by electroglyph » Wed Dec 27, 2006 11:29 am
There's not a lot of difference in the texture formats. Your big gains come from how you plan surfaces and textures in the first place.
Avoid transitions.
Think of jpg as being made by combining the red, green, and blue colors. The more you jump from one color to another, the bigger your image file will be. If you try saving a solid white jpg and a black and white checkerboard jpg the white one will be smaller, even if both images are 512x512. If you make a house and texture it you should put seperate textures the roof and walls. Don't map everything to one sheet and leave gaps in between.
Use Compression.
You can set your jpg compression to zero and the filesize will blow way up. It's probably safe to go to 15-20% before you start to see squares out of place on the texture.
Use tiling.
Don't put a mile of image on a mile of ground. Repeat a tiling texture for land, mountains, big walls, etc.
Don't over model.
No one is going to be able to see that tree on the mountaintop a mile away. It doesn't have to be more than a flat square. If you remember Ahnonay when you swim out to the cities you find out they're only billboards. Anything you won't get close to should be that way. Don't model beltbuckles or buttons if just a texture will do. If an object must be modeled, round objects use more polys than square ones.
