Q4 - Typical texture sizes in Q4?

[AEon]

I'll start converting AEdm7 to Quake4 pretty soon, using Evillair's eX texture set.

This set of textures is available in 256x256 and 512x512 pixels.

In Q3A I am using the 256x256 resolution set, and for most of the textures this is more than enough.

Question is would the 512x512 actually be any good in Q4?

My guess would be that is primarily uses up the texture memory of the gfx card, thus possibly imposing limitations on who can run the map.

Is 512x a typical texture resolution for Q4?


Usually Q4 materials now require something like 4 textures ("bumpmapping"), so is it still possible to turn .tga into .jpg to bring down the size of the textures in the .pk4?

For Q3A this was quite possible, but since some of the Q4 textures rely on transparency and who knows what else, I have the feeling this is a non-trivial matter?

[Hipshot]

Increased pak-sizes comes with a new engine. Don't fight it! =) Use the 512^2 versions. It's still odd why you chose the 256^2 for Q3 since 512 would look much better there as with Q4.

[AEon]

For Q3A I picked 256x since most of the textures in Q3A are 256x and in most cases I used "FIT" to place textures and was already downscaling them a lot. So the 512x would not have helped.

I am noticing, after some tests in Q4, that where the default texture size seems to be 512x by default, since all my textures are mapped quite a bit (4 times per face).

Trouble is these large .tga huge .pk4 file sizes. This is really bad, the 512x version of the texture is 40 MB large.

Not a very fun download for folks wanting to play a "simple" map.

Hmmpf.

[Kat]

It's not the size that counts, it's how many differents one you've used; try not to use to many unique textures.

I totally agree about pack size as well, and what you've mentioned there at 40MB probably hasn't even got the DDS versions included?!

[AEon]

Well for once I wanted to *really* use a texture set, I use about 8 MB of the 12 _d textures in Q3A. So I am only using 66%.

The 40 MB inclused all textures (diffuse, etc.). But that is bad enough.

I might be forced to use the Q4dm1 textures instead, thus massively cutting down the pk4 file size. Sigh... I liked the idea of using a new texture set thusfar rarely used AFAICT.

[Scourge]

Mabye make 2 different versions of the map? One with each texture set?

[Kat]

Mabye make 2 different versions of the map? One with each texture set?

You can do, but with the advent of the addon.conf file it could cause load problems as I don't know if you can differenciate pk4's like that without possibly throwing up an error (not sure if it works like 'either/or').

[AEon]

For a moment I thought I could simply swap the texture folder with 512x and 256x... but that would probably mess up the alignment of the textures.

Need to test this, because Q4's editor does some very strange things with textures. Possibly it is bright enough to allow texture changes.

Then I could simply compare how "bad" the 256x version looks compared to the 512x version.

[o'dium]

If your doing Quake 4 textures, then try and go with 512. It may be a large file size at the end but 256 will just look to muddy thanks to the local maps. Remember its 3x a texture minimum, with Quake 4 using 4x a texture per set for the best visual inpact of the engine.

[AEon]

Will test the 256x textures vs. 512x just to see how bad it is.

Personally I'd prefer to use 512x, but a map pk4 with 30 or so MB, is ugly, size-wise.