Texture size and unwrap
Hey guy's this is actually a really noody question but I kind of just went with it until now.
Texture sizes, which ones are the most common? I'm not sure if this is completley wrong or fine but I've always used like 800x800 since I was it in a tutorial a long time ago -.- Can somone please elaborate on this? I'm guessing next gen games use way higher res renders. The thing is when I put in something even like 1024x1024 I can't see the wire frame. If I scroll in on max I can until its 1:1 ratio. Can somone just please elaborate on what the difference is?
Also, I've been having some trouble with unwrapping and the checkered pattern. When I unwrap I obviously get a really nice checkered pattern going on the mesh but when I try and squeeze all it in I get like completley un even sqaures somtimes like 1 sqaure on a part, not even a recognisable square or no squares at all because its so distorted o.O I'm doing the unwrap correctly but when I fit it all in they don't have enough space to gather all the sqaures on the texture. Any help?
These are just things on my mind.
Edit; I see people talking about doing 256 texture sheets and stuff aswell..hmm
Texture sizes, which ones are the most common? I'm not sure if this is completley wrong or fine but I've always used like 800x800 since I was it in a tutorial a long time ago -.- Can somone please elaborate on this? I'm guessing next gen games use way higher res renders. The thing is when I put in something even like 1024x1024 I can't see the wire frame. If I scroll in on max I can until its 1:1 ratio. Can somone just please elaborate on what the difference is?
Also, I've been having some trouble with unwrapping and the checkered pattern. When I unwrap I obviously get a really nice checkered pattern going on the mesh but when I try and squeeze all it in I get like completley un even sqaures somtimes like 1 sqaure on a part, not even a recognisable square or no squares at all because its so distorted o.O I'm doing the unwrap correctly but when I fit it all in they don't have enough space to gather all the sqaures on the texture. Any help?
These are just things on my mind.
Edit; I see people talking about doing 256 texture sheets and stuff aswell..hmm
Replies
no 800 x 800
can be anything from 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,8196, somethingcrazy
most common is 1024
I normally author in 1024 and if it needs to be smaller crunch it to 512 or something. 1024 or 512 are average res now imo, especially as most games seem to go with texel density of 1024 per 7ft or so (an average sort of wall in relation to the player. Don't know precise density)
As for the rest of your questions, I am unsure what you are asking so someone else can grab these for you
Mini questions : Is there a difference in 800x and 1024? also do you change the actual size of the texture sheet when you go to options on the unwrap utility? Infact.. I put it to 2048 x 2048 and it was as big as 1024 x1024.....
To illistrate my problem :
Edit: Hold on, tiny pic is slow xD
When its outside of the UV box it displays a really nice no distorion map that I'm trying to go for. The reality is the red square when I zoom all the parts into the UV space. (It's like that all around not just the part I've shown you)
The only real way to deal with distortion is to start relaxing things.
Texture sheet size in unwrap options, you dont really need to set this, unless you work with a 1024x512 texture for example (so you get a different ratio in the UV window). Can be used if you want to use pixel snap, but these are generally rare occasions I think. Can't think of anything else.
They are actually taking renders from blender (I use an MD2 exporter to give the programmer the animation and models) so I don't really think the "refusing" will be a problem. Now that I think about it... all my textures are in 800x800. That's not really that bad is it?
And yes, 1024x1024 is pretty standard atm for most geometry in a game. For really detailed stuff, it will go up to a max of 2048x2048. For low detail stuff; 512x512, 256x256, 128x128 is not uncommon. Don't use something like 800x800.
Edit: just read your last post. If your models are just going to be rendered to a sequence of sprites (a la Diablo) then you don't have to worry about texture size.
As for you now being able to see the wireframe, I'm not sure really. Are you using an old monitor with a low resolution? I could see this being a problem in general in max, but texture size should not be a factor.
Your distortion problems, as Vig pointed out, are the same regardless of whether you scale your UVs up or down. The distortion is just hidden better when you're looking at smaller checkers. Make sure you pack everything into the small blue square (0-1 space) as this is your main texture area. Anything outside that area will just be tiled. If you'd like to see more checkers once everything is packed in; open your Material Editor, go into your diffuse checker map, and change the U and V Tiling to something like 10. Make sure both U and V have the same tiling though, or your checkers will come out as rectangles and it will be hard to make sure there is no stretching.
lol memory and thinking fail : (
Power of 2 images sizes in general is a good idea, though not really mandatory any more (with stipulations to older hardware, which you probably wont target anyway.) Square is debatable, but often a good rule to follow also. On today's hardware however, this is mostly an efficiency thing as the graphics card will use and abuse whatever its given.
What happens if you don't use standard sizes depends on the application and/or hardware (drivers probably?). i.e. an 800x800 texture in a modeling/rendering app like blender or max will probably stay 800x800 though it on the graphics card it uses the memory equivalent to a 1024x1024 (the extra is throw away/blank essentially). But in non real time it won't really matter. However, a game (or similar app, even a modeling/rendering app view window for instance) may also do this, or it could upscale (or downscale) the image to fit the memory used. Thus your 800x800 image could get resized into memory to a power of 2, 1024x1024 or 512x512 for instance. This is undesirable since it changes your image in ways you may not like.
What really limits texture sizes today depends. I've used large sized images up to 8192x8192. This is a hardware issue as well, much like the non power of 2 of old. In fact, many of those cards that can't handle NPOT images larger than 1024x1024 either. But again, it really depends on the hardware. For instance, the limit on the XBOX 360 is 8192x8192. How efficient using an image that big is though can really depend on how you use it and what else you need to do around it.
If you do use larger images, such as 2048x2048, it will most likely work, but it could be inefficient since the harware may break it up into chunks it can manage, and this can lead to undesireable results.
I haven't even mention bit depth...