PSP texturing...having a bit of a brain fart

Chunkey

Right guys;

When working on PSP spec characters in the past, I was told that the best way of keeping the file sizes down but maximizing colour usage would be to use lots of small texture which can then be knocked down to 4bit colours.

These were for bit part characters but the aim for what I'm doing for the portfolio are main characters in a side on scroller (3d remake of Gunstar Heroes) so I'm in 2 minds whether to just say fuckit, anything that is shared between the 2 characters (everything except the red/blue coloured bits and hair) as a single texture or to still go the multi texture route...

What would you guys do in this situation? I'm guessing it's a rhetorical question at the end of the day but hearing how other people may tackle the issue may help me decide the best way for myself

Thanks

Chris

Chunkey

haha fair enough doing it as one big texture map apart from what needs to be done seperate heh

god I love being popular on here :P

EarthQuake

You impatient bastard!

I imagine if you had a character that had many elements, that were easily split onto separate textures, and each had different color that it would be very efficient that way, but what do i know, i've never done any ds work.

LEViATHAN

Depends on the engine, but shared stuff on one map usually works best.
Also 4-bit is quite low, 8-bit is fine as well, but then again it's a side-scroller remake thing.

Brice Vandemoortele

Psp has a similar cache size as ps2, 8Ko. Whatever the engine making maps that fit into that cache is going to be more efficient. the gpu does not support compressed texture so index colors is mandatory (loads of fun). In the 8Ko range you can use 128*128 with 4bits(16colors), 128*64 with 8bits(256 colors), or similar power of two.
The reduced number of color will force you to think your designs accordingly and to gather similar colors on the same map. With 4bits you can't expect more than 2 colors with their gradient. On the other side tga is lossless so you can afford really sharp patterns and details.
I think we had pretty descent discussions already about psp specs, I guess you can dig something out of the archives

Also don't underestimate the power of mirroring and vertex color. you can easily have a symmetric pant covered by bag, or a reused part of armor, that is shadowed in a different way with vertex color. Psp is pretty good on polycount so don't go crazy on poly optimization, learn the strengths of your target

danr

i'd go for sharing stuff across larger textures. TBH it doesn't make a huge amount of difference at the end of the day, unless you're going really wacky with the colours. Remember that the chars you're talking about from the past were pretty varied, it sounds like your portfolio stuff will want to be more homogenous in terms of design

Actually, no, fuck it. Sharing stuff? Bollocks to that. Give *everything it's own texture @ 256 colours at least. It's 2009, we'll tell IT what to do thanks very much, not the other way round. If someone calls you on it, tell them not to be such a pussy. Oh, and tell them Matt sent you.

Chunkey

cheers guys

EQ: Shutit sweetpea

Leviathan: 4bit can look shite but remember if there's vertex lighting, you can get away with not having much of a gradient as there's also texture filtering on PSP iirc (been around 2 years since I last worked on PSP heh) which also helps things a bit.

Brice: Damn they look good for 4bit textures dude Yeah definitely the case with using polys to define details which is contrary to what is the standard these days with normal maps which usually just want volumes modelled. both characters sit at around 1300 tris, enough to look good up close for victory scenes, etc but not a waste when the camera is pulled out when the action kicks in.

LMAO@ Danr- true, matt is god. The god of Guinness Still can't believe what he and Andy managed to squeeze out of the various systems we worked on

Going to set it up so similarly coloured components are set up on the same texture, kinda what I did with the VCS characters so at least it shows I can be working nice and tight. Also looking at making the boss characters as well, do some mock up screenshots as well like it's a proposal for a game

Will be posting up a thread once I start texturing up the characters, having to juggle work and seeing the family and gf so might be drips and drabs hehe

cheers again guys