12K Maps?

Menty

I've noticed games like Unreal and Gears of War have amazing texture resolution for each of their meshes, and I recently heard of a process that would allow up to a 12K map, be compressed down to a 1K map to contain all of those high resolution details while having a usable map size through dds file format. Is this possible to do? And if so how is it done? Can you have really big maps then scale them down without losing any detail? I am really curious to figure this out to further push the textures of my characters.

A few examples of image maps and texture layout that show an extreme amount of detail that I am trying to achieve:

http://www.gameartisans.org/contest...als_1_2711.html

http://www.gameartisans.org/contest...als_1_4588.html

Any help would greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!!

-Menty

MoP

Those links don't work for me - try re-pasting them?

I've never heard of anyone using 12k maps before (I assume you mean 12288 x 12288 pixels? That's 12x1024 which seems like a very odd number...), where did you hear about this?

The way Unreal Tournament and Gears of War do it, apart from having high-res source textures (which usually get scaled down to 1024x1024 so they lose some of the finer detail, and then get DXT compression so lose more quality), they also have tiling "detail" maps which are usually just fairly generic noise or pattern which is overlaid or masked over the whole texture at a higher resolution, blended on top in the shader.
This way you get a rough approximation of fine detail (eg. concrete bumps/metal scratches) and still retain the larger shapes and details in the overall texture.

I can't think of a way of scaling down 12288 pixels to 1024 and still retain the detail, perhaps you are confusing some different techniques?

MM

correct links:

http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/dw/4/view_entries/finals_1_2711.html

http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/dw/4/view_entries/finals_1_4588.html

those are both 2k ie. 2048x2048

@ Menty - where did u read 12k ?

vcool

We read 12k in your thread topic. !

renderhjs

I know that with crysis they added some more contrast in order to fight the blurry downsampling to a lower res. That way more details are visible on a downsized texture.

Menty

I didn't read it anywhere, I was told it was possible. I'd never seen or heard of it before soni cured you guys would b the guys to ask. I'm having a really hard time trying to wrap my brain around the texturing process to get really sharp normals.. And really high detailed texture maps at a low size. Have you all ver heard of substance air? I hear programs likethiscould convert really large image maps o extremely low levels without loss of detail. Thanks so far for all your help!

Japhir

2048x2048=possible.
12K (as it reads in your thread title) is waay to big.

Mark Dygert

Maybe in film, on some insanely detailed object the camera gets very friendly with but honestly you're almost talking about a texture budget for an entire scene...

EarthQuake

http://www.allegorithmic.com/?PAGE=PRODUCTS.substance

What he's talking about is using an app to mix textures/proceedurals.

renderhjs

its still rasterized as bitmap data in the RAM within any renderer and thats why that technology still fails- the win is almost useless for render times, saving RAM and alike. All you get are somewhat scalable textures with less or hardly any artistic in depth control like brush strokes or alike.

I heard some of those guys talking at the FMX in Stuttgart ('07 I believe) and they really believe that its the future - node based procedural materials. But personally i haven't seen much proof yet of awesome examples. Most great stuff we see these days are all bitmap based because the artist has way more freedom and control with the existing tools - and Photoshop is a major reason for that.

StefanH

we are actually using that in production and the textures are about 12 times smaller before they are unpacked. It's just good for getting smaller distribution sizes that's it!

frubes

maybe you are talking about things like terrain megatextures?

http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.php/An_Advanced_Terrain_and_Megatexture