Texture sizes - calls

Target_Renegade

Its not brain science but it occurred to me that a 1024*1024 texture size contains 16 * 256 tiles. It seems that it would be rediculous to have 16 256 textures, but is it? Whats the impact of calling that number of textures since they would occupy little GPU memory? Being pretty poor at using UVW space efficiently does wasting that space make more of an impact than the above, or would be wiser to break textures down into say: 3*512 and 8 * 256 that equals the same size as 1024 *1024?

JordanW

This is highly dependent on your engine. Some engines will pack all of your tiny textures into a sheet for you before sending it to the graphics card. Also AFAIK the fact that they're small textures occupying little GPU memory doesn't help the texture calls. 16 texture calls is still going to be 16 texture calls.

Tumerboy

depends on the engine. Most that I've worked with, prefer single, larger textures, to multiple smaller ones, at least where it's reasonable to do so. The entire texture is loaded when it is, so maximizing your UV space is somewhat important. I mean, you could only use 1/16th of your 1024 space if you want, but why? when the whole 1024 has to be loaded anyway.

EarthQuake

If you were working on ps2 spec, that sort of hardware generally handles more, smaller textures better. But modern hardware, you want to pack in as much into 1 texture as posible. I generally texture modular sets for entire buildings with 1 single set of 2048s to reduce draw calls.

Target_Renegade

Thanks for the advice gents, its put things into perspective.