Recommended max size for a texture map?

dialNforNinja

Okay, so, the last time I seriously worked with texture maps was about 1998, when 256x256 pixels was ye gods huge and only the latest 3DFX Voodoo graphics card could support 512x512. Obviously, times have changed since then, but what would a good maximum practical size be for a character's front-and-center high-rez image map, to allow for compatibility and a decent level of detail without too much of a performance hit with older and mobile hardware? Are we at 2048 square now? 1024? I've got a transforming monster truck to skin, so it's basically got all the exterior of a humanoid plus all the exterior of a vehicle plus about half of each again in parts that would normally be unseen inside the model, and I need the car body to allow for a detailed paint job, sponsor logos, etc.. At 1024 it'll probably have to be split into three or four parts to look acceptable, so if 2048 is viable in a single chunk that saves three operations to clear and load the buffer, right?

Megalomaniak

When you say older and mobile hw, does that include older mobile hw? Safe bet is 1024 but you might be fine with 2048 perhaps.

cybereality

For desktop, you can go up to 4K for important textures (or even 8K on high end machines, I did this on one of my demos), but less key objects should probably be 2K or maybe less if they are smaller on screen. Web and mobile have performance issues with such large textures. You can probably get away with 2K for the main character or car, but 4K would be pushing it, unless on the newest highest end phones. If you want your game to run on crappy phones, then you likely want 1K for most stuff and maybe 2K only for the main character. But you'll have to experiment, because it will depend on your game. For example, a large 3D RPG would take up a lot of RAM, and thus you may have to make compromises. But if it were a single screen mobile game (like a runner) without too many objects, you could probably use larger texture sizes.

dialNforNinja

Sounds like 1024 is the better idea - not that I really expect to end up with, at best, any more than a free-roaming demo to amuse myself nyooming around in (yes that's a real word; I didn't even make it up myself and its meaning is immediately understandable!) but I might, and having always been on older hardware myself (my "new" computer was built in pre-lockdown 2019, with a Ryzen 3600 not-X and Radeon RX580; the previous one was a laptop from 2012 and wouldn't have been replaced yet if the CPU fan didn't die and cook it) I always appreciate it when developers don't aim for the latest, cutting edge of top-end equipment.

Thanks for the advice!

Megalomaniak

@dialNforNinja said: (my "new" computer was built in pre-lockdown 2019, with a Ryzen 3600 not-X and Radeon RX580; the previous one was a laptop from 2012 and wouldn't have been replaced yet if the CPU fan didn't die and cook it)

I'm still rockin' a first gen ryzen 5 1600 and an RX470 8gb, they still do very well, no problem.

cybereality

Well Godot 3.x scales down pretty well to low end hardware, even laptops and Intel iGPUs. Of course, you need to optimize it and make sacrifices, but 60fps is possible. The mobile performance could be better, though. It's great for 2D and simple 3D, but there are serious performance concerns with post process effects or even shadow mapping. If you bake the shadows, it will look nice and this is better for mobile.

Godot 4.0 has much better graphics, but also needs better hardware. I haven't tried the mobile renderer yet, in theory it should be good, but my tests on desktop indicate that you need a good machine if you want to use the new features like global illumination.

dialNforNinja

@Megalomaniak said: I'm still rockin' a first gen ryzen 5 1600 and an RX470 8gb, they still do very well, no problem.

I did go for the 8gb gpu as well, and 32gb of system RAM. Experience has shown me that even if nothing else in a system is up to even half the recommended specs, you can still run most things semi-decently as long as there's enough memory that it's not hitting the swap file to launch at all. Since my systems drives (separate ones for Manjaro and 'Doze so I could get it to actually boot by default to Linux, which gives me a desktop and reopens a couple hundred browser tabs before 'doze even puts up a splash screen) are both SSDs, I don't want to hit the swap file at all if I don't have to, to avoid burning their lifetime writes up.

But anyway, back to more directly relevant material. I would expect the new high-end features to take more grunt to churn them out, so no surprise there. I'm not going for photo-realism anyway; if I wanted that UE5 just came out with a huge free asset library and yadda yadda. It's also a 40gb download just for the engine and IDE, and maybe some folks got time and space for that, but I sure don't. Godot 3.4+ is good enough for cel shading with most props and minor characters just using material or vertex colors, and that's plenty for my purposes. I want to play in a giant robots cartoon, not a UHD Micheal Bay music video.

spacecloud

dialNforNinja

I don't want to hit the swap file at all if I don't have to, to avoid burning their lifetime writes up.

Have you decreased swappiness?

cybereality

dialNforNinja UHD Micheal Bay music video

ROFL 🤣