LarryG on 28/9/2012 at 23:41
While we are on the subject, does anyone know of a good, free animated bitmap editor? I want to try out some animated particles but neither IrfanView nor PSP can save animated textures.
Soul Tear on 29/9/2012 at 09:55
Quote Posted by Sensut
...there are no more palettes as well.
That is, for example, I'll put 500 PNG-textures (various resolution 1024 and 2048) in Thief2/Fam/MyFM, next: add_family MyFM - and no errors now?
Sensut on 29/9/2012 at 10:47
Quote Posted by Soul Tear
That is, for example, I'll put 500 PNG-textures (various resolution 1024 and 2048) in Thief2/Fam/MyFM, next: add_family MyFM - and no errors now?
Exactly. Details are in "modders_notes".
Code:
Max texture dimension: 4096 (from 1024)
Max texture families: 32 (from 16)
Max family textures: 1024-ish (from 256-ish)
Code:
Aside from the new image formats, the priority (which type can override another) has been slightly adjusted.
The priority order is as follows, where the first has the highest override priority:
.DDS
.PNG
.TGA
.BMP
.PCX
.GIF
.CEL
The Watcher on 29/9/2012 at 10:58
Well, you won't hit a palette limit.
You will run into problems with graphics card memory exhaustion, though: a single 2048x2048 32 bit texture excluding mipmaps occupies 16MB of memory without compression, and even with DXT you're going to be lucky to get that below 2.5MB - and if they're PNGs, you're not getting DXT at all. 500 of those, and you're looking at 4 to 8GB of graphics memory (again, without counting mipmaps), and there aren't many consumer-grade graphics cards with 8GB of memory yet. If you're lucky, it'll just slow rendering down, but who know what these binaries will do in that situation, it could outright break.
Just because you can use big textures it doesn't mean you must, or that you necessarily even should. There's a reason that, even in modern big-name games, many textures are 512x512 or smaller, with only some going larger than that: it's a trade-off between apparent detail, the amount of time the object is likely to be drawn at the highest mip level, and memory required. With Thief and Shock, there's even more to consider: unless you're going to go through and replace every texture with a higher quality equivalent, and every model with a higher poly version, there will be a significant and jarring contrast between old, stock resources and any new high-res/high-poly resources unless you exercise care with the use of high quality resources.
tl;dr: don't go crazy with the high-resolution stuff. There are technical and aesthetic factors you must consider while using them. Be careful and use them when appropriate, not just because you can.
Sensut on 29/9/2012 at 11:37
Is so. I loaded some 512x512 bmps and I had to scale down to 13-14 in Dromed in order to look good on a 48 x 48 wall. Then I resized the image to 256x256 and increased the scale to 15 in dromed and there was no difference. Only the 512 image was almost 1MB and the 256 only 35kb. The image quality is more important than the size.
Lady Rowena on 29/9/2012 at 12:29
So the textures will be still oganized in families? Why, if there are no more palette restrictions?
And what is the criterium to organize them?
I didn't install the "thing" yet, but I'm so tempted.....
skacky on 29/9/2012 at 12:51
Well, they aren't families per se anymore since there is no need to associate them with a full.pcx palette file, but you will always need to put your textures in a folder. (like /floor, /wall, etc). Or you can just put all your textures in a single folder if you want.
But yeah The Watcher is right, though games using 1024*1024 textures are pretty common nowadays. Just don't get crazy on the big textures, there's no need to. 512*512 and 256*256 for a game such as Thief is fine. For instance, most textures in Half-Life 2 are either 256*256 or 512*512.
Sensut on 29/9/2012 at 12:52
There is no need to organize them, but it is easier to find them by categories in the "Texture Palette" window.
LarryG on 29/9/2012 at 13:14
Quote Posted by The Watcher
Well, you won't hit a palette limit.
You will run into problems with graphics card memory exhaustion, though: a single 2048x2048 32 bit texture
excluding mipmaps occupies 16MB of memory without compression, and even with DXT you're going to be lucky to get that below 2.5MB - and if they're PNGs, you're not getting DXT at all. 500 of those, and you're looking at 4 to 8GB of graphics memory (again, without counting mipmaps), and there aren't many consumer-grade graphics cards with 8GB of memory yet. If you're lucky, it'll just slow rendering down, but who know what these binaries will do in that situation, it could outright break.
Just because you
can use big textures it doesn't mean you
must, or that you necessarily even should. There's a reason that, even in modern big-name games, many textures are 512x512 or smaller, with only some going larger than that: it's a trade-off between apparent detail, the amount of time the object is likely to be drawn at the highest mip level, and memory required. With Thief and Shock, there's even more to consider: unless you're going to go through and replace every texture with a higher quality equivalent, and every model with a higher poly version, there will be a significant and jarring contrast between old, stock resources and any new high-res/high-poly resources unless you exercise care with the use of high quality resources.
tl;dr: don't go crazy with the high-resolution stuff. There are technical and aesthetic factors you must consider while using them. Be careful and use them when appropriate, not just because you can.
Excellent explanation. Thanks!
Quote Posted by Sensut
There is no need to organize them, but it is easier to find them by categories in the "Texture Palette" window.
Before they were organized by color "theme", now we get to organize by whatever we think makes for logical groupings, up to 32 of them. That will take some thinking, but now we can more easily mix and match texture packs. That's cool too. And up to 1024 (ish??) textures per group? Wow.
