Am I thinking this right?

[andylegate]

the prp district textures files. One thing that can make it huge in size is the amount of times that a texture is used on the face of a mesh.

For example: A simple cube has 6 faces, so even if I UV map only 4 of the faces, with a 50kb texture, it will be 4 times that.
Likewise, if I have a mountain side that has over 5,000 faces that I UV map, then said texture is used 5,000 times, so the Prp file will be HUGE? Right?

Or am I wrong?

[Paradox]

No.
The Textures.prp contains the actual image data. The mapping is only stored as points relative to the image data in a separate class along with the geometry.

If I have a 256*256 texture that I stretch over a huge landscape; the data in the .prp file will only contain the image data of the 256*256 texture (and smaller sizes due to mipmapping levels).

[andylegate]

Hmmmmmm........

Trying to figure out why my file is over 27 MB then, for such a small Age. I do know that when I look in the TEX Cache folder, the TEX files in there are HUGE compared to the size of the actual texture file is.

For example, I've got a texture simply called gold. It's a JPG file that is 20 kb big. I use this texture for the 8 toruses that I have in my little age. They are not huge in size.

Yet the TEX file for gold (IE gold.jpg.tex) is over 2.7 MB big!!!!

What is doing this then?

[Nadnerb]

Indeed. There is only one copy of every unique texture stored. Your textures prp will be the same size whether you map your texture to 6 faces on a cube or 72,000 faces on a complicated mesh or terrain.

[Aloys]

(I replied to a similar question just a couple days ago but I don't find my post.. argh)

The size of the texture file you use before it is exported by blender/PyPRP doesn't matter. When PyPRP exports your age the texture may be compressed again or may not be depending on the export option you use. If you use "Export all as full Age" your texture will not be compressed, resulting in a big file even if your texture was small before. If you use "Generat Age Release" then your texture will be compressed and it will be of a much more reasonnable size. (but most likely it still will be bigger than a highly compressed jpg file; that is normal).

What matters is the dimensions of your texture; if it is large (for instance 1024x1024), then eventhough it is a tiny jpg file, the texture is huru will end up being heavy.

[andylegate]

Ah ha! Thanks Aloys! Now that one makes a lot of sense. One, my little Age was exported using Full Age.

Also, I noticed some of the textures vary, 800x600 or 300x300.

Is it better to use PNG format instead of JPG?

[Jennifer_P]

I think I recall reading somewhere in the Programmers forum that it doesn't matter whether you use jpeg or png. But I could certainly be wrong...hm, I guess I'll go try to find out.

[Jennifer_P]

Well, I didn't see anything immediately. Have to wait for an expert to come along.

[Trylon]

If the images have full opacity, it doesn't really matter, but you can only use png images if you want to use alpha values in your textures.

[Robert The Rebuilder]

Andy:

To reduce the size of your age to 25% of its original size (or more), try the "Generate Release" export option for PyPRP.