3 questions about texture sizes

[Roofy]

Hi there all,
I have 3 questions about texture sizes. First off, after doing a search in
this forum, I found out how to find the maxium texture size my hardware can
handle. However, this is only currently tells me what the texture size I should
use for my computer. So basically, what my first question is, I wanted to know
what would be the average texture size for PC's. Why I ask this is because
arfter doing the command that finds my maxium texture size that my computer can
handle, it says that I can handle up to 2048x2048, but this doesn't help if
lets say the standard hardware texture size is 1024x1024.

My second question is, when you speak in maxium hardware texture size terms,
is this for per object, per scene that is loaded into memory, or for the entire
game?

... and my last question is, does hardware texture size also include basic
shaders as well (meaning with no textures)? If not is there a limit on that as
well?

[hondo3000]

1. If you know what maximum texturesize the endusers graficcard can handle, you
can build a switch to different *.w3d files with that are saved with different
texturesizes. you can see how the hardware variates:
[url]http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/pipermail/dir3d-l/2005-September/009554.html[/url]

but don't forget that the macs are limited at the moment to a maximum
texturesize of 512x512. If the textures are bigger then the maximum texturesize
they are scaled down to it. In your example a texture that is 2048x2048 would
be scaled down to 1048x1048 if this is the maximum texturesize of the endusers
machine.

2. The maximum texturesize is per Texture. But the Textures are stored
uncompressed in the VRAM of the graficcard. There is no way to check how much
RAM is left and i am not sure what happens if you put a lot of data in it.

3. A shader only layers textures like photoshop and renderes them depending on
the settings of the shader. The maximum hardware texture size only limits the
size of the texture, if you use no textures in the shader (setting all
texturelayers to void) the model will be only rendered depending on the values
that are given by "ambient", "emissive", "diffuse", "specular"

Just want to add here that textures should be in this sizes:
1x1, 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024,
2048x2048, 4096x4096 ...

but can be also be combined like this:
32x1024 or 512x256 and so on. this is just good to know.

If textures do not fit into this grid of pixel values, the texture will be
scaled up or down to the next size that is closest to it.
if you type this code into the message window and execute every line, you can
check the resulting texturesize.

global pImage
pImage=image(100, 1000, 24)
member("world").newtexture("image", #fromimageobject, pImage)

put member("world").texture("image").width
-- 128
put member("world").texture("image").height
-- 1024

This will happen to all textures if they enter the graficcard.

[Mike Blaustein]

I'm not going to answer your questions directly, because I think you
have a flaw in the logic of your question. I wouldn't worry so much
about the maximum texture sizes that your computer (or any one else's)
can handle. It is a better plan to spend more time finding out the
MINIMUM texture size that you can use to make the model look good. I
generally try to stick with 256x256 bitmap textures. If it is a face or
something that really requires a lot of details, then I'll bump up to
512x512. If you can make your stuff look nice at 256x256, then you
won't need to worry about hardware requirements and you won't need to
say stuff like you need at least a Core Duo processor to use your site.

The only time I would use larger textures would be in a kiosk situation
where I knew for a 100% fact what kind of hardware would be running
there. Then I would try to tweak out the textures to their max, though
even then, it is a better practice to work for the least common
denominator as long as the scene still looks good.

[Roofy]

[q]Originally posted by: Newsgroup User
I'm not going to answer your questions directly, because I think you
have a flaw in the logic of your question. I wouldn't worry so much
about the maximum texture sizes that your computer (or any one else's)
can handle. It is a better plan to spend more time finding out the
MINIMUM texture size that you can use to make the model look good. I
generally try to stick with 256x256 bitmap textures. If it is a face or
something that really requires a lot of details, then I'll bump up to
512x512. If you can make your stuff look nice at 256x256, then you
won't need to worry about hardware requirements and you won't need to
say stuff like you need at least a Core Duo processor to use your site.

The only time I would use larger textures would be in a kiosk situation
where I knew for a 100% fact what kind of hardware would be running
there. Then I would try to tweak out the textures to their max, though
even then, it is a better practice to work for the least common
denominator as long as the scene still looks good.
[/q]

Mike,
...and see, I did not even know that you should try to get good looking
results for a 256x256 size image. I was thinking that games are designed at no
minimum of 512x512, and detaied images are set at 1024x1024. So that also is
good to know. I guess by knowing that, is that why there is a texture count
limit? I heard somthing about thist saying that maxium number is about 100
textures?

hondo3000 ,
Thanks for the help. That pretty much answered my question.

One more question though. Now I am not sure if this next question is supported
in Max but for Maya, I noticed that I could also make one object have more than
1 UV set, but what I wanted to know is if shockwave supports UV sets?

[hondo3000]

>I heard somthing about thist saying that maxium number is about 100 textures?

Shockwave3D is not limited to 100 textures. It's good to use not more then 100
textures to keep a good performance on different machines.

>...but what I wanted to know is if shockwave supports UV sets?

Yes, Shockwave3D supports UV Coordinates, but only one set per shader. A model
can have more then one shader. You but they can only be applied to different
Polygon-selections. This has to be done when the modelresource is created.

And one shader can have up to 8 texturelayers. Normally you would use one
layer for the texture, and a second one with a lightmap. Every texturelayer can
have its own scale, positoin and rotation.

cheers!