about texture sizes and multiple objects

Support Materials and Textures
#1

i’m planning on doing a walkthrough of an existing building using the game engine…
i’ve taken the pictures of the walls and all i need to do is to retouch some of the pictures and they’re ready to be used as textures…

my questions:

is it alright if i’ll be dividing the walls into multiple objects and apply the uv mapping to them individually?
or will i gain performance if i let the mesh stay as 1 object? (…and perhaps have multiple material index)

i remember reading something saying that all textures should be packed into a single image file. is that right? is there any issue with using many image files of smaller size compared with a single image file with large size in the game engine? (how about in non-realtime rendering?)

thanks for any info that you can give… :slight_smile:

#2

am not sure if i posted this in the right place… or should this be in the GE support? my apologies…

#3

If we are talking about real-time graphics for the GE, then yes, technically you should reduce the number of textures. But from my experience, having 100 32x32 texture is the same as having 2 2048x2048 texture. The performance difference is minimal.

#4

thanks mpan3! i thought my thread has been forgotten :frowning:

so as a general rule, i should minimize the number of textures by mapping almost everything using (as much as possible) one texture map.

can you suggest any article to read regarding this? i really would like to know more… thanks again!

#5

Well, you don’t HAVE to use one texture. Probably the best way to find information for this would be to look up environment modeling tutorials for game engines. Just remember that Blender’s game engine will probably not handle as many poly’s or textures as a guide for, say, the Unreal 3 engine. The methods are just about the same tho: make model, define sections, make textures.

There’s not really a ‘right’ way to do it, just do whatever is easiest for you. If it’s easier for you to make one texture, go for it. If it easier to do it with a number of smaller textures, that way works as well. I think having one single huge texture might cause some slow-down if it’s TOO big. I don’t know all of the Game Engine’s limitations for textures and such.

Do some googling for “Lowpoly Environment tutorial” or something, you should be able to pull up a number of examples you can learn from.