DROPPED Terrain Bump - Texture Pack (by SparrowPrince)

[phazer11]

So are you saying to half the resolution? I think I and several other people are probably a bit lost by your comment Kelmych.

[EssArrBee]

He's saying the modders should half the resolution on creation and forgo DXT compression. This is something that Sparrow has always practiced and I think is kind of an unwritten rule.

[phazer11]

So he was saying to use R5G5B5 compression on Terrain Bump?

[EssArrBee]

No R5G6B5 is the format you save the texture in, then use DXT compression, which has native decompression support in any DX hardware for almost zero cost. Using other formats makes DXT screw up the quality of the texture. I believe that it doesn't really matter what format you save a normal map in if it's uncompressed. The process of resaving them in R5G6B5 was for the purpose of compressing them without loosing a lot of fidelity.

[Kelmych]

So are you saying to half the resolution? I think I and several other people are probably a bit lost by your comment Kelmych.

I'll try again. There are two standard uncompressed formats for textures without specularity, R8G8B8 and R5G6B5, that differ only in the level of quantization used. A texture file using R5G5B5 format is roughly 1/2 the size of one in R8G8B8. These are different only in the number of bits used to represent each of the colors (~5 vs. 8).

 

Separately, there is an issue of what resolution (e.g., 2028x2048 vs. 1024 vs. 1024) to use for textures. A texture with 1Kx1K resolution is 1/4 the size of one with 2Kx2K resolution. Resolution is independent of the degree of quantization (~5 vs. 8 bits) used.

 

Since the discussion in this thread is about tangent space normal maps, one of the questions that came up previously is whether it is better to save a normal map texture at:

• "full" resolution using DirectX compression (e.g., DXT5), or
• uncompressed at a lower resolution (e.g., half the resolution).

Many of the texture creators said that ordinary DirectX compression works so poorly for normal maps that it is better to use a lower resolution uncompressed texture than a full resolution DirectX compressed texture.

 

When optimizing normal maps there are many combinations of compression format (8 bit uncompressed, ~5 bit uncompressed, ordinary DirectX compression, and even a special variant of improved DirectX compression for normal maps that Ethatron developed) and resolution to choose from.

 

If the texture creator saves the normal map texture as uncompressed, then it is desirable when optimizing to save the normal map in one of the two uncompressed formats at either full or half resolution. We would then have 4 choices for how we save the normal map texture (assuming we don't convert it to use DirectX compression). For the Terrain Bump package it was recommended that we save the normal map textures at the original resolution but use ~5 bit quantization vs. 8 bit (thus saving about 50% of the file size).

[phazer11]

Ok this is basically what I had gathered using what I knew about encoding, photography, etc pooled together however that is a much better explanation that I believe others will find straighten things out.

[z929669]

So what Kelmych is saying is that you should not convert any uncompressed normals to DXT format (but if you do that using DDSopt, the result will be slightly higher quality than with other compression formats). If they are very large already, they can be reduced in size, so 2k can be reduced to 1k, saving you 75% of the original 'cost' (usually, 2k and above can be considered "large" for most applications ... but Sparrow has already done that with this mod). Furthermore, the 8-bit, uncompressed format can be reduced to approximately '5.34'-bit, which saves yet another 1/3 of performance cost at minimal quality cost.

 

So the goal is to compare 565 uncompressed to 888 original uncompressed for this mod. Sparrow's comments indicate that we should pay particular attention to the vertical object models that use these textures (rocks & mountains) and get some close-up screens for comparison.

[Guest]

Normap Map Compression Comparison.zip

 

Sorry I have taken ages to reply and have not looked through the decal fix files yet, but that should help. I just generated some RGB noise and compressed one side. I hope the differences are apparent, and if you can't open it then just download GIMP or similar. :)

 

Basically a half-res uncompressed normal map should look better than a full-sized one because it's going to keep the clarity. If you look at the comparison, it might take you a moment to notice, but it becomes evident that the detail just blurs into the other ones on the right-hand side.

[z929669]

I can't download the file :(

 

Anyway, I am hoping that going from 888 to 565 (still uncompressed) will be a good trade off.

[Guest]

 

Well that is one of them, but that site will have applied JPEG compression. That is a 3D render with basic lighting. You can see the compressed version looks like it has white pebbles stuck in it, the consistancy of the grain is just ruined

[phazer11]

Upload to Minus I uploaded a 6MB or better uncompressed bitmap there (you'll need to download their android or apple store app to create an account)

Also I was able to download the file and I can add it to dropbox or mediafire if you guys still can't get it (probably your ISPs fault).

 

Here's the bitmap provided by Sparrow (sadly Minus doesn't accept tga files) right click the thumbnail and say open in new tab.

[EssArrBee]

So that's why the snow looks so awesome in game.

[Guest]

Full Res. vs. Compressed:

 

LINK

 

Half Res. vs. Compressed:

 

LINK

 

Even though the half resolution loses sone detail, it still looks miles better to me than the compressed one. Might want to upload this to the mod page or something z929669? I would but it would end up in the user section regardless of permissions.

 

EssArrBee Wrote:

So that's why the snow looks so awesome in game.

[z929669]

Full Res. vs. Compressed:

 

LINK

 

Half Res. vs. Compressed:

 

LINK

 

Even though the half resolution loses sone detail, it still looks miles better to me than the compressed one. Might want to upload this to the mod page or something z929669? I would but it would end up in the user section regardless of permissions.

 

EssArrBee Wrote:

So that's why the snow looks so awesome in game.

I'd be happy to upload the compare to illustrate.

 

Could you create the 565 uncompressed as an alternative "performance" tradeoff? (or supply me with the source file, and I will prepare the diffs/compares) ... and yes, I still have yet to prepare the performance version for testing, but I just finished optimizing all of the vanilla textures and will tackle shortly.

 

EDIT: not sure what I was thinking there .... your examples aren't normal maps :P

[JareX]

this mod makes my Ice mountains look horrible:

 

it goes from this (turned off)

 

into this (turned on)

 

 

 

is this something I did wrong? or the mod just do that?

 

if thats not the case I don't think its a good idea that this mod is on STEP.

Edited March 8, 2014 by JareX