of a bad question, sorry. Jpg is smallest file size, and you guys don't seem to have any textures that use alpha channels. so I just answered my own question. I understand a 4k PNG file size is gonna be super huge compared to a jpg, and you guys are in the downloads bandwidth business now. File size is king.
I'm curious how your JPG output looks compared to a lossless file format. How much data gets lost in translation. It must not be noticable, because megascans look amazing. I'm not complaining about the JPG's, I am totally cool with them
I know in photoshop for web development, a PNG is usually preferred, they are lossless, and they support alpha channel.
JPG are obviously great when you don't need transparency, and you can find a sweet spot by balancing jpg quality / file size. But I've noticed that as jpg quality increases, the file size often equals or exceeds the size of a png. A 100% quality jpg often exceeds the file size of a png.
But I think other things come into play, like the amount of different colors in the image.
I'm speaking from a web developer perspective though, so obviously different use cases. I don't use 4k images on the web, etc.
Would love to learn more about the decision to use all jpgs though. I'll probably do some tests at some point and report back , quixel people seem very busy...
I've been told that we're open to the idea of *.PNGs for normal maps in the future.