self edit.

I usually stick to 1024x1024, only when the texture takes up a huge area (like the entire sky, or something very large) will I go over.

Insanity? It's what I'm all about!

If you want to make large textures, do so. Mod for yourself, not for other people :shrug:

If the game engine does resize textures over 1024x1024 wouldn't that make the texture look more detailed because all the detail the texture originally had gets compacted. I don't know I'm just ramblin, but I agree with you there is no need to make huge file sizes for something that just going to get resized anyways.

self edit

With MGE it won't resize stuff, I'm not even sure this resizing rule is true.

Edit: Sure Skydye, I'll join.

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There's that problem.
And there's also 5000+ polygon hairs.

You must test this to see if it's true so we can decide if it's really a problem or not. Make two textures one 1024x1024 and another that's 2048x2048 then check them ingame.

To some extent polygon count is irrelevant, given that current cards can easily render in excess of 1 000 000 triangles at decent frame rates. The issue that is the killer is batch count.

Hair is also a fairly rare thing (5 on screen at once in a town average), which makes it even more irrelevant as to how high the polygon count is.

I'm fully aware of the Math involved ......

MW may or may not resize textures above 1024 but it doesn't matter .... 2048 textures look clearer than 1024 so what MW is doing under the hood is irrelevant.

I agree that 2048 is to big for 90% of the texture needs of MW but on a few things it really looks good & if My PC can handle it what does it matter to you?

It would be pointless to do in modern games. IIRC The SM 3 specs requires a supported texture size of at least 4096x4096. Why put artificial limits in place when all it is going to do is eat cpu power.

(I am not saying that this doesn't happen in MW, IDK about Morrowind. I am not sure why they would though :shrug:)


Why should you dictate that a modder shouldn't push his or her GPU to the max? I am sure you are perfectly capable of resizing textures if you think they are to large.


We have video cards with 1gb of memory. That could hold at least 50 4096x4096 dds textures with several hundred megabytes to spare for other data :shrug:

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With MGE there's a huge difference...

A blanket statement like that is totally untrue .... because it totally depends on too many variable.

PC's are radically difference since the days Qarl made his conclusions about resolutions.

All I can say is on "My" PC I can see a difference ... some textures you can see a lot of difference between 1024 & 2048 some its is not enough to warrant to size difference.

Why don't you just post up screenshots?
You seem not to trust each other's statements, so just post a couple screenies and prove your point.

I think that a modder should be able to make what they want, or else they will not enjoy modding.
Though I am curious as to what has caused people to choose to make such large textures lately...

I'm confused. If people want to make massive textures than what's the big deal? Maybe it's because I haven't been doing this for very long, but I can pack a lot more detail into a 1024x1024 texture than a 512x512, and so on. If the texture is like a brick wall or something, I agree the extra size isn't needed, but, especially because I don't know how to make/apply bump/normal/detail maps, if something requires a ton of detail, I go bigger.

self edit

So prove it I say show a 1024 texture ingame versus the same texture but at 2048.
I kind of agree with darknut that its a broad statement so put your money where your mouth is

Yes, one would think a screenshot of a noticeable difference would be fairly conclusive. And since SWG is apparently putting a texture over the entire sky rather than using the vanilla repetition, one would think the difference would be very noticeable if there was a 1024 limit. Any chance you could throw a 1024 texture on that sky mesh and show us SWG?

http://i42.tinypic.com/52cjyo.jpg, as apposed to this http://i44.tinypic.com/96w7eu.jpg, same UV map as before, huge difference.

Both are the exact same texture, just differently sized, and the difference between them is easily noticable. Of course, I'm using MGE, and I'm not sure how the difference would look like without MGE.

here is a screen of a test I did ... here is the setup:

I grabbed a 2048 photo from the net & used it to replace the "tx_bc_dirt" texture (dirt in seyda Neen)

The photo started out 2048 so there is 0 filtering except I use unsharp mask after I resized the texture to 1024.

As you can see from the screenie the 2048 version is def clearer than the 1024 version & MW changes the perspective a little between the 1024 & 2048.

Is it enough to warrant the size difference ... maybe not ... but that's not the point

2048 really seem to make the most difference with ground textures ... MW uses a shader for ground textures ... maybe that has something to do with it ... I don't know ... I just know I can see the difference.



http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h61/TheDarknut/textures.gif

With the picture of the sky it's pretty hard to judge since they look like it's a different time of the day in each picture. But I do believe the modified one is barely, diminutively smoother looking. It is, but not enough to brag about. Assuming that they were different times of the day, I was looking at the clouds to compare the two. And as for the picture of the ground, it's noticable. I can see it, nothing major but still an improvement.

So it looks like you guys are right. Nice pics. :thumbsup:

Yes, I believe I see a difference there, but it is hard to be sure. Of course, it occurs to me that in posting screenshots we might be losing the very detail we are interested in. Both of SWG's screenshots are 1440x900 for example, so will we actually see as significant a difference between 1024 and 4096 as he saw? This may be where the standard photo sharing sites fail.

They were at practically the same time, it was at sunset, so the sky colour was changing, and I dunno about you, but I can CLEARLY see the difference between the two resolutions, in my example and Darknut's, size does make a difference, but 1024 usually works fine, so it should be a default.

Here's my set of personal rules:
512 - Minimum size
1024 - Default size
2048 - use only on really big objects
4096 - hardly ever use, only on objects that use up a huge about of screen space, like larger than the screen.