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View Full Version : What size textures should I be using? Mine are humongous!

MissouriMedic
11-02-2006, 08:28 AM
Newbie question here... (even though I've been modelling a few years. This is just one question that I never took the time to answer)



I'm texturing a detailed interior... (3D Max with Vray). My question is, what should my texture sizes be? I want them to be as large as possible in order to preserve detail... but I think I'm committing a bit of an overkill right now. Does anyone know the formula to calculate how large they should be? Or perhaps a nice, working link to a tutorial or a discussion. In the past I've just kind of arbitrarily chosen sizes ranging from 500x500 to 3000x3000 range. In many instance I know these were way larger than necessary. Now I'm just looking for a simple formula or rule-of-thumb so I'll know what sizes are necessary to preserve detail. Thanks!
soulburn3d
11-02-2006, 04:29 PM
There are too many variations for a simple forumula to work. But a few things to consider. What's your final render resolution? How close are you going to get to any surface that has one of these maps on it? Personally I paint all my maps huge, like 3 to 4k, save them as psd files, then save out pngs (or whatever your favorite format is) at a much smaller resolution, then apply those to my 3d scene. That way, once I see them in the scene, and see how they hold up, I can always replace them with a larger map taken from the original psd if they need more resolution.

- Neil
MissouriMedic
11-02-2006, 11:29 PM
Sounds like a good plan! I essentially do the same. I save them as higher resolution .psd files, and then collapse them and save them as .tga's as needed (keeping the .psd for later tweaking).

Can you give me a very general ballpark idea of what's "typical" resoution, just so I know where to aim for? Let's say for instance that my final image will be rendered at 1024x768, and I want a texture for a detailed object with fine detail (I'm working on a page from a book right now, for example). What might be an "average" resolution for such a texture?
Ghostscape
11-03-2006, 01:18 AM
General rule for me is to make the texture 2x the size of the object on the screen. So if I had a book page in a 1024x768 image that took up half the space, I'd used a 1024x1024 texture map on it.
soulburn3d
11-03-2006, 04:21 PM
General rule for me is to make the texture 2x the size of the object on the screen. So if I had a book page in a 1024x768 image that took up half the space, I'd used a 1024x1024 texture map on it.

Yup, that's generally my rule as well. But also do lots of test renders, and start small, to see what you can get away with.

- Neil
MissouriMedic
11-04-2006, 02:05 AM
Thanks guys! That's exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate it.

(BTW... love your work, Neil. I'm pretty new to the forums so I didn't even catch who you were, but I've followed your work and tutorials for a few years. :) )
soulburn3d
11-04-2006, 02:39 AM
(BTW... love your work, Neil. I'm pretty new to the forums so I didn't even catch who you were, but I've followed your work and tutorials for a few years. :) )

Thanks, glad you've enjoyed my stuff.

- Neil
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11-04-2006, 02:39 AM
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