I was asking myself what was the best format between bmp and jpeg for game blender?
bitmaps are very large but will not compress the image so the filesize is huge
Jpeg is smaller, but they degrade the image when they compress.
TGA is native to blender and requires no additional DLL files to run but can be big
PNG is the best overall, you can compress them if you want, they can have an alpha channel too.
.bmpâs are huge, a definate nono for uploading or using as textures.
.jpg, and .png would do fine, though .pngâs are bigger then .jpgâs.
PNGs and GIFs are my favorite because they usually have great detail and feature an alpha channel as MMPH! said. Between jpgâs, pngâs, gifsâs, tgaâs, etc., its really just a matter of personal preference though.
so Itâs a bad idea using bmp ?
does huge texture affect the framerate ? ( sounds obvious but I prefer ask )
oh yeah!!!
does huge texture affect the framerate ?
this is the biggest game killer known to the game engine. Many games have been abandoned because of this.
Be careful when using Jpegs, they can ruin your textures⊠They are totaly worthless for bumpmaps and will ruin normal maps.
PNG can be compressed too, but if you make them the same size as the jpeg counterpart, it will ruin textures too.
We need a good game developer to work on the game engine, DXT support would really help things a lot.A new render engine would help too.
I suggest read articles about images, file types and picture compression modes. There are no good or bad formats. If you use only png format that will be not rational solution. Please read articles shown below⊠hope this will help 
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/JPG_GIF_PNG.asp
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.html
If you use only png format that will be not rational solution.
yea there is a time and a place for jpegs too.just be careful is all I was trying to say.
We really need DXT
About .gifâs they can be animated, but to my knowledge they have limited color depth.
I usually use 512x512 textures in my games doesnât really slow things down. Use vertex colors when you can, itâll allow to avoid putting in more textures. Sometimes you can just make a greyscale texture and use vertex colors to color it.
I use JPG for nearly everything. Itâs versatile and small.
If I need lossless quality or alpha, I use PNG.
Bitmaps are a really bad idea and I never use them at all.
Yah, you guys sound like you really know what youâre talking about. A tip is that jpegâs small and good for repeating textures like grass or stone.
Turin:
Strictly speaking, GIF doesnât handle alpha, but instead uses indexed transparency.
Seems pedantic to point this out, but there is a significant difference. With an alpha channel you can have soft edges and semi-transparency. With indexed transparency you canât.
GIF was made years ago by Compuserve
As stated above, it is a very outdated format.
Freen has the right idea.
use PNG or TGA for alpha masking.
I dont think GIF is supported by the game engine.
Donât use TGA --it is as bad as using BMP. Both compress the same (though TGA is a lot more flexible).
JPG and PNG are the best choices for size-to-quality ratio. Both decompress quickly and with little overhead, and both are adaptable to input colordepth.
This is where you will save the most space. How often do your texturemaps use more than, say, 500 colors? 250? 100? You save significant space if you can reduce the input colordepth without sacrificing anything on the target display.
(This is where people get the âPNGs are bigger than GIFsâ rhetoric. They compare a 256-color GIF to a 16 million color PNG and, since the number of colors actually used is the same, conclude that PNG is defective. PNGs actually compress much better than GIFs.) /end rant 1
BTW. GIFs are not limited to 256 colors. Legacy GIF readers are. /end rant 2
Personally, I wish Pinnacle Systems cared one iota about the TGA format. It has great potential⊠/end rant 3
i mostly use .Tga and .jpg, simply becaus that was my only options when i first found blender a long time back, and i dident find a reason to change, dident slow me down and it supports alpha(tga that is.). But after reading i might consider chaningâŠ
Freen, very good point. I was wondering about that.
Should the memory size of a texture matter?? Once itâs uploaded in your graphics card itâs all the same size. No matter if its bmp or jpg.
Donât use TGA --it is as bad as using BMP. Both compress the same (though TGA is a lot more flexible).
JPG and PNG are the best choices for size-to-quality ratio. Both decompress quickly and with little overhead, and both are adaptable to input colordepth.
Well what do you use for your normal maps? as nice as PNG is you will still get âstair steppingâ in normal and bumpmaps.
I guess you new guys just got to learn this crap the hard way.
Both compress the same (though TGA is a lot more flexible).
SighâŠ
BMP has absolutely NO compression. That is why it is called a Bit-map every single bit is mapped out along with every color the only thing you can do to make a bitmap smaller is to palletise it down to 24,16,8,4, or 2 bit.
TGA gives you the option to use RLE compression.
You really should learn about this stuff before you go and tell new people maxims that are completely untrue.(I recommend Wikipedia, or just reading in general, guessing will make you look silly)
There is definitely a time and a place for TGA.
Halleluja brother!
⊠TIF, anyone?