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UDK Texture Quality

polycounter lvl 7
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feanix polycounter lvl 7
I'm working on some UDK stuff for university. I of course work at home on things and bring them home. Today I noticed how much better my textures seemed to look on the (better) university machines.

I'm guessing that the UDK has decided that it would melt my computers brain (2 GHz Dual Core, 2 Gigs of ram) to show the textures at full quality. But I don't care. I need to take WIP screenshots for progress reports and I don't want it to half my texture quality for those. I don't mind taking a performance hit.

I've tried messing with the MinLODSize settings in the UDKEngine.ini file (both in the SystemSettingsEditor and SystemSettings sections) and it didn't help at all.

Here's a screenshot from the texture viewer of of "1024" texture and the same texture from photoshop.

94Db5.jpg

Is there any way I can force the UDK to show my stuff to me at full quality, regardless of my settings?

PS: I realise there is going to be at least some loss in quality due to texture compression, that's okay. I also know that it's not just compression though, as quality changes when I change to better machines. I just want it to use full resolution instead of some mip-mapped rubbish.

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  • moose
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    moose polycount sponsor
    can force the textures to defer compression in the texture properties. It will compress them when you save the package, but you can turn Defer Compression on, and take your screenshots/renders then :)
  • feanix
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    feanix polycounter lvl 7
    Compression is not the problem here, the problem is that the resolution is being made smaller. Compare the size of the pixels on the left (photoshop) and on the right (in the UDK). On the right the texture size seems closer to 256 pixels than 1024. Defering compression doesn't help because the texture size still appears to be 256 when it should be 1024, resulting in an awfully blurry texture regardless.
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    Here is the solution...

    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80311

    SEARCH the polycount forums next time!

    ALSO, you can set the texturegroup to "UI" rather than render target...I dont think it makes a difference, both work to enable full resolutions.
  • Ben Apuna
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    Are you importing those normal maps with the TC_NormalmapUncompressed compression setting by any chance? That will cut your resolution by 1/2. Though for some normal maps this actually looks better in game than the standard TC_Normalmap because there aren't any compression artifacts.
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    Ben Apuna wrote: »
    Are you importing those normal maps with the TC_NormalmapUncompressed compression setting by any chance? That will cut your resolution by 1/2. Though for some normal maps this actually looks better in game than the standard TC_Normalmap because there aren't any compression artifacts.

    Ah yeah, forgot to mention that! Thanks Ben.

    I always use TC_NormalmapUncompressed if I want to have the best looking normals I can, I am unaware of a better way.
  • feanix
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    feanix polycounter lvl 7
    Welp, I tried all that and it didn't help. Things I tried:

    1) Change LOD Groups to Cinematic/UI/RenderTarget
    2) Reimport Texture
    3) Save Package

    Texture is still awful looking. I'll get some pictures from the university computers tomorrow for comparitive purposes.

    Also tried using Uncompressed Normal Maps. No apparent change. If the UDK was a game it would seem to me that the texture quality slider in the graphics options was all the way down. There is no apparent way to turn this imaginary "texture quality slider" up in the UDK. Perhaps the engine has simply judged my home hardware to be made of poop and refuses to allow me to increase texture quality to dangerously high level.

    YOU WANT PIXELS? YOU CANT HANDLE THE PIXELS!
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    Really really wierd...I have no idea then.
  • vcortis
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    vcortis polycounter lvl 9
    I'm assuming you are using targas correct?

    Also have you tried right clicking and fully loading the package?
    Sometimes it will just use mipped versions of textures unless you do that.
  • feanix
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    feanix polycounter lvl 7
    I'm importing from either PNGs or PSDs. And yeah, I'm fully loaded. If importing from TGAs was crtical, wouldn't the textures be smears here and at my uni?
  • tristamus
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    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    feanix wrote: »
    I'm importing from either PNGs or PSDs. And yeah, I'm fully loaded. If importing from TGAs was crtical, wouldn't the textures be smears here and at my uni?

    I personally stick with TGA's....I don't think importing psd's is a good idea man. They contain a lot of information that I don't believe is relevant at all for when importing to UDK. Plus, they are way bigger file sizes. Use TGA man!
  • vcortis
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    vcortis polycounter lvl 9
    I don't know if it will fix your problem but in the future use TGAs, Unreal likes those the best.
  • sprunghunt
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    sprunghunt polycounter
    The image you have visible - is that from the texture viewer?

    If that's the case then you might not be able to fix the poor quality. The view in the texture viewer is just a preview image. It's not supposed to be representative of the final quality in game.
  • alexk
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    alexk polycounter lvl 12
    Not sure if this will do anything but try adjusting the LODbias setting to -1 or -2. That's in the texture viewer, when you double click a texture.
  • A-N-P
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    A-N-P polycounter lvl 6
    At the bottom of the texture editor in UDK, find 'Mip Gen Settings' and set to 'NoMipmaps'. This worked for me.
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