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Optimal textures for multi-platform-engine

Last post 04-27-2008 2:32 PM by jwatte. 2 replies.
  • 04-22-2008 4:18 PM

    Optimal textures for multi-platform-engine

    (This thread could be considered as an extension of the thread : http://forums.xna.com/thread/58121.aspx)

    Now... if i wanted to choose a set of optimal texture types for a program for multiplatform (windows, linux, mac...) and multi-engine (directx, opengl, etc.), anybody knows about typical solutions for these cases? Do they choose using textures at half way from every option, or do they normally optimize each case?

    Anyway... i have no problem about converting texture types to get each optimal set for each option of the program, but i would like to know if this is worth it. Have in mind that i need the best optimization possible. (I also have in mind that if i want texture sharing among people i should use a common format for that purpose).

    Thanks as always :D

  • 04-26-2008 5:41 AM In reply to

    Re: Optimal textures for multi-platform-engine

    Nobody can help with this? ^^
  • 04-27-2008 2:32 PM In reply to

    Re: Optimal textures for multi-platform-engine

    Answer
    It turns out that the graphics hardware supports the same formats on all platforms (except possibly PS/3). Thus, the format you'll end up delivering is likely DXT compressed textures in some container. The DDS file format is popular for such containers.

    However, for XNA Game Studio Content Pipeline, it may actually munge your data if you provide DXT compressed data as input, so you probably want to provide uncompressed input for it. That intermediate format should probably be something like TGA, which is universally supported and has good alpha support. In this case, you'll have three copies of the textures: 1) your source art (.PSD or whatever); 2) your intermediate format (.TGA) and 3) the "built" format (DXT data inside an XNB file for XNA GS; probably a DDS file with DXT data for all the others).

    There's another question, too: what is the size of textures you can use on the different targets? Targeting hardware with 64 MB of framebuffer is very different from targeting hardware with 512 MB of framebuffer. You should be prepared to drop (and not even deliver) the top one or two MIP maps of large textures for reduced targets.

    Jon Watte, Direct3D MVP kW X-port 3ds Max .X exporter kW Animation source code
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