Texture size vs. object size

[-Jesse-]

Hi,

Is there any rule of thumb that what kind of texture size is good for certain size of object? I know "bigger is better" for the looks and "smaller is better" for performance, but has anyone made any "rules" or a guide about it? I mean texturing a Coke bottle needs a lot smaller texture than texturing a bus...

 

[Emery]

Over on racesimcentral.com, I asked Com8 about textures on his buildings for his new airport track. He said the large textures were 1024x1024 and, depending on distance from the track & LOD, ranged all the way down to 128x128.

I made some 8ft square braking markers (simple signboards) and used, I think, 256x256, which is possibly higher resolution than needed.

 

[Emery]

Another way of saying it is that you would start with 1024x1024 and work downwards. It's easier to make a high resolution image and scale it down than to make a low resolution image and scale it up.

 

[Nedo]

I playing around with different Texture resolutions this days,
what i did is open existing tracks and see what they have done.
Some Tarmac Textures are even up to 2048x2048. Things who are
large & close to you should use bigger textures, everything else is
fine with lets say 512x512 or less.
Drive around and see if the texture is enough for your taste,
crop it down, drive again the track and see the difference,
if its still looking ok, crop it down again for another test.


R
Nedo