Texture Optimization

[Coby Foden]

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Ormand Lionheart wrote:

But...if you were to upload at 1023x1023 which is going to be downscaled to 512x512 . . .

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1023 x 1023 texture will be upscaled to 1024 x 1024, not downscaled to 512 x 512.

I did some experiments with various sizes to see what happens to the texture size in uploading if the texture size is not one those what SL supports:

Original size on the left, the resulting size in SL after uploading on the right.

768 x 768 ---> 512 x 512

769 x 769 ---> 512 x 512

800 x 800 ---> 512 x 512

900 x 900 ---> 1024 x 1024

1023 x 1023 ---> 1024 x 1024

According to the above example the trigger point, whether the texture is downscaled to 512 x 512 or upscaled to 1024 x 1024 at upload, is somewhere between 800 x 800 and 900 x 900.

Anyway, I do believe that it is best to size the image in the image editor to the required size rather than let the upload process do the resizing.

[Ormand Lionheart]

Thanks for the info. I know when I record video I get much better quality after compression if the source is rendered to the same size so what you say does make a lot of sense.

[Zepharine]

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Void Singer wrote:

instead of pre-"squishing", pre-expand.... it'll up the pixel density for the final product giving it more detail.

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Can someone explain just what this means... make your image larger, before downsizingto 512?

[Qie Niangao]

This seems to be about an ancient problem in SL rendering of non-square texture dimensions. You'll find a lot of absurdly oversized textures from back in those days, which followed Void's then-relevant suggestion: to square-up the dimensions, zoom the smaller one up to the larger one to avoid losing detail (but only if that resolution is really necessary).

I think that bug is long gone, in which case this all means nothing now.

(A lot has changed in the years since this thread was current. Now, with separate Material maps there are much more complex options for "texture optimization" -- but SL's creators tend to use simple, uniform UV maps, slap on a baked lighting paint job and call it a day.)