Tips for preserving texture detail?

I am trying to keep my texture sizes as small as possible but I am not liking the results when I reduce the size. I have a concrete texture for a wall that looks great at 512 x 512 with all sorts of little details shown. But when I reduce it to a more acceptable size of 256 x 256, it gets blurry and loses most of its detail.

I am reducing the size in photoshop and choose the sharper resampling option. Not sure what else I can do. Do I just have to use the larger texture if I want to preserve the detail in my build?

Without seeing the texture in question, it's impossible to say.

Yup. Sometimes that's the only choice you have. When you drop the texture size from 512 x 512 to 256 x 256, you are losing 75% of the information that was in the original. There's no amount of fiddling you can do to the 256 x 256 to bring it back again. The trade-off between getting reduced load time and getting maximum resolution is purely a subjective one. You have to decide how much it's worth to preserve the detail in your texture if a lot of people have a hard time waiting for it to rez. Tough call.

Thanks. I guess i will just upload both sizes and have people help me test the load times. Would just be disappointing to have to use the blurry version.

One other thing to think about ..... You, the artist, are going to be much more sensitive about the appearance of your textures bcause you know how much detail you put in them. Visitors to your region won't have that information. Also, they will be less likely to stand and gaze at it for a long time, appreciating all the hard work you put into making it beautiful. If the wall texture is a centerpiece of whatever you are building, and you think people really will appreciate your incredible detail, go ahead and use the larger file size. If it's a wall that people are likely to walk past without paying much attention, consider using the smaller size to guarantee that they at least see SOMETHING.

If it's just the occasional texture here or there that needs to be large, don't worry about it. The important thing is not to overdo it. Don't cover an entire build with 512's or 1024's when 256's or smaller would work. But if it's just a handful of surfaces in question, there's nothing wrong with erring on the side of visual quality.

What I usually try to determine is this. How much of the typical observer's screen is the texture likely to cover? If it's something going on a big wall, then chances are it's going to occupy a large portion of the screen. In that case, a large texture is justifiable. If it's something insignificant, though, like the back of a chair that nobody's likely ever to zoom in on, then there's no reason to go big.

In other words, try not to think so much about the texture itself, but more about its context. Are the details you're trying to preserve really important to the integrity of the build as a whole? If so, then by all means, do what you have to do to make them visible. But if the build will still be high quality without them, don't be afraid to make sacrifices.

Question:

Assume you are using a detailed 512 x 512 that goes on walls. Also assume you are going to do some smaller accessories using that same texture. Is it better to reduce the texture to a 256 x 256 or smaller if using it IN THE SAME BUILD on smaller items? Or, are the benefits of the smaller size texture outweighed by needed to download another texture?

If it is already getting loaded once for the visible 512 x 512 texture, any smaller section of that texture loads at that same instant. But if you make a seperate 256 x256 texture, the client has two different textures to download, and will take more resources to load the additional texture. In short, if any part NEEDS that large texture, reusing smaller sections of the large texture costs nothing, while adding more textures adds to your overhead.

I frequently use 512 x 256 or even 1024 x 512 textures on my buildings, showing only as much width of the wall (the longer dimension) as is needed. Since there is often only one texture needed for all interior walls when done that way, it still loads faster than if I had a bunch of different textures.

Thanks, Ceera. I kinda thought that was the logical answer but I've learned that logic and SL don't always travel in the same social circles