All textures export at 4k?

jordank95

I keep hearing people say to export all textures at 4k and downscale them in engine. Does this apply to things that I know will be using smaller textures like 256 or 512? Seems so many 4k textures will keep adding to project file size. 

Kanni3d

Seems so many 4k textures will keep adding to project file size. 

Yep.

If you know your target size for the intended usage/asset, you can export at 4k, downsize, and import at that resolution. But ideally a size above and be fine to avoid that very issue and have some sort of buffer if you ever need to upscale.

Ghogiel

even if you author at 4k and the level of downsample is not having a negative effect, you can export from say substance or what ever and do the downsample there, or most of it there, and not within the game engine project files to save project space.

Authoring and importing a 4k set for something that's likely going to be 256 is a bit over the top.

Also with small textures if you are being a bit pedantic you might take issues with the final look as downsampling sometimes has an obvious negative effect depending on the algorthim used. So you either might need to manually downsample or control how it's downsampled to avoid border pixels being blured too much and things getting muddy. Which is where you might have a small concern you might also be wasting a load of time sculpting or painting details at a high resolution that cannot be stored in a small texture or looks kinda crappy. If you can have an idea what is going to show up in the texture you might also approach the authoring a bit differently when the texture is known to be small. Like you will probably exaggerate or sharpen some aspect in the texture to allow them read on a small texture.

poopipe

As ghogiel says.  This will negatively affect quality. 

Downsample in something that does a good job of it - painter is pretty good, Photoshop gives you more options

rollin

Had this topic come up lately. 

You don't want to import everything 4k into your engine project if this is for anything production related as this can lead easily to tenth to hundreds of unused GB of data. It is better to be on the point or slightly higher. Still you should be able to get higher resolutions out of your art authoring tools either manually or ideally via batch process.

thomasp

I'd always downscale and sharpen/enhance manually and depending on the texture channel - and only after the asset has been well and truly finished. Nothing worse than having to redo that process over and over for minor texture tweaks.

jordank95

rollin said:

Had this topic come up lately. 

You don't want to import everything 4k into your engine project if this is for anything production related as this can lead easily to tenth to hundreds of unused GB of data. It is better to be on the point or slightly higher. Still you should be able to get higher resolutions out of your art authoring tools either manually or ideally via batch process.

Right, this is what I think a well. But doesnt a 4k texture downscaled to a 2k texture look better then if authoring the texture at 2k initially? But I should be doing my downscale outside of engine instead on in engine? So if I know the texture is going to be no more then 2k in game, its best to export at 4k, downscale to 2k in Photoshop, then import into engine at 2k?

Ive just heard from some people who have some good AAA experience that they import all textures at 4k into engine and downscale in engine. 

poopipe

jordank95 said:

 So if I know the texture is going to be no more then 2k in game, its best to export at 4k, downscale to 2k in Photoshop, then import into engine at 2k?

Ive just heard from some people who have some good AAA experience that they import all textures at 4k into engine and downscale in engine. 

yes that.  
Working at double resolution allows you to add more detail and the downsampling will smooth out rough edges - it's particularly beneficial in painter/designer where resolution can affect the behaviour of certain nodes. 
Generally I find downsampling at export from Painter is 'good enough' and that going to photoshop isn't necessary
 but 
Photoshop has many options and you can select the one that suits your particular image the best so if you're looking to get the best possible results then you want to do that



if their engine has equivalent filtering algorithms to photoshop then what they suggest is fine - if they're talking about unreal then it doesn't so it's not

Afaik in unreal you can discard unused mips when cooking so disk size isn't something to concern yourself with.  Whether this is the case on your engine of choice depends on the engine

jordank95

poopipe said:

Working at double resolution allows you to add more detail and the downsampling will smooth out rough edges - it's particularly beneficial in painter/designer where resolution can affect the behaviour of certain nodes. 
Generally I find downsampling at export from Painter is 'good enough' and that going to photoshop isn't necessary
 but 
Photoshop has many options and you can select the one that suits your particular image the best so if you're looking to get the best possible results then you want to do that



if their engine has equivalent filtering algorithms to photoshop then what they suggest is fine - if they're talking about unreal then it doesn't so it's not

Afaik in unreal you can discard unused mips when cooking so disk size isn't something to concern yourself with.  Whether this is the case on your engine of choice depends on the engine

interesting. ok thanks for clearing that up. and yeah, the engine was not Unreal when they were working in AAA, but when I was working with them we were using Unreal and they were still applying that logic. 

