Default blank texture vs. 8x8 blank texture: what's faster?
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Miriel Enfield
Prim Junkie
Join date: 12 Dec 2005
Posts: 389
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09-29-2006 00:21
Okay, my understanding of SL's default blank texture (you know, the one you get by clicking the "blank" button in the texture picking window) is that it's actually just another texture, which happens to be... well, blank. The texture picker says it's 32 x 32. I've managed to upload an 8 x 8 blank texture of my own, and I'm wondering which will load faster. (And yeah, I know they're both so small that this isn't a huge issue.) Anybody know?
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Candide LeMay
Registered User
Join date: 30 Dec 2004
Posts: 538
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09-29-2006 00:32
A blank texture will compress to roughly the same file size, no matter what dimensions (it will just say here's pixel with this color, repeat it N times). However, chances are that people will already have the default blank texture loaded from elsewhere so it should be (very marginally) faster.
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Chosen Few
Alpha Channel Slave
Join date: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 7,496
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09-29-2006 06:41
From: Candide LeMay A blank texture will compress to roughly the same file size, no matter what dimensions (it will just say here's pixel with this color, repeat it N times). That may be true, but file size really isn't much of an issue compared with texture memory. A 32x32 texture contians 16 times as many pixels as an 8x8, so it will consume 16 times the video resources. Compression doesn't affect that in any way. As far as your video card is concerned, there's no such thing as file size, just pixels and channels. With that in mind, the Lindens really aught to downsize their blank texture. There's no reason for it to be so big. Granted, we're only talking about 3KB at 32x32, so it's not all that much, but compare that with the mere 192 bytes of an 8x8, and it's obviously a lot of waist. Add up all the little inefficiencies like that that are all over SL, and the savings could be huge. So, my advice, Miriel, would be to use the 8x8. The library texture might load faster for people the first time around since, as Candide said, people are likely to have it cached already before they get to your place, but loading it is just a one-time thing. Actually viewing it is an all-the-time thing for as long as someone's there. It's to everyone's advantage for not to force people's video cards to process unnecessary pixels. Always go as small as possible. Again, as you said, it's not that we're talking about all that much; 3KB is a drop in the bucket. However, SL's got an awful lot of drops, and as we all know from our crappy FPS, they do add up. That bucket can fill to capacity pretty quickly. If only SL were capable of using a 1x1, or even a 2x2, imagine how much faster it might be if all those instances of 3KB could be reduced to just 3 or 12 bytes instead.
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Cottonteil Muromachi
Abominable
Join date: 2 Mar 2005
Posts: 1,071
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09-29-2006 09:38
I'd actually be happier if that 'none' button in the texture panel actually does something.
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Joannah Cramer
Registered User
Join date: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1,539
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09-29-2006 10:43
From: Chosen Few That may be true, but file size really isn't much of an issue compared with texture memory. A 32x32 texture contians 16 times as many pixels as an 8x8, so it will consume 16 times the video resources. Compression doesn't affect that in any way. As far as your video card is concerned, there's no such thing as file size, just pixels and channels. Some aspects to keep on mind here, perhaps... each texture is really loaded as a series of mip-maps, that is collection of images repeatedly scaled down to half size of 'higher' mip-map. With texture as small as 8x8 there's no room really for mip-map generation, which may cause problems on some graphics card and driver combinations. Also, textures are internally stored in compressed form where possible, and this compression is based on dividing base image into 4x4 pixel areas which are then handled like single pixel of regular image. Taken this way, 32x32 pixels base image becomes 8 'compressed pixels' wide and 32 bytes large, which is likely more convenient for a gfx card to handle than fraction of such amount when operating on compressed version of 8x8 pixels texture.
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Jeremy Bender
anachronistic iconoclast
Join date: 12 Aug 2006
Posts: 99
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09-29-2006 10:55
From: Cottonteil Muromachi I'd actually be happier if that 'none' button in the texture panel actually does something. Never worked for me either. One of the first things I did was upload my own transparent texture, I am sure many do the same.
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Jopsy Pendragon
Perpetual Outsider
Join date: 15 Jan 2004
Posts: 1,906
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09-29-2006 12:12
If textures are stored as mini-maps... and the 32x32 blank texture is already loaded... wouldn't using a 8x8 blank texture just add one more texture rather than actually save anything? (I suppose stretching/tiling a smaller texture would reduce the labor performed by the display card somewhat... but considering how fast video cards are now, is this ever going to add up to anything noticible?  )
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Cottonteil Muromachi
Abominable
Join date: 2 Mar 2005
Posts: 1,071
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09-30-2006 01:06
From: Jopsy Pendragon If textures are stored as mini-maps... and the 32x32 blank texture is already loaded... wouldn't using a 8x8 blank texture just add one more texture rather than actually save anything? (I suppose stretching/tiling a smaller texture would reduce the labor performed by the display card somewhat... but considering how fast video cards are now, is this ever going to add up to anything noticible?  ) Ssssshhh. This is an intellectual debate. Not a practical one.
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Mephisto Brennen
No Copy / Mod / Transfer
Join date: 20 Jul 2006
Posts: 84
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09-30-2006 08:14
To step aside of this, what do you wanna put on an 8 by 8 image. Thats not allot of pixels (64) to work on 
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Cottonteil Muromachi
Abominable
Join date: 2 Mar 2005
Posts: 1,071
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09-30-2006 10:27
From: Mephisto Brennen To step aside of this, what do you wanna put on an 8 by 8 image. Thats not allot of pixels (64) to work on  8x8 works very well for gradients. But theres a border around it, but easily adjusted by scaling the texture to 0.9 or so.
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