Switch Atlas Material

[TriplePAF]

Hello,

I'm currently playing with Redux from Allegorithmic and can't find a (simple) way to switch my Atlas Material to the Redux Material version. is there somewhere an option to do that.


Kind regards,


Peter Fonk. 

[ArenMook]

Dare I ask why? Allegorithmic stuff does procedural textures/materials. Atlas materials are not procedural in any shape or form.

[TriplePAF]

Off-course. I'm already happy that I got your Attention.

The technical reason is that the memory footprint of the GUI Atlas texture will be reduced. I'm not sure that is a good solution for things like GUI Eye candy. As most Developers I like to judge the Quality of the game elements myself (if it's acceptable). The product doesn't use a regular PVRTC compression and I'm curious how it will handle the GUI Atlas texture.


Peter.

[ArenMook]

It won't. And when the texture is in video memory, it will take the same size regardless of whether it was a JPeg, PNG, PSD, TGA, or an allegorithmic "texture" before.

[TriplePAF]

Ok,

Sorry for the delay. I had to rethink your answer a few times. Does that mean that the memory footprint is pixel related and that compressing things can reduce or worsen only loading time (General Speaking)?

To answer my question from you advice: In case of NGUI I should try to get a smaller Atlas or faster shader and not try to compress the texture.

Kind regards,


Peter.     

[ArenMook]

When the texture data is stored on disk, compression (jpeg, png, etc) matters. When the texture is uploaded to video memory, the texture's compression its different -- truecolor (raw data), DXT, PVRTC. So it doesn't matter whether your source texture is PNG, JPeg, or PSD, in the end it simply doesn't matter.

GPU compression is not recommended for UI atlases. Compression is acceptable for tiled textures on 3D models, but is unsuitable for crisp, pixel-perfect UIs.

[TriplePAF]

Thanks for explaining it. 



Peter.