Alex_J

The rule isn't "always export 4k", the principle is "work in a way that allows flexibility." 

The idea is that if you always keep the largest possible file you could need handy, then you can adapt to new changes more readily. 

As others mentioned, if you are the one who has the information and gets to make these decisions, a lot of times it makes sense to keep the texture project file in the app you authored textures in rather than have a library of 4k textures, and only send what you actually need to the game project. It's generally good to not have the game editor project become a landfill, but to only keep in it what you actively need.

Outside of the project you keep your working files, backups, archives, etc. That's how I do anyways because I don't have a monster machine, and a bloated unreal or unity project quickly becomes too laggy to work with. And I think in most games, 4k textures probably arent ever being used? I just guessing but beyond cinematics I just don't think they're really necessary. Maybe somebody can correct me about that.

Neox

poopipe said:

jordank95 said:

 So if I know the texture is going to be no more then 2k in game, its best to export at 4k, downscale to 2k in Photoshop, then import into engine at 2k?

Ive just heard from some people who have some good AAA experience that they import all textures at 4k into engine and downscale in engine. 

yes that.  
Working at double resolution allows you to add more detail and the downsampling will smooth out rough edges - it's particularly beneficial in painter/designer where resolution can affect the behaviour of certain nodes. 
Generally I find downsampling at export from Painter is 'good enough' and that going to photoshop isn't necessary
 but 
Photoshop has many options and you can select the one that suits your particular image the best so if you're looking to get the best possible results then you want to do that



if their engine has equivalent filtering algorithms to photoshop then what they suggest is fine - if they're talking about unreal then it doesn't so it's not

Afaik in unreal you can discard unused mips when cooking so disk size isn't something to concern yourself with.  Whether this is the case on your engine of choice depends on the engine

from my experience, in unreal, 4k downsampled to 2k still looks a lot better than exported at 2k from substance

jordank95

Neox said:

poopipe said:

jordank95 said:

 So if I know the texture is going to be no more then 2k in game, its best to export at 4k, downscale to 2k in Photoshop, then import into engine at 2k?

Ive just heard from some people who have some good AAA experience that they import all textures at 4k into engine and downscale in engine. 

yes that.  
Working at double resolution allows you to add more detail and the downsampling will smooth out rough edges - it's particularly beneficial in painter/designer where resolution can affect the behaviour of certain nodes. 
Generally I find downsampling at export from Painter is 'good enough' and that going to photoshop isn't necessary
 but 
Photoshop has many options and you can select the one that suits your particular image the best so if you're looking to get the best possible results then you want to do that



if their engine has equivalent filtering algorithms to photoshop then what they suggest is fine - if they're talking about unreal then it doesn't so it's not

Afaik in unreal you can discard unused mips when cooking so disk size isn't something to concern yourself with.  Whether this is the case on your engine of choice depends on the engine

from my experience, in unreal, 4k downsampled to 2k still looks a lot better than exported at 2k from substance

right, and thats what made me bring this up in the first place. a 2k downscaled from a 4k looks much better than just a 2k. but I think I was more curious if downscaling it in UE4 is best, or an outside app like photoshop. Seems using an outside app is the right answer if I know the texture will never be 4k in game. 

jordank95

poopipe said:

As ghogiel says.  This will negatively affect quality. 

Downsample in something that does a good job of it - painter is pretty good, Photoshop gives you more options

So in order to downscale in painter, I would have to set the project to work in 4k, then upon export I just choose 2k? And that should get the same or similar results?

poopipe

Yes.

@Neox
Yeah, that's exactly why I generally recommended working double size and downsampling at export. 

Neox

poopipe said:

Yes.

@Neox
Yeah, that's exactly why I generally recommended working double size and downsampling at export. 

but even that looks worse than downsampling in photoshop or unreal?

i would have to make a test again, but I remember some projects we worked on, where we shouldnt do it, can't possibly show their examples NDA and all, but yeah

poopipe

Happy to take your word for it 
 It's certainly possible for a given filtering method to look bad in certain cases and good in others.