Battlezone Forums

@ZA+MTS - Interesting. So in order to increase texture quality, I have to reduce the resolution? That sounds crazy.

Its called optimization.

DXT compression is what does the compression per block of pixels. BZ2DXTGen does this, and is a requirement.

Mipmapping is the generation of 1/4 (and then 1/16, etc) smaller textures. BZ2DXTGen does this, and can be tuned with the options.

Good mipmapping increases quality onscreen with less popping/shimmering.

-- GSH

bigbadbogie wrote:Interesting. So in order to increase texture quality, I have to reduce the resolution? That sounds crazy.

It wouldnt, the mipmaps are also compressed with DXT.

That said, in regards to texture quality (sharpness), there is already a certain 'ideal settings' which are based on distance. For example a 512x512 texture wrapped onto something as big as a building looks super crisp from 15m away, at 1024x1024 it would be 7m, 2048x2048 is 3m. Onto something as small as a pilot, the distance is half of that.

I don't know if that's the exact formula but I wanted to illustrate that there's no point in creating some ultra high resolution textures for view distances which you won't be seeing it at. Optimization is important given that each time you double the height and width of an image, you are increasing the pixel count (and thus file size) by x4.

MrTwosheds wrote:

@ZA+MTS - Interesting. So in order to increase texture quality, I have to reduce the resolution? That sounds crazy.

Its called optimization.

I'm only interested in optimisation for so long as it improves the quality of the game. If it can run without a hitch with ultra-resolution textures, I'll settle for that option.

Why would anyone settle for blurry textures when they already have non-blurry high-resolution textures?

What you have claimed is that making 2048x2048 textures is pointless as they are never seen in game and only their 1024x1024 or 512x512 mips are seen, but I do see an increase in visual quality when using higher-res 2048x2048 textures (unless I'm imagining it, and I don't think I am).

GSH wrote:DXT compression is what does the compression per block of pixels. BZ2DXTGen does this, and is a requirement.

Mipmapping is the generation of 1/4 (and then 1/16, etc) smaller textures. BZ2DXTGen does this, and can be tuned with the options.

Good mipmapping increases quality onscreen with less popping/shimmering.

-- GSH

Do 2048x2048 make a difference to quality as opposed to 1024x1024 textures? Or are the others right about only the mips being seen in game when using 2048x2048 textures?

Zero Angel wrote: It wouldnt, the mipmaps are also compressed with DXT.

That said, in regards to texture quality (sharpness), there is already a certain 'ideal settings' which are based on distance. For example a 512x512 texture looks super crisp from 15m away, at 1024x1024 it would be 7m, 2048x2048 is 3m. I don't know if that's the exact formula but I wanted to illustrate that there's no point in creating some ultra high resolution textures for view distances which you won't be seeing it at. Optimization is important given that each time you double the height and width of an image, you are increasing the pixel count (and thus file size) by x4.

They've all been created already. 3m distance would affect the way the terrain at the feet of a pilot is seen.

If the file-size is the only issue, then it's not an issue.

If I had to re-size all of my textures, it would take ages. I have hundreds of 2048x2048 textures. That said, there are more that are smaller. 1000's more.

Only the QF Military 'race' has every texture at 2048x2048. The other 2 races are almost exclusively 1024x1024.

Ill take blurry textures if it means it will run on my HD 4000

As others have tried to tell you, the GPU will generally try and pick the 'right' mipmap level for each triangle onscreen -- it aims for a 1:1 pixel:texel match. I.e. mapping one onscreen pixel to one pixel in a source texture (or its mipmap chain). So, a building far away may only be 20x20 pixels onscreen -- for a combination of screen resolution, camera position, etc. The GPU will aim for a 16x16 or 32x32 depending on its tuning. Give a full mipmap chain to the GPU, and it'll generally do the right thing.

You can make textures too large - take the startup 'legal' screens. If you made them 4096x4096, most people's GPUs would treat the largest mip(s) as waste, as it wouldn't show them. But, it would increase the disk and RAM footprint. If too many textures have wasted largest mips, that can really hurt performance.

-- GSH

GSH wrote:If too many textures have wasted largest mips, that can really hurt performance.

-- GSH

That's all I needed to know.

This probably just pushed the mod's release back another month.

bigbadbogie wrote:

GSH wrote:If too many textures have wasted largest mips, that can really hurt performance.

-- GSH

That's all I needed to know.

This probably just pushed the mod's release back another month.

So a month past never is... still never?

Yea, because GSH telling you something we've been telling you from the start in a slightly different way means that you are pushed back another month, the scoundrel.

Nielk1 wrote:

bigbadbogie wrote:

GSH wrote:If too many textures have wasted largest mips, that can really hurt performance.

-- GSH

That's all I needed to know.

This probably just pushed the mod's release back another month.

So a month past never is... still never?

Yea, because GSH telling you something we've been telling you from the start in a slightly different way means that you are pushed back another month, the scoundrel.

The set release date for QF2 is in exactly 20 days time. That's what I'm aiming for.

No, what GSH did was eliminate my doubts. Not a scoundrel, just the bearer of news.

Resizing the textures isn't hard, I believe XnView can do a BATCH resize for you.

In DXT form?

yay! Can't wait!

BZ2DXTGen can pre-size images for you. Keep your high-resolution files as-is, just add an entry per item you want to shrink (or upscale) to do that.

-- GSH

The issue is that these textures have been accumulated over 2 years. I don't even have a lot of the original files, and those I do have are PSDs and would require a manual resizing, exporting to .tga and DXTing of each one.

+ Bump maps and a0 textures.

I'm going to try this with DXTGen:

[__RULE7]
IfWidthEq = 2048
IfHeightEq = 2048
PreScaleX = 1024
PreScaleY = 1024
IfComment = "Downscale 2048x2048 -> 1024x1024 "

Is this the best way?