texture dimension woes

#1

I have a paradox issue here…

Im working on isolating items from images to use as item textures. EG, a wall vent, that I can slap on a poly to be used in levels, etc.

The problem is, rarely are items in the real world a factor of two in their dimensions. So, if I am to uphold our law of factor of two sizes, then I will get stretching in one axis (not good). The only way to fix this (somewhat) is to edit teh size of the poly to shrink one axis back, but that is two seperate operations that reduce quality, not to mention the game engine’s interpolation it’self!

I could try and keep the pixels unstretched by cropping proper dimensions, but leaving extra white space around certain axis’, but then you can no longer just slap these textures onto primitive uv surfaces. E.G. You would have to do more work, like using uv unwrap modifiers so you can map just the item and not the junk around it.

So, what is the general consensus on this?

#2

I do not know but you did remind me of an arguement I saw last week.

Some guy was saying how if a texture is not perfectly square, that it will have a penalty on it, even if it still is divisible by a factor of 2.

The other guy said, it does not make a difference, the only thing that counts is having both dimensions divisible by factors of 2.

Well, then someone else said that when they have a texture 128x256 that they add extra white space to make it 256x256 so it loads faster.

I do not know if this helps, because the way I see it, you have a lot more pixels to work with, even if the algorithm in the gpu does squares faster.

#3

Having a texture that is divisible by 2, but differing numbers is all right, but a texture that is square is more efficient.

Meaning, a 256X256 is smaller and faster to load than 2 128X256’s, but 1 128X256 is still smaller and faster to load than a 256X256.

My suggestion is to place a vent texture on to the dimentions that you would like, into a square sheet, but also place a few other textures onto the same sheet, until full, instead of wasting texture space on white, or on other objects. Put in a tin can texture or two, a second vent type, or access cover, perhaps a fire alarm, or lightswich, etc.

The other thing to keep in mind, is it is better to use indexed colours, they are smaller and faster. Try sampling one of the existing colours in your texture sheet, and fill the empty areas with this colour(rather than white or black), so that when you index it to 256 colours, it still has the whole range of colour information it had before.

#4

Instead of scaling the polygon, just scale your texture the opposite way. ie squeeze the image rather than cropping it.

Simon

#5

